- Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny - Now More Than Ever
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- Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
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- During several so-called "Human Rights" Tribunal
hearings I attended in Toronto to watch how Canada's censorious Holocaust
Lobby tried in vane 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!
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- One of these merry days, some of these characters will
find their immortality affirmed in an 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.
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- 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 courtroom, coattails flying, so people don't miss how important,
how weighty he is in the grand scheme of things.
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- Below, I give you Marvin Kurz, B'nai Brith's Legal Warrior,
defending the eroding home turf:
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- [START]
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- Zundel Is No Champion Of Civil Rights
- By Marvin Kurz
- (Globe and Mail, Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2004)
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- =====
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- Marvin Kurz is national legal counsel of the League for
Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada.
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- [END]
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- To which Paul Fromm, Director of CAFÉ, the Canadian
Association for Free Expression, replies:
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- [START]
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- March 17, 2004
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- The Editor, The Globe and Mail. BY FAX -- For Publication
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- Dear Sir:
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- [END]
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- Reminder:
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- 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.
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- http://www.zundelsite.org/gallery/donations/index.html
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