Our 57th Year of Publishing

A few further notes
All policies are rooted in philosophies. And the philosophical roots of this Service's policy are the principles to be found in the Gospels of the New Testament.
We might sum up our objectives in these terms:
To promote loyalty to the Christian concept of God, and to a society in which every individual enjoys inalienable rights derived from God, not the State.
To defend the Free Society and its institutions -- private property, consumer control of production through genuinely free and responsible enterprise, and limited, decentralized government.
To promote financial policies which will reduce taxation, eliminate debt, and make possible material security for all with greater leisure time for cultural activities, now made possible by optimal utilization of high-tech development.
To oppose all forms of monopoly, whether described as public or private.
To encourage reform that would give the grassroots electorate more input and control over public policy, and make its public representatives and governments more accountable.
To support policies genuinely concerned with conserving and protecting natural resources, including the soil, and an environment reflecting (God's) natural laws.
RESPECTING the importance of the individual, this Service:
REJECTS the materialistic concept that the individual can do nothing, that he is but flotsam drifting on the sea of history;
BELIEVES that the individual does count;
AND FURTHER BELIEVES that the individual, calling upon God's grace and guidance, can be more than a helpless victim of environment; that the individual, working in association with others of faith and courage -- the dedicated minority - can help to shape and mould history, and make a constructive contribution to the future of our country.
RESPECTING GOVERNMENT, this Service believes that:
It is not the legitimate role of government to do for people what they can and should do for themselves. The prime role of government should be to maintain law and order and justice, and the general conditions which encourage the exercise of personal initiative and responsibility by the people in looking after their own welfare.

And this postscript: A year ago, in our December 2002 issue, I warned against the escalating assault upon our fundamental freedoms in Canada in these words:
"Another grave threat to the future of our country as a genuinely free nation comes from within: from the current bureaucratic censorship and book-banning by the federal government of anything expressing a view considered by the Elitist Establishment to be 'politically incorrect,' and the escalating attack upon our fundamental rights of freedom of speech and assembly, and the right of dissent.
"This assault upon the right of Canadians to examine all sides of any issue, and to dissent or express a 'politically incorrect' view, is being promoted under the pretense of combatting 'racism' or 'anti-Semitism.' The enemies of freedom are now exploiting the 'war against terrorism' as an excuse to actually pass legislation criminalizing dissent! Yet, this spurious ploy which now threatens freedom of assembly, speech and communication of Canadians of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, under the pretense of defending 'human rights' and 'protecting minorities,' is in reality slipping the totalitarian shackles upon all Canadians.
"Also, there are the shameful arrests and deportations of Canadian citizens for so-called 'war crimes' allegedly committed more than half a century ago in distant lands during the stress and duress of wartime. Significantly, under duly constituted courts of Canadian common law, Ottawa was never able to get a conviction in any of these cases. Obviously that's why they were switched over for judgment to 'human rights' tribunals, where accused are not protected by our common law and where truth is no defence and, as a matter of fact, is irrelevant. These arrests and deportations are reminiscent of the former Soviet Union's brand of 'justice,' are motivated by a spirit of hate and vengeance. They are an outrageous waste of our tax-dollars; they constitute a denial of the Christian precept of love, forgiveness, reconciliation and regeneration. And they have no legitimate place in our great country.
"The foregoing are just a few of the questions which we deal with."
Those words of warning are even more timely today, as exemplified by the shameful jailing of Ernst Zundel (see our On Target section).
Essential Weapons
Essential weapons in today's defence of our country as a free and sovereign nation, include facts, information, knowledge and understanding. And it is in researching and placing in your hands these essential 'weapons' and challenging a renewal of faith, vision and dedication, that this Service plays a unique role in our nation's defence and future.
With this November-December issue we'll be welcoming many new readers to our 'family,' the result of gift subscriptions. Let me warn that its a hardcore, but compassionate and dedicated family, and that you'll find our Service at times neither enjoyable nor pleasant reading. It is not written for the faint of heart. It deals fearlessly with the great and often 'controversial' issues of the hour, ugly as they may sometimes seem, but an understanding of which is essential to our survival as a free and sovereign people.
To all our readers, new and 'old,' my wife Wanda and I wish you a holy and joyous Christmas, a happy and healthy New Year; and may you, throughout the coming months, find our reports provocative, challenging, and useful in defence of freedom, our heritage, and our country. - Ron Gostick (Publisher)

