Newsletter No 274

                                                                                                           ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                       February 2006
                                                                      No 274

Ernst Zündel comments on First Day’s proceedings at Mannheim on 8 November 2005

My dear Ingrid -

Never before have I been confronted with such a situation - it is in every respect surreal. Only you with your artistic nature would fully comprehend it. Here is the clip: I am the captain of my ship, captain of my soul, and like [the hero] in the Odyssey, I have just passed through some hair-raising storms and travails and have been more or less shipwrecked on some foreign shore. I don't have any maps of these, for me, uncharted waters. So I hire someone who, like Mark Twain, knows the mighty Mississippi River, and tells me, the captain: Turn here. Cross there. Avoid this rock, that shoal. Watch the sand bank over there. My lawyers, who have had a lifetime of experience in navigating in these dangerous and tricky German waters, tell me to take a course of action totally at odds with what my instincts tell me I should do.

The lousiest decisions in my life were always those when my mind overruled my intuition. The worst results stemmed precisely from this dichotomy. To all other people this would sound odd, but not to you, for you know me by now pretty well. You sensed that I was working on an intuitive plan. I formulated it, outlined it - and saw it torn to shreds by the reality of the legal system as it exists - not as it is written in the criminal code of present-day, post-WWII Germany. Now I sail my ship of fate in unfamiliar waters on the guidance of people who are my trusted advisors, but whose instincts I distrust. Apparently there is a vast difference in Germany between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law as applied - far more pronounced, it seems to me after yesterday's encounter with the lawyers, than even in America or Canada.

Thus, my lady, what will unfold is not my intuitively arrived-at solution, which I not only felt but intellectually believed would have allowed the German justice system to extricate itself from an impossible cul de sac into which the politicians have driven the people, into which opportunistic legislators, financed by and beholden to powerful lobbies, the bane of modern societies, have forced them. It will ultimately lead to this civilization's collapse. I firmly believe this. This is how Greece, Rome, Czardom and Weimar perished!

In the context of German reality, at this time, as I find it in the courtroom in Mannheim, I have little choice but to take my pilots' advice - or risk an even greater shipwreck.

One day, Ingrid, when all this is over, I will explain my plan to you and to the world at large. This is not the time, not the place, not the right medium in the form of a letter to be read in a few days by the very man who will sit in judgment over me. I have spent many weeks and months plowing through 30 four-to-five inch thick ring binders of "evidence" gathered by the German states' various police forces, intelligence agencies, snitches and informants. Ingrid, the German authorities do not lack information about what the issues are that confront them and concern them and their history. The problem is how they use, or misuse, that information.

I give you an example of the spirit afoot here. A 78-year-old academic of high rank tried bravely to defend himself by explaining, very cautiously and carefully phrased, why he had certain views and doubts - and was promptly recharged again! He defended himself again - and was recharged for the third time! It took my breath away when, last night and this morning, I read the details of this case, and others - all 2004-2005 cases! - that convinced me to let my head overrule my intuition.

The German people must find their way out of this dilemma collectively. I alone cannot achieve it for them. My fellow independent thinkers cannot achieve it for them. The playing field is not level. The goal posts are being changed daily.

*****

I am afraid the veneer came off yesterday. It was good that it came off so early in these proceedings! My lawyers were proven right. Had I insisted on my plan, I would have looked like Hans-guck-in-die-Luft. [Ernst is referring to a German parable of a boy with his head in the clouds, not watching where he is going] Since I saw friends from all over in the audience, I am sure that you will have had reports about what went on inside. Since I saw the judicial system and its representatives of this current German entity in action, I think it is better I censor myself severely!

The 8th November '05 hearing was in content and in conduct something that school children will one day read about. It will one day be part of the German law school curriculum - trust me, Ingrid! I saw all kinds of people in the court room - from Chile, Paraguay, the US, England, Canada, France, Belgium, Austria - I was actually surprised that so many people came from so far away to show their moral support!

The room was large, bright, the sound system was far superior to what it was in Canadian courtrooms. 97% of the time one could hear clearly what Dr. Meinerzhagen said or read from documents.

He looked again, unnervingly, like my mentor, Mr. Arcand. The prosecutor is an elegant, good-looking, well-groomed man of maybe 42-45 years, with bright eyes, good skin, clear diction - but his job is his job.

Ingrid, they will prevail in the courtroom. But Truth in History has been the winner since my February 1981 postal hearings.

It was proven to me one more time that German people are ill-equipped as hypocrites. Very quickly the German penchant for directness and honesty comes to the surface - and that's what happened in court yesterday. Germans will be Germans! [Had you been here], you would have seen some live fire exercises in the authoritarian personality syndrome in action! Ingrid, these people chafe under this Allied-devised and conquerors'-imposed situation and its institutions as if they were wearing the proverbial hair shirt.

What I saw yesterday makes me realize how lucky I was, and how fortunate for the German Cause and history it was, that I fought all my historic trials in a country under an organically evolved British Common Law based legal system. What we were able to achieve there,

THEN, would simply have been impossible under the system in place here, at this time. There is a God in Heaven who destined Ernst Zundel to do his work and live his most vital and important years in an Anglo-Saxon environment. I am happy about that. All the sophistry, the mental barf they spread via the media over the German people comes into direct confrontation with eternal truths and concepts to the point that it gives me goose pimples. The tragedy for Germany is that the laws were legislated by the very people the mass-circulation Bild-Zeitung called "the grand coalition of thieves." I agree with you about "excising the evil" - especially after I saw how the German system works. There is at this time no charismatic leader, male or female, to exploit the rampant disintegration. The German Titanic is severely listing, taking on water - and these professional liars are busy rearranging the chairs on the deck? There is a "let them eat cake", Marie-Antoinette surreal feeling that has settled like a Smoky Mountain ground fog over our fatherland. All those living here and under the system know that we are seeing the end of the post-war era. I believe that Gerhard Schröder's inexplicable stepping back after his loud claim to the chancellorship on election night, and also Joschka Fisher's slinking quietly into the political wilderness, is so totally atypical of those two men that, in my opinion, someone, some force from somewhere, must have confronted them with arguments to go quietly - but to go! You can be sure that the East Coast did not forgive those two men for not joining in the rape of Iraq! For them it was, Game Over! It was Iraq Payback Time! I am surprised they lasted as long as they did!

