- Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
-
- Today is Day 6 of my planned hunger strike strategy.
We still have 12 days to go where we can prepare and network. We are
moving right along, and so far, we're on schedule with our plans.
-
- I am building an impressive network of people who are
linking to my website and are otherwise engaged in spreading the word.
I have somebody in America as well as in Canada who will fax all day long
to all the important leads we are getting, to keep them up to date on developments.
This morning I told Ernst's relatives in Germany. They agree, and are
on standby.
- Not all people are in agreement, however, with what I
am going to do. Many of the objections are legitimate but moot; some are
based on misinformation on where we stand in our struggle and why this
has got to be done.
- I will run a few arguments by you to clarify my mission.
They are partly lifted from correspondence I received, which I paraphrased
in order to condense their meaning. In other words, the exchange below
is imaginary, but the protests that have been sent to me are embedded in
this exchange.
- Zgram reader:
- I am surprised that Ernst allows you to do what you are
obviously decided you will do.
- Ingrid:
-
- I am not his property, and he is not my master. He couldn't
stop me if he tried, and he didn't try - for he understands exactly what
I am doing.
-
- Zgram reader:
-
- What do you really want? Where is your bottom line?
-
- Ingrid:
-
- I want an impartial judge or someone in power to undo
an egregious wrong to look at this case and decide, based on the evidence
at hand that we were never allowed to present, that Ernst is entitled to
come back. He was here legitimately, and he needs to come back under power
and protection of the law.
- Zgram reader:
-
- There is no habeas corpus any longer. The USA PATRIOT
Act removed it.
-
- Ingrid:
-
- That argument reminds me of a passage in one of my novels
where, during Stalinist times, pressure was put on some hapless Soviet
slave to get the cows to give more milk in order to fulfill the quota the
government had set.
-
- "You fool," the commissar said to the trembling
slave, "don't you know you have no choice but to get your cows to
give more milk? You know and I know you will be shot if you don't fulfill
your quota!"
-
- To which the slave replied: "You know it, and I
know it. But do the cows know it?"
-
- Do the American people know it that the Patriot Act is
meant to get them terrified enough so they can be treaded like cattle?
Do our officials know it? Do our elected representatives know it? I
bet you, not enough. How many people in America know that habeas corpus
is just about dead? Not one in ten - maybe not even one in a hundred.
How many know the time might come when they, too, will be shot for not
fulfilling their quota - that is, not be politically correct enough? I
bet you not even one in a thousand.
- My hunger strike is about Ernst, of course, but it is
also about spreading the word that terrorized, artificially demonized victims
are another one of our enemies' political weapons. They are trial balloons
to test the degree of resistance still left in the land. They are the
canaries in the mine shaft. Is there still enough resistance in America
to a dictatorship that can utterly bypass the law? I have not the faintest
idea.
- Zgram reader:
-
- Your congressman is powerless to do what you want him
to do, or his life would be in jeopardy. He's not going to risk his life
for you and Ernst. This is not my opinion, Ingrid. It's a fact. Senator
Wellstone, (D-MN) was murdered in the plane crash; it was no accident.
-
- Ingrid:
-
- Where else would I go? If not my congressman, then who?
Besides, our cause does not carry that kind of political weight. Our request
is very simple: Please take five minutes and look at the FACTS. Ernst
and I are not rabble rousers; we were living quietly and responsibly in
a small community away from the maddening crowds. To say that Ernst is
"dangerous" because of what someone "might" do in
the future is ludicrous. An eighth grader can figure that out. This was
a political kidnapping with an unintended outcome, because obviously the
original plan didn't work - Germany isn't eager to import the name Ernst
Zundel since the German people are well on the way of shaking the Holocaust
reparations monkey off their backs. I realize that no congressman by himself
can undo what the American government saw fit to do to please a noisy lobby
in Canada - arrest Ernst without cause, throw him as live bait to the Canadian
neo-cons, and ban him from returning to his family for the next 20 years
on the flimsiest evidence imaginable. However, my congressman can tell
me who can. He can smooth the way for me - at least that's what I have
always assumed a congressman could do and would do for the people who counted
on him.
- Zgram reader:
-
- One of the many reasons he cannot do these things you
are asking for your politically incorrect husband is because he can't risk
getting smeared. He wants to be reelected. Everybody knows that.
-
- Ingrid Zundel
-
- I appreciate that. But I want my husband back, and I
am not a political liability asking for my right - at least not in the
eyes of law-abiding, decent people. I am putting my trust in him by saying,
"I believe you are an honest man, and you will do what's right."
I cannot believe that my own Congressman would do more with my tax money
for a kitten that got stuck in a tree than he would do for a man who was
politically kidnapped in broad daylight on his watch. It has now been
more than a year. I have contacted his office repeatedly. A former colleague
of his has contacted him. Have I even got one call? There must be a reason
for his reluctance, and it cannot be just fear of what a pushy lobby might
do. He could be misinformed. And I believe he can use his connections
- let's say to contact the Canadian government and say: "Look here.