FROM MONTH TO MONTH
Prospect of Martin y a 'United Right'
Many Canadians today, with the prospect of Paul Martin taking over the PM's office, and a 'United Right' Opposition, are looking for a major improvement in the governance of our country. However, any euphoria may not last too long.
After all, the Alliance has already forgotten much of the former Reform Party programme. And now, with the remnants of the Red Tories helping to formulate policy will there be anything worthwhile left of meaningful reform?

And, except possibly on the 'gay marriage' question, is there really much difference in the policies of Martin and a U.R. hybrid? And with the Tories now in the same tent, Mr. Harper may have to modify his views on Sodomite marriage!
Then, too, on Financial policy, neither Martin, MacKay, Harper nor any other would-be U.R. leader such as Mike Harris, has ever uttered a word indicating they understand the need for financial reform to alleviate the interest/debt problem now burdening the Canadian people and all levels of government. So there isn't much difference in political labels on this vital question.
And on foreign policy? Well, Mr. Martin is going to re-establish closer relations with Washington, whatever that implies. While both components of the U.R. have condemned our P.M. for not joining Mr. Bush in making war on Iraq. Not much difference there. As a matter of fact, if we'd had either Martin or the U.R. in the PM's office this past year, we'd now have thousands of our poorly equipped soldiers mired down and bleeding in Iraq, with another war debt piling up on our shoulders!
In other words, when we shortly get this Martin Liberal government and a United Right Opposition, we'd better have our wits about us and not let our glasses get fogged up with political euphoria.
Eighth Pillar Of Wisdom?

Iraq Is A Deep Morass -- by Michael Keane, LA Times, 21/9/03:
That Iraq would become a troublesome source of guerrilla tactics should come as no surprise to any student of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence is considered by many strategists to be the father of guerrilla warfare. He articulated a powerful treatise on the topic in his classic book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
During World War I, Lawrence's guerrilla victories against the Turkish forces occupying the Arabian Peninsula provided a stunning contrast to the simultaneous slaughter occurring in the trenches of Europe. Although Lawrence claimed that his vision of warfare came to him as he lay dazed in a feverish state, he was actually formalizing a form of war practiced by Arab tribes for centuries.
Lawrence's thesis was that a successful rebellion required three elements. First, the rebels must have an unassailable base, not merely a physical base of operations but also a psychological fortress in the mind of every soldier willing to die for his convictions. Second, in what he called the "doctrine of acreage" (what strategists now call the force-to-space ratio), Lawrence stated that an insurgent victory required that the size of the occupying force must be insufficient to pacify the contested area. Finally, the guerrillas must have a friendly population. Although the population need not be actively friendly, it must not be hostile to the point of betraying the insurgents. This support can be generated either from fear of retaliation or sympathy for the guerrilla cause or both.
The application of Lawrence's theory to the current military situation in Iraq is not comforting. First, the rebels seem to possess an unassailable base in both physical and psychological terms.
Within Iraq, hostile forces have demonstrated an ongoing ability to launch numerous daily attacks. The continuing inability to capture Saddam Hussein is the most significant evidence of this problem. Externally, there is a base of bordering states that are failing to stop volunteers from infiltrating Iraq. American troops have found foreign passports on the bodies of enemy forces killed. Perhaps more troubling, however, is the psychological "base" (of) the mind of the enemy. When religious extremism is mixed with nationalistic fervor, it cements to form the bricks of unshakeable conviction. As Lawrence himself noted, "An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot."
Then there is the force-to-space ratio of coalition forces, which is clearly inadequate. The Americans have only about 130,000 soldiers in Iraq. To match the number of soldiers per inhabitant as the United States has in Kosovo would require 526, 000 troops in Iraq. Finally, guerrilla victories can work to slowly undermine US credibility while simultaneously building support and gaining recruits for the insurgents. