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April 6, 2004
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
Today is Day 6 of my planned hunger strike strategy. We
still have 12 days to go where we can prepare and network. We are moving
right along, and so far, we're on schedule with our plans.
I am building an impressive network of people who are
linking to my website and are otherwise engaged in spreading the word. I
have somebody in America as well as in Canada who will fax all day long to
all the important leads we are getting, to keep them up to date on
developments. This morning I told Ernst's relatives in Germany. They agree,
and are on standby.
Not all people are in agreement, however, with what I am
going to do. Many of the objections are legitimate but moot; some are based
on misinformation on where we stand in our struggle and why this has got to
be done.
I will run a few arguments by you to clarify my mission.
They are partly lifted from correspondence I received, which I paraphrased
in order to condense their meaning. In other words, the exchange below is
imaginary, but the protests that have been sent to me are embedded in this
exchange.
Zgram reader:
I am surprised that Ernst allows you to do what you are
obviously decided you will do.
Ingrid:
I am not his property, and he is not my master. He
couldn't stop me if he tried, and he didn't try - for he understands
exactly what I am doing.
Zgram reader:
What do you really want? Where is your bottom line?
Ingrid:
I want an impartial judge or someone in power to undo an
egregious wrong to look at this case and decide, based on the evidence at
hand that we were never allowed to present, that Ernst is entitled to come
back. He was here legitimately, and he needs to come back under power and
protection of the law.
Zgram reader:
There is no habeas corpus any longer. The USA PATRIOT Act
removed it.
Ingrid:
That argument reminds me of a passage in one of my novels
where, during Stalinist times, pressure was put on some hapless Soviet
slave to get the cows to give more milk in order to fulfill the quota the
government had set.
"You fool," the commissar said to the trembling
slave, "don't you know you have no choice but to get your cows to
give more milk? You know and I know you will be shot if you don't fulfill
your quota!"
To which the slave replied: "You know it, and I know
it. But do the cows know it?"
Do the American people know it that the Patriot Act is
meant to get them terrified enough so they can be treaded like cattle? Do
our officials know it? Do our elected representatives know it? I bet you,
not enough. How many people in America know that habeas corpus is just
about dead? Not one in ten - maybe not even one in a hundred. How many
know the time might come when they, too, will be shot for not fulfilling
their quota - that is, not be politically correct enough? I bet you not
even one in a thousand.
My hunger strike is about Ernst, of course, but it is also
about spreading the word that terrorized, artificially demonized victims
are another one of our enemies' political weapons. They are trial balloons
to test the degree of resistance still left in the land. They are the
canaries in the mine shaft. Is there still enough resistance in America to
a dictatorship that can utterly bypass the law? I have not the faintest
idea.
Zgram reader:
Your congressman is powerless to do what you want him to
do, or his life would be in jeopardy. He's not going to risk his life for
you and Ernst. This is not my opinion, Ingrid. It's a fact. Senator
Wellstone, (D-MN) was murdered in the plane crash; it was no accident.
Ingrid:
Where else would I go? If not my congressman, then who?
Besides, our cause does not carry that kind of political weight. Our
request is very simple: Please take five minutes and look at the FACTS.
Ernst and I are not rabble rousers; we were living quietly and responsibly
in a small community away from the maddening crowds. To say that Ernst is
"dangerous" because of what someone "might" do in the
future is ludicrous. An eighth grader can figure that out. This was a
political kidnapping with an unintended outcome, because obviously the
original plan didn't work - Germany isn't eager to import the name Ernst
Zundel since the German people are well on the way of shaking the
Holocaust reparations monkey off their backs. I realize that no
congressman by himself can undo what the American government saw fit to do
to please a noisy lobby in Canada - arrest Ernst without cause, throw him
as live bait to the Canadian neo-cons, and ban him from returning to his
family for the next 20 years on the flimsiest evidence imaginable.
However, my congressman can tell me who can. He can smooth the way for me
- at least that's what I have always assumed a congressman could do and
would do for the people who counted on him.
Zgram reader:
One of the many reasons he cannot do these things you are
asking for your politically incorrect husband is because he can't risk
getting smeared. He wants to be reelected. Everybody knows that.
Ingrid Zundel
I appreciate that. But I want my husband back, and I am
not a political liability asking for my right - at least not in the eyes
of law-abiding, decent people. I am putting my trust in him by saying,
"I believe you are an honest man, and you will do what's right."
I cannot believe that my own Congressman would do more with my tax money
for a kitten that got stuck in a tree than he would do for a man who was
politically kidnapped in broad daylight on his watch. It has now been more
than a year. I have contacted his office repeatedly. A former colleague of
his has contacted him. Have I even got one call? There must be a reason
for his reluctance, and it cannot be just fear of what a pushy lobby might
do. He could be misinformed. And I believe he can use his connections -
let's say to contact the Canadian government and say: "Look here. You
don't look so good to the rest of the world for the foolish thing you
allowed - or perhaps even masterminded. We're neighbors. Try to be a bit
more neighborly."
