Fwd: ZGram - 3/18/2004 - "Look who's teed off and fuming"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

>
>
>Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!
>
>March 18, 2004
>
>Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
>
>During several so-called "Human Rights" Tribunal hearings I attended 
>in Toronto to watch how Canada's censorious Holocaust Lobby tried in 
>vein to demolish an American website belonging to yours truly, I 
>formed a certain image in my mind of half a dozen or so opposition 
>players.  These folks are quite a distinct cast - a screenplay 
>writer's dream!
>
>One of these merry days some of these characters will find their 
>immortality affirmed in a hilarious Zundel movie - starring the 
>plucky guy with nothing but integrity and grit against the wicked, 
>plotting free speech censor meanies of the tribe with all the 
>worldly might behind them - yet never quite succeeding in wrestling 
>to the ground the insecurity within that marks the Chosenites. 
>
>I see them very clearly as I experienced them - the aging hippie 
>with the pony tail, the roly-poly feminist, the frustrated would-be 
>dancer doing an amazing boogie woogie, hop and skip before both 
>audience and judge, the mousy fellow blustery with self-importance, 
>spittle flying, hissing hate yet lacking punch, KNOWING  he is 
>lacking punch, rushing in and out of courtrooms, coattails flying, 
>so people don't miss how important, how weighty he is in the grand 
>scheme of things.  
>
>Below I give you Marvin Kurz, B'nai Brith's Legal Warrior, defending 
>the eroding home turf:
>
>[START]
>
>Zundel is no champion of civil rights  
>
>By MARVIN KURZ 
>
>  (Globe and Mail, Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2004) 
>
>  An old legal maxim holds that hard cases make bad law. Neo-Nazi 
>propagandist Ernst Zundel has consistently attempted to live that 
>adage.  His numerous challenges of Canadian law, in service of a 
>campaign to  make his Jew-hating legal, have twisted Canadian courts 
>into pretzels. 
>
>  Throughout his tortured route through the Canadian legal system, 
>Mr.  Zundel has attempted to portray himself as a crusader for 
>freedom.  However, he has shown more of a penchant for 
>self-promotion than virtue.  Notoriously, he once dragged a cross to 
>court, evoking not so subtle  references to the notion that he, like 
>the Christ, was the victim of an evil Jewish conspiracy. 
>
>  In recent weeks, The Globe and Mail has taken up Mr. Zundel's 
>cause. In  both an editorial and a feature article by justice 
>reporter Kirk Makin,  The Globe focused on the use of a national 
>security certificate to jail  Mr. Zundel as a potential security 
>threat. The headline of the feature  article: "Ernst Zundel, 
>civil-rights champion?" says it all. 
>
>  If, as the advertisement says, context is everything, a bit of it 
>is  needed here. Mr. Zundel is a Hitler-loving neo-Nazi who 
>emigrated from  Germany in the 1960s. He spent decades portraying 
>the Jews as the true  criminals of the Holocaust. Expanding on 
>themes found in Mein Kampf, Mr.  Zundel became one of the most 
>notorious and well-connected hate  propagandists in the world. 
>
>  Successive Ontario attorneys-general refused to charge Mr. Zundel 
>under  the hate-propaganda sections of the Criminal Code, baselessly 
>fearing  that the provisions were unconstitutional. Without 
>ministerial consent,  he could not be charged. Finally, a Holocaust 
>survivor, Sabina Citron,  despaired of a government refusing to use 
>its own laws. She privately  charged Mr. Zundel under an obscure law 
>dealing with the promotion of  false news. Although the government 
>was shamed into taking over the  case, it refused to charge him 
>under the proper hate-propaganda law. Two  successive juries 
>convicted Mr. Zundel before the Supreme Court of  Canada ruled that 
>the false-news law, unlike the hate-propaganda law,  was 
>unconstitutional. Mr. Zundel crowed that our legal system sanctioned 
>his views. 
>
>  Mr. Zundel applied for Canadian citizenship in the 1990s. He 
>realized  that any conviction would see him deported to Germany, 
>where he already  had a conviction and was wanted on new 
>hate-propaganda charges. He was  refused Canadian citizenship 
>because the Security and Intelligence  Review Committee found, under 
>existing law, that he was a security  threat. Mr. Zundel's appeals, 
>all of the way to the Supreme Court, were  rejected. 
>
>  In 1996, both Ms. Citron and the City of Toronto complained to the 
>Canadian Human Rights Commission about Mr. Zundel's anti-Semitic 
>website. Mr. Zundel denied ownership of the site. Relying on the 
>evidence of his own correspondence and the testimony of his ex-wife, 
>a  human-rights tribunal rejected his claims. It ordered him to 
>cease and  desist using his site to promote hatred of Jews. 
>Anticipating this  ruling, Mr. Zundel fled Canada for the United 
>States. When the Americans  threw him out, Canada need not have 
>accepted him back. When it did, he  made a cynical refugee claim. 
>Only then did the government hold him  under a security-certificate 
>procedure. 
>
>  Whatever evidence the government has against Mr. Zundel, it has 
>already  proven that he is a risk to Canada. He contemptuously 
>abandoned our  country when it finally became clear that his form of 
>hatred would not  be tolerated. He then attempted to hoodwink our 
>system when the  Americans evicted him. He may be entitled to 
>challenge our  security-certificate law, but civil-liberties 
>champion? Give me a break. 
>
>=====
>
>  Marvin Kurz is national legal counsel of the League for Human 
>Rights of  B'nai Brith Canada.
>
>[END]   
>To which Paul Fromm, Director of CAFÉ, the Canadian Association for 
>Free Expression, replies:
>
>[END]
>
>March 17, 2004
>
>The Editor, The Globe and Mail.     BY FAX -- For Publication
>
>  Dear Sir:
>
>  	B'nai Brith's Marvin Kurz misses the point in his article 
>"Zundel is no champion of civil rights." (Globe and Mail, March 17, 
>2004) "Whatever evidence the government has against Mr. Zundel, it 
>has already proven that he is a risk to Canada."
>
>On the contrary, nothing of the sort has been proven. The 
>government's contention by way of a Canadian Security and 
>Intelligence Service (CSIS) national security certificate is that 
>Mr. Zundel is a "terrorist" and, therefore, a threat to national 
>security. The contention is, on its face, preposterous. As Mr. Kurz 
>snidely remarks, Mr. Zundel has never shied away from publicity. His 
>views have been widely circulated in pamphlets, radio and television 
>broadcasts. Access to Information requests filed by Mr. Zundel 
>reveal that he's been under police surveillance since 1960, when the 
>Mounties observed him attending an anti-communist rally in  Montreal.
>
>  	Mr. Zundel is a pacifist. As defined by the CSIS Act, a 
>threat to national security must either resort to serious acts of 
>violence or be doing the will of a foreign power. The CSIS Act makes 
>it quite clear that a threat to national security "does not include 
>protest, lawful advocacy or dissent." Mr. Zundel's historical 
>dissent may be offensive to many, but this fact does not constitute 
>a threat to national security.
>
>  	Thus, the Crown has resorted to a series of secret hearings. 
>Neither Mr. Zundel nor his defence team knows what the accusations 
>are or who the secret witnesses are. This denial of fundamental 
>justice renders the proceedings a serious human rights violation and 
>a disgraceful farce. To "get" one annoying dissident, Canada is 
>trampling of due process and freedom of speech.
>
>[END]
>
>
>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
>
>