Okay, here comes a Revisionist blast about that endangered species called Freedom of Speech, followed by a liberal whimper.
The first part - today - sketches in very rough strokes the five-year-long ZŸndel ordeal around the Zundelsite. Tomorrow you will be treated for what Canadians believe is the "essence" of the struggle for Freedom of Speech - protecting a kid with a very dark psyche so he can utter threats to frighten other youngsters.
I title this two-part ZGram "Think Columbine!" - and while the title might not seem appropriate today, you will see the connection tomorrow.
As every ZGram reader knows, for five long years, Ernst ZŸndel has battled the liberal, government-appointed censors of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, staffed by its Chretien-appointed Tribunal. This intellectually stifling and costly proceeding has been the longest CHRT hearing in Canadian history.
Ernst ZŸndel did not fight this drawn-out battle just for himself. He could have easily washed his hands of the entire American-based, American-owned, American-run Zundelsite and walked away years ago, saving himself endless court appearances and tribunal hearings. He could have saved himself almost $200,000 in legal fees, punitive fines, court costs of the opposition against him etc. He could have saved himself more heartache, struggle, grief and aggravation than even most of his supporters know.
Ernst ZŸndel fought because he is a man and not a mouse. He fought because he understands that if the Canadian Hate Laws, already entrenched in Canada's Criminal Code, are allowed to be applied by the Human Rights Commission to cover Internet content, that will mean the final kiss of death of intellectual freedom in his adopted country, Canada, where he came as a nineteen-year-old boy in search of freedom from coercion.
More than any of his detractors, Ernst ZŸndel realized that the freedom of the Internet is the bedrock of freedom for the New Millennium - and for all freedom-loving people. The transcripts of these Tribunal and peripheral Federal Court Trial Division and Federal Appeal Court proceedings, as well as the submissions and rulings made to and by these courts -- all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada! - reveal such legal and judicial as well as moral bankruptcy that future generations and historians will shudder in disbelief.
During this seemingly interminable see-saw battle, the supposed guardians of Canada's freedoms sat on the sidelines. None of Canada's self-proclaimed guardians of fundamental freedoms ever lifted a finger or raised their voices in support of Ernst ZŸndel, preferring a deafening silence. The intellectuals snickered. The politicians vilified ZŸndel inside and outside of Parliament. The ruling Liberal Party passed amendments to the CHRC Act to fine-tune the persecution and repression machinery, turning it from remedial to punitive legislation with fines and ultimately jail terms if "cease-and-desist" orders were ignored or broken. The media censored or ignored these proceedings which will limit their freedom to research, report and publish on-line their own stock-in-trade - namely truthful information. All these people, fearing the artificially created, politically useful "ZŸndel Taint", knowingly negated fundamental Canadian Rights guaranteed in the much-vaunted Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Freedom of the Press, Opinion, thought and even Freedom of Association.
A Human Rights Tribunal judgment is expected in a few weeks - and is expected to be sweeping and brutal. It will affect all media of Canada. It will affect the intellectuals in academia, the politicians. It will affect most everyone with a stake in true freedom of speech - for make no mistake about it: The persecution of Ernst ZŸndel had a purpose beyond just punishing an inconvenient voice. It served to get a hold of the new medium for the Marxist-spawned, ever more arrogant and power-greedy Canadian Human Rights Industry.
Up to now, the Human Rights crowd had no instrument to control the radio waves, TV broadcasts, and the print media. The new Internet technology incorporates all communications in one way or another - and the forces hiding in the dark shadows behind the lofty and seductive phrases of anti-racist rhetoric and the fuzzy-woozy liberal censors knew that if they could bludgeon ". . . the man Canada loves to hate" into submission, they would be setting a precedent. They would emerge triumphant over the Internet, the new communications highway. Ernst ZŸndel was their means to an end.
The Human Rights industry will now grow by leaps and bounds. It will censor and dictate, at its whim, what can and cannot be researched, reported, published or broadcast. In another few years, the print and electronic media of communications, as we have known it, will be totally eclipsed by the Internet. The Human Rights Industry, with its obscene ". . . truth is not a defense" and ". . . intention is immaterial, only the protected minority recipient of hurt feelings counts. . . " frame of reference and state of mind will hound and bludgeon into submission and financially bankrupt all opposition to their Orwellian New World Order agenda.
It will be payback time for Canada's indifference and snickers - as one man struggled to preserve what millions threw into the gutter. The bureaucratic empire built on the ruins of Canada's ancient, largely Anglo-Saxon traditions will consume not hundreds of thousands (as in the ZŸndel case) but billions of dollars of individual and corporate money in the end! The power of the Canadian Radio and Television Commission, even the power of the Canadian court system, will be subordinated to this Moloch, this bureaucratic Marxist nightmare, which will pale anything our socialist/liberal/utopian dreamers could have, in their feverish brains, conjured up.
The current intellectual elite, whatever little of it there is left, seems to perceive this dimly. It seems to want to try to salve its conscience by some contrived, media-created straw man issue parading as Freedom of Speech. Tomorrow you will read an article on just such artificial incident against the backdrop of the ZŸndel struggle.
Tomorrow: "Think Columbine - Part II
Thought for the Day:
"Zündel's fate is absolutely impossible in Russia. Jews in Russia have no opportunity to persecute Revisionists; they could only hiss."
(Sent to the Zundelsite by a Russian history professor)