Zgram reader:
Don't you know that that the mild mannered Americans who
have dissented from the government in Washington D.C. are in prison now?
For instance, there's Professor Sami Al-Arian - he's in prison. What on
earth did he do????
Ingrid:
Who is Professor Sami Al-Arian? I am sure I should have
heard of him, but I have no idea. From what I know about innocent people
who have been picked up and locked away by what we call "the
system", they no more deserve their fate than Ernst deserves his
fate. However, that is precisely my point. I have to ask, "Who is
Professor Al-Arian?" because I genuinely don't know. Nobody ever told
me why he is held in chains. Millions of others are asking for the first
time, "Who is Ernst Zundel? What on earth did he do?" Unless I
tell them what he didn't do, that he cannot get justice because in Canada
the truth is no defense, who will tell them? Somebody has got to speak out
- and it has to be someone who is acceptable to what's still left of
decency in America.
Zgram Reader:
I don't want to offend you, but I sense a whiff of white
supremacy in your reply. There are political action groups that could help
and would help, but they may not be acceptable to you.
Ingrid:
Despite some stories you may have heard about what our
enemies call our yen for "white supremacy" - I can assure you
that we have no problems whatsoever with people of other races, as long as
they do not lie about us, call us names, extort money from us, send us
parcel bombs in the mail, make government law enforcement their personal
hit squads, and do other things not done in civilized company - such as
inventing gas chambers and demonizing those who ask for simple proof. No
one from a Third Country has done any of those things to us, and therefore
we don't have any argument with them.
Zgram reader:
Your spending down your resources is foolish... Use your
strength to build a great Web site. If you want to hurt the position of
the Canadians and those who oppose you, forget your foolish hunger
strike and get on with making the Zundelsite the best site in the world.
Place your energies into making your web site a masterpiece of
creativity and a place folks love to visit.
Ingrid:
As of last week, my volunteer webmaster tells me the
Zundelsite is getting a million hits a month. It's not as if people
don't like my website. Weeks go by without a single piece of hate mail
sent to me. And, just to remind my readers, in 1996 the Zundelsite was
THE most popular website in the entire, world-wide cyber space. Three
governments attacked it in various ways, and guess what? I am still on
the air, and still saying what I have said all along.
Zgram reader:
Which is?
Ingrid:
Which is that I believe the admittedly tattered First
Amendment is still the law of the land. That First Amendment allows me to
say all the things I have said in some 4000-plus website documents. Most,
but not all by any means, deal with the Holocaust as a political weapon,
one of many psycho-political weapons, even though it is peddled as an
historical fact.
Zgram reader:
You are one determined lady, but allow me to share with
you that hunger strikes don't work because they don't affect the wallets
of those who would do this to your husband.
Ingrid:
Well, if his findings about Auschwitz, which have been
double-checked and verified several times over, were more generally known,
they would most certainly affect the wallets of our enemies because
reparations from Germany would dry up, and sympathy money from the United
States would dry up. I think a friend of mine who suggested I print up a
series of T-Shirts that state, "Ernst Zundel is in jail because he
told the truth" has a point. People would start getting curious and
ask, "What IS the truth? What is Ernst Zundel telling that makes his
enemies so desperate that they have to resort to a political
kidnapping?"
Zgram reader:
Ingrid, do you have a exit strategy ? The drongo Americans
don't in Iraq - and are being knocked off like flies. The well-fed
[expletive deleted] will burp as they comfortably reach over for another
"ponsky" as they watch you with perfect equanimity slowly wither
away - they will sickly smile as they say to themselves, "here's to a
well deserved extinction." Nothing is more descriptive of these
people than the indifference with which he will watch a goy die. Ask a
Palestinian, or a Rachel Corrie.
Ingrid:
I am not putting on a show for the entertainment of our
enemies. This is a well-thought-out publicity attempt within the limits of
my means to make clear to as many people as I can reach with the help of
my friends and supporters, that a dangerous precedent will be carved out
in stone if our enemies can get away with what they have done to my
husband.
Today it is my husband, tomorrow it is going to be yours -
our your father, or your brother, or your son. That our enemies will be
indifferent to me does not concern me. I know them - not only will they be
indifferent, they'll snicker, they'll hoot, they'll point fingers, they'll
call names. As someone already reported to me, they are laughing like
hyenas on usenet. Is that going to endear them to the rest of the world
and make them look like someone you'd want as a friend or an ally?
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The Zundelsite now has a separate web page dedicated to my
hunger strike to commence on April 19. You can check for updates and press
releases at http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/hunger_strike/index.html
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Reminder:
Help free Ernst Zundel, Prisoner of Conscience. His
prison sketches - now on-line and highly popular - help pay for his defence.
Take a look - and tell a friend.
http://www.zundelsite.org/gallery/donations/index.html
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Write to Canada's Prime Minister and complain
over the unfair treatment Ernst Zündel has received.
Prime Minister Paul Martin
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Telephone: (613) 992-4284
Fax: (613) 992-4291
Email: Martin.P@parl.gc.ca |
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