You don't look so good to the rest of the world for the foolish thing
you allowed - or perhaps even masterminded. We're neighbors. Try to be
a bit more neighborly."
-
- Zgram reader:
-
- Don't you know that that the mild mannered Americans
who have dissented from the government in Washington D.C. are in prison
now? For instance, there's Professor Sami Al-Arian - he's in prison. What
on earth did he do????
-
- Ingrid:
-
- Who is Professor Sami Al-Arian? I am sure I should have
heard of him, but I have no idea. From what I know about innocent people
who have been picked up and locked away by what we call "the system",
they no more deserve their fate than Ernst deserves his fate. However,
that is precisely my point. I have to ask, "Who is Professor Al-Arian?"
because I genuinely don't know. Nobody ever told me why he is held in
chains. Millions of others are asking for the first time, "Who is
Ernst Zundel? What on earth did he do?" Unless I tell them what he
didn't do, that he cannot get justice because in Canada the truth is no
defense, who will tell them? Somebody has got to speak out - and it has
to be someone who is acceptable to what's still left of decency in America.
- Zgram Reader:
-
- I don't want to offend you, but I sense a whiff of white
supremacy in your reply. There are political action groups that could
help and would help, but they may not be acceptable to you.
- Ingrid:
-
- Despite some stories you may have heard about what our
enemies call our yen for "white supremacy" - I can assure you
that we have no problems whatsoever with people of other races, as long
as they do not lie about us, call us names, extort money from us, send
us parcel bombs in the mail, make government law enforcement their personal
hit squads, and do other things not done in civilized company - such as
inventing gas chambers and demonizing those who ask for simple proof. No
one from a Third Country has done any of those things to us, and therefore
we don't have any argument with them. Zgram reader:
-
- Your spending down your resources is foolish... Use
your strength to build a great Web site. If you want to hurt the position
of the Canadians and those who oppose you, forget your foolish hunger strike
and get on with making the Zundelsite the best site in the world. Place
your energies into making your web site a masterpiece of creativity and
a place folks love to visit.
-
- Ingrid:
-
- As of last week, my volunteer webmaster tells me the
Zundelsite is getting a million hits a month. It's not as if people don't
like my website. Weeks go by without a single piece of hate mail sent
to me. And, just to remind my readers, in 1996 the Zundelsite was THE most
popular website in the entire, world-wide cyber space. Three governments
attacked it in various ways, and guess what? I am still on the air, and
still saying what I have said all along.
-
- Zgram reader:
-
- Which is?
-
- Ingrid:
-
- Which is that I believe the admittedly tattered First
Amendment is still the law of the land. That First Amendment allows me
to say all the things I have said in some 4000-plus website documents.
Most, but not all by any means, deal with the Holocaust as a political
weapon, one of many psycho-political weapons, even though it is peddled
as an historical fact. Zgram reader:
-
- You are one determined lady, but allow me to share with
you that hunger strikes don't work because they don't affect the wallets
of those who would do this to your husband.
- Ingrid:
-
- Well, if his findings about Auschwitz, which have been
double-checked and verified several times over, were more generally known,
they would most certainly affect the wallets of our enemies because reparations
from Germany would dry up, and sympathy money from the United States would
dry up. I think a friend of mine who suggested I print up a series of
T-Shirts that state, "Ernst Zundel is in jail because he told the
truth" has a point. People would start getting curious and ask,
"What IS the truth? What is Ernst Zundel telling that makes his enemies
so desperate that they have to resort to a political kidnapping?"
-
- Zgram reader:
-
- Ingrid, do you have a exit strategy ? The drongo Americans
don't in Iraq - and are being knocked off like flies. The well-fed [expletive
deleted] will burp as they comfortably reach over for another "ponsky"
as they watch you with perfect equanimity slowly wither away - they will
sickly smile as they say to themselves, "here's to a well deserved
extinction." Nothing is more descriptive of these people than the
indifference with which he will watch a goy die. Ask a Palestinian, or
a Rachel Corrie.
- Ingrid:
-
- I am not putting on a show for the entertainment of our
enemies. This is a well-thought-out publicity attempt within the limits
of my means to make clear to as many people as I can reach with the help
of my friends and supporters, that a dangerous precedent will be carved
out in stone if our enemies can get away with what they have done to my
husband.
- Today it is my husband, tomorrow it is going to be yours
- our your father, or your brother, or your son. That our enemies will
be indifferent to me does not concern me. I know them - not only will
they be indifferent, they'll snicker, they'll hoot, they'll point fingers,
they'll call names. As someone already reported to me, they are laughing
like hyenas on usenet. Is that going to endear them to the rest of the
world and make them look like someone you'd want as a friend or an ally?
- =====
-
- The Zundelsite now has a separate web page dedicated
to my hunger strike to commence on April 19. You can check for updates
and press releases at http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/hunger_strike/index.html
-
- =====
-
- Reminder:
- Help free Ernst Zundel, Prisoner of Conscience. His
prison sketches - now on-line and highly popular - help pay for his defense.
Take a look - and tell a friend.
-
- http://www.zundelsite.org/gallery/donations/index.html
|