It is clear that the old order of things is expiring. I read here that the Republican majority - some 28 US senators in President Bush's own party - refused to vote for an important piece of legislation, about oil of all things! Oil is Cheney's and Bush's power base - and his own party denied him a majority. That is a clear sign that Bush is truly a lame duck president from now on, and things also concerning 9/11. There will be movement.

How far? From within prison walls, it's hard to be specific, but there is a new fluidity similar to what I felt, sensed and saw before the East German and Soviet Union regimes of almost 70 years collapsed, imploded silently, became history - gone in spite of atomic rockets and submarines.

Tonight they are supposed to have a TV Special Report on the Zundel Case - shades of Canada 1985-2000! It is amazing to me how all this developed. It sometimes is a bit as if life had placed me in the eye of a hurricane where there reigns an eerie calm, while all around me in a safe distance howling storms whip up gigantic waves in mountains of greenish froth which scare untold millions out of their wits. Twenty years ago a London Times writer asked: "What manner of truth is this man Zundel in touch with to create such a furor?" That's the one question I keep asking myself: What on earth is it, exactly, that so unnerves these people? The incredible over-reaction! You can be sure, Ingrid, that there is an equal mountain of evidence implicating U.S. bureaucrats, US spy services and lobbyists [conspiring] to throw me out of a country of almost 300 million people. For doing what, exactly? Asking a five-word question - DID SIX MILLION REALLY DIE? One question? 30,000 words in that little essay written 31 years ago by a university student? Think about the disturbance this caused!

It is this more than strange energy vortex that fascinates me, that convinces me that there is some force we do not yet understand, that we are approaching or tapping into without even knowing or comprehending. History can be very instructive. As you know, I have taken the long view in all this, and I am not inclined to change my attitude. My belief in an inscrutable but basic order in the cosmos has not changed. I did not survive all these trials, tribulations, persecutions, the bombs and the arson, for NO reason. You could say that with all the misfortune which has befallen me - and, by extension, now you - I have been very fortunate. And so will you be also!

So, my hard-working wife, I am thinking of you, and looking at your gentle, intelligent face - your bookmark does you justice. Ingrid, I will keep the dream alive. It is not geography-bound.

[The trial continues this month - ]

Harold Pinter – Nobel Lecture

Art, Truth & Politics

The government failed in its attempt to gain a conviction in any of the 51 charges against Dr. Sami Al-Arian. We join with people around the country in demanding that he be released immediately.

In a significant blow to the Bush/Ashcroft/Gonzalez assault on civil rights and civil liberties, especially against Arab and Muslim people and political activists in the U.S., on Tuesday, December 6 a jury acquitted Dr. Sami Al-Arian of the key charges leveled against him by the Justice Department. The jury deadlocked on other charges. Dr. Al-Arian has been an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian people's right to live free from occupation and is a political target of the U.S. government and the right wing.

In 2003, the Bush Administration touted the arrest of Sami Al-Arian as a significant use of their new Patriot Act powers, calling him a supporter and

facilitator of terrorism. The prosecution of Dr. Al-Arian was also hailed as an important use of "foreign intelligence" in U.S. courts. The FBI reportedly traveled to Israel to accept information from authorities there which was used to prosecute this Palestinian activist.

The government had harassed Dr. Al-Arian for nearly eight years prior to his arrest, which was finally undertaken after a crescendo of attacks from anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab voices and right-wing media outlets. After September 11, 2001, he was vilified and smeared by Bill O'Reilly on FOX news and immediately thereafter removed from his tenured position at the University of South Florida.

Despite having roots in the community and a family, Professor Al-Arian was denied bail. He has endured two years of solitary confinement in a maximum security penitentiary. Dr. Al-Arian was placed in 23 hour lock down in a windowless cell where the light was never turned off and was denied a clock or watch. He has been denied basic privileges, been chained and shackled, subject to strip searches and given limited visitation.

Dr. Al-Arian was a speaker at the first national demonstration against a war in Iraq on October 26, 2002, that was initiated and organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. After his arrest, his daughter Laila Al-Arian spoke at the April 12, 2003, anti-war and anti-occupation demonstration organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R.Coalition.

________________________________________________________

From: Margit Alm - margalm@bigpond.net.au, Sent: Saturday, 26 November 2005

A Matter of Values - The passing of a beloved, old friend ...

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Mr Common Sense.

Mr. Sense had been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was. His birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered for having cultivated such value lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm and that life isn't always fair.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies: - don't spend more than you earn, and reliable parenting strategies: - adults, not kids, are in charge.

His health began rapidly to deteriorate when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place:

- Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate;

- teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch;

- a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student.

Issues such as these only worsened his condition.

Mr Sense declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer aspirin to a student; but, could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Finally, Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense finally gave up the ghost after a woman failed to realise that a steaming cup of coffee was hot, she spilled a bit in her lap, and was awarded a huge financial settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason.

He is survived by two stepbrothers; My Rights and Ima Whiner.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realised he was gone.

If you still remember him, pass this on, if not, join the majority and do nothing.