ZGram - 8/13/2004 - "Letter to Jamie Satterfield"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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

August 13, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

It seems that Ms. or Mrs. (not Mr.!) Jamie Satterfield of the 
Knoxville News Sentinel got an earful - both pro and con Ernst Zundel 
- about her article on our long-awaited victory in the Appellate 
Court.  In one of her replies to a complaint about her yellow 
journalism ways, she wrote:

"It's not my purpose to do some huge expose on Mr. Zundel and his 
views. It is merely to report his Knoxville-based court case. I care 
not one wit whether his views are valid. That's for the public to 
decide."

It would be nice if she would care whether the world should continue 
to believe in a lie that is poisoning our children's minds by the 
busloads, but that is up to her.  We care, and ever more people care, 
and that is what's important.  However, she does have a point worth 
having or caring about - the public *is* entitled to a professional, 
neutral write-up so it can make up its mind and decide.  I pointed 
out at least four or five factual errors in her write-up - and never 
mind her sneers and smears.  Did the paper run my rebuttal or her 
correction?  Not to my knowledge.  Yours?

One thing is for sure:  Her information did not come from the court 
room or from a court transcript.  Chances are it came from the ADL 
smearmongers - an outfit that lost some $10+ million dollars not too 
long ago in a smearmongering court case somewhere in Colorado. 

At any rate, here is one letter to Ms. Satterfield from a former Army 
Chaplain we know well, Dr. Robert Countess:

[START]

Dear Ms. Satterfield:

  Your article provided important information on the Zundel 
matter-which I have followed rather closely since the day he was 
arrested and rather furtively moved around and then secretly deported 
to Canada-along with a style of reporting generally NOT observable in 
the Canadian newspapers.  Congratulations!

  As a retired US Army Chaplain [Protestant] at age 67, and an 
academic in the field of Ancient Greek and History, I visited Zundel 
in his Ontario isolation section on March 31st, 2003 for an hour, 
unsuccessfully attempting to get the prison Chaplain to allow Zundel 
to have a Christian hymnal in his cell.  I think that not even a 
Bible has been permitted.  Of course, there is no chair nor table in 
the cell, leading me to assume that an effort has been made  to 
punish this prisoner of conscience severely, who has not even been 
presented with habeas corpus, something required by the US 
Constitution and even the Canadian.

  In Roman History we learn nulla lex; nulla poena.  "No law; no punishment"    

  My interest in the Zundel matter is both legal and moral.  IF a 
Zundel can be whisked away without being able to call his attorney, 
and if his vital prescription drugs and legal dietary supplements 
prohibited, and if he can be held for going on TWO YEARS  in abject 
isolation without legal charges, THEN  you and I and all Tennesseans 
and Americans are in danger of similar mistreatment. [I am a native 
of Tennessee, BTW.]

  Morally, my concern is that Zundel has for many years demonstrated 
in words and actions a pacifist theme in his energetic pursuit of 
historical issues.   Morally, I care NOT whether he 'denies'  a 
"Holocaust"  or "the Holocaust" or every "holocausting" of dead Greek 
heroes depicted in Homeric tales about Troy; moreover, I care NOT 
whether he "denies" that the Moon is made of green cheese or that 
"Uncle Joe Stalin" was a good friend of FDR or that the Brits 
established the world's first ever Concentration Camp around 1902 in 
South Africa during the Boer War [in which many thousands of innocent 
men, women, and children died as a result of British maltreatment].

  DENIAL is-at least the last time I read the US Constitution's FIRST 
AMENDMENT-legal in our USA; also legal is the affirmation of 
dissenting points of view on history and religion and politics and 
science.

  By analogy, one might argue that if a University of Tennessee's 
department of Biology were to DENY Darwinian Evolution today, and if 
he were "schlepped away" in a rather furtive and bizarre and illegal 
fashion to Canada to be held for "thought-crimes", I would 
vociferously champion his defense as to illegal treatment.

  Ernst Zundel is an example of what Jewish Holocaust experts 
regularly call Sonderbehandlung [= special treatment]; except in what 
Professor Norman Finkelstein calls his book, The Holocaust Industry,
  "Sonderbehandlung" would be Special Treatment in homicidal gassing 
chambers at Auschwitz.   For Zundel, his "SB" has been an extra-legal 
and illegal and immoral and political and politically-correct "SB" 
and, as such, is a  severe threat to any and all DISSENT on 
controversial topics of our day.

  Let me emphasize this overall matter again.  If a Zundel were to 
DENY the "Six Million Jews in Nazi Gas-Chambers" substratum of THE 
HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY, what would this have to do with a barrel of crude 
at $44.75 on the spot market in New York?
     From a moral standpoint, nothing at all.   

NOW, if Zundel were to urge people to inflict physical harm on "Jews" 
or fire them from their employment for whatever reasons,  THEN I 
would be a strong and highly vocal critic of Ernst Zundel.

    From personal conversations with Zundel when a guest in my home or 
when a guest in his home, or elsewhere, I find no basis whatsoever 
that he holds onto a disposition for violence.  In point of fact, 
your fine article would have been enhanced if you had included that 
he left Germany around 1951 to immigrate to Canada SO THAT HE WOULD 
NOT HAVE TO SERVE IN THE NEW GERMAN MILITARY IN ANY FORM-so strong 
was his commitment to pacifism.

  His warm relations with individual Jews over the past 40+ years in 
Canada and the USA are well known to many people.  Zundel, I have 
found, treats individuals qua individuals and thus likes or dislikes 
people for what they individually ARE, not based on an abstraction 
colored by prejudice.

  As a visitor to some 40 foreign countries and having lived both in 
Germany and Turkey, I know something about terrorism and irrational 
violence and hate-speech.  As an academic, I just returned from 
teaching Greek in The Netherlands for three weeks.  As an author, I 
have published nearly a hundred articles in various journals and have 
authored or edited numerous book projects.  I have given public 
lectures at the University of Malta, at the University of Natal 
[South Africa], Queensland University [Australia], in the USA and in 
Europe.  With all this, I have found Ernst Zundel to be the sort of 
person I can drink coffee with and discuss all sorts of issues and 
data and ideas with pleasant agreement or disagreement-on even some 
of most pressingly controversial issues of the 21st Century.

  In closing, may I be allowed to phone you about this matter?  Or, if 
you wish to phone me, you will find my numbers below my address here 
in North Alabama.


  --
Robert H. Countess, Ph.D.
Ancient Greek
email: boblbpinc at earthlink.net
28755 Sagewood Circle
Toney, AL 35773  USA
Phone: (256) 232-4940  Cell: (256) 653-7598
Fax:  (256) 232-4940