When I talked to Ernst yesterday, he told me that he was
scheduled for a "bail hearing" - and that he felt he could handle
it himself. He did not expect that bail would be granted, but he felt that
it was necessary to go through the motion to document the record of his
human rights abuses by the Canadian government.
I haven't been able to talk to him today, and now I fear
that something far more sinister is going on. For background information,
read what the National Post has to say - and remember that Ernst was six
years old when World War II came to an end:
Here is the first syndicated American commentator telling
this country what might be in store - if the Zundel precedent is allowed to
go unchallenged:
By Samuel Francis (nationally syndicated columnist)
Friday, February 28, 2003
Great Britain and the United States may not be quite
prepared to crack down on dangerous thinkers, but where those guardians of
Anglo-Saxon liberties fear to tread, the European Union is ready to
gallop. This week the London Daily Telegraph reported that the Union is
even now sprucing up new laws against "xenophobia and racism" to
make sure no one has any unusual thoughts at all -- and that British
subjects will be extradited to the continent if they violate them.
The recent Scotland Yard investigation of journalist Taki
Theodoracopulos for violating British laws against inciting "racial
hatred" seems to have gone nowhere, but Taki, as the wealthy
jetsetter journalist is known, may still not be safe. Thought crimes that
the British won't prosecute could still be punished if the EU bureaucracy
can get its claws on the culprits through the extradition process.
Moreover, of it works for British Thought Criminals, it may also work for
those in this country.
In an article in the Telegraph last week, Home Affairs
editor Philip Johnston reported that the British government "has
undertaken that if such 'offences' take place in Britain the perpetrators
would not be extradited -- but it will be for the courts to decide the
location of the crime. This opens up the prospect of a judge agreeing to
extradite someone whose observations, though made in Britain, were
broadcast exclusively in a country where they constitute a crime.
Legislation now before Parliament will make 'xenophobia and racism' one of
32 crimes for which the European arrest warrant can be issued without the
existing safeguard of dual criminality. This requires that an extraditable
offence must also be a crime in the UK. Alongside the arrest warrant, EU
ministers are negotiating a new directive to establish a common set of
offences to criminalise xenophobia and racism."
Under current law, "Holocaust denial," for
example, is a criminal offense in some European countries like Germany and
Austria. A British citizen who committed that "crime" in Germany
and then returned to Great Britain could not be extradited back to Germany
to stand trial. But under the proposed new laws and directives, he could
be -- if British judges so ruled.
What that means, presumably, is not just that Britons who
committed such offenses while physically on the continent could be
prosecuted. Also subject to the new laws would be those who merely
broadcast or published their criminal thoughts, including through the
Internet. "Holocaust denial" is one offense, but new legislation
against "xenophobia and racism" could broaden state control over
thought and expression far more, even when those expressing verboten ideas
never left their own living rooms.
The Telegraph article quotes Lord Filkin, a minister with
the Home Office, as saying that no British citizen would be extradited to
the continent "in respect of conduct which has occurred here and
which is legal here". But, asked whether "comments originating
in Britain but carried abroad on television or through an internet
chatroom would be extraditable," he said, "It will be for the
courts to decide." In other words, neither British law as written nor
constitutional tradition will protect the British citizen from being
hauled out of his own country to face trial in a foreign state under laws
to which he never consented and possibly jailed merely for expressing
unconventional thoughts that are legal in his own country.
Given the broad scope of existing European laws that
punish "Holocaust denial," there's no telling how far the new
laws could reach, but clearly they reach well beyond merely inciting
racial violence. Scientists who study racial differences and come up with
the wrong answers, clergymen who criticize Islam and other non-Western
religions, political leaders who object to mass immigration, and
journalists who merely criticize political correctness and double
standards may all have good reason to shut up and get jobs selling cars.
Could the laws reach into the United States? This country
recognizes the European Union and generally extradites European criminals
wanted in its member states, as they do Americans wanted for trial in this
country. Just this month immigration authorities expelled alleged
"Holocaust denier" Ernst Zündel to Canada, giving only the
thinnest technical rationale for kicking him out. Mr. Zündel, who broke
no laws while living in this country, may eventually wind up back in his
native Germany, where he could go to jail for what he has written about
Nazi policies toward the Jews.
Mr. Zündel, of course, is not an American citizen, but
the parallel with what may well be in the works is clear enough. Any
thought, any idea, any statement that challenges the official egalitarian
ideology faces repression by the emerging global state, and neither
constitutions nor national borders will protect those who question that
ideology or the global power it serves.
