ZGram - August 1, 2004 - "South China Morning Post: 'Speak no evil'"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

August 4, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

It is Sunday morning - and here you have a ZGram Lite - just a 
snippet I picked up from Canada's minority press. 

Please note the mild comment at the end of this write-up - that Ernst 
is being prosecuted for nothing more than his "foolish beliefs." 
None of the talmudic ranting and raving the Toronto Star is famous 
for, for instance - just a benign and casual attitude that no one's 
mortal soul is endangered if Mr. Zundel speaks his mind about the 
Holocaust.

I like that kind of attitude.  Wish there were more of it in our 
censor-happy world.

[START]

South China Morning Post
July 28, 2004

  Speak no evil
- by Claude Adams, Vancouver

If you ask them, bureaucrats and politicians will always argue for 
free speech. The trouble is, most only support it in the abstract. 
Put them within earshot of a rude opinion or a politically incorrect 
comment, and they will reach for the censor's red pencil. You could 
call them the "Free Buts", as in: "I believe in freedom of 
expression, but..."

Recently, a Canadian government agency revoked the licence of a radio 
station in Quebec City that attracts 80,000 listeners a day. It acted 
after receiving 42 complaints over two years from "offended" 
listeners.

What offended them? Comments about the size of a woman's breasts; 
that a psychiatric patient "doesn't deserve to live"; and that some 
foreign students in Canada were the sons of "plunderers and 
cannibals".

The agency's mandate is to protect the "social fabric" of Canada, 
whatever that is, so those 80,000 fans will now have to listen to 
contemporary jazz, or something equally inoffensive.

Two days later, the same agency gave a reluctant approval to a 
licence for al -Jazeera, the Arab-language TV news network. But there 
was a catch. The cable companies that carried the network would have 
to agree to cut any "abusive comment".

What constitutes "abusive"? the companies asked.

You decide, said the agency.

No thanks, said the cable companies, which did not want to try to 
adjudicate on good taste. That is tough for 500,000 Arab-Canadians 
who are looking for an alternative to CNN and Fox News.

Some critics call these the actions of a "nanny state". Freedom of 
speech, they argue, must include the freedom to say things that will 
upset somebody else. If the message is offensive, allow the market 
place to take care of it. Ignore it. Change channels. Take the 
offender to court.

An editorial in The Globe & Mail said: "No one outside China or 
Zimbabwe would dream of shutting down a newspaper over an offensive 
cartoon or ranting commentary."

The philosopher John Stuart Mill said that the free clash of 
opinions, even if they are outrageous, helps crystallise our beliefs. 
For months now, Ernst Zundel, a German-Canadian, has been sitting in 
a jail cell awaiting deportation. His offence is the conviction, 
expressed over again, that the Jewish Holocaust never happened.

Critics tried to prosecute him under hate literature laws, but 
failed. Zundel was then convicted of spreading "false news". But the 
Supreme Court overturned the verdict.

Finally, authorities detained him under Canada's murky new security 
laws, meant to deal with terrorism. Zundel will almost certainly be 
deported, not for anything he has done, but for his foolish beliefs.

That is called security.

[END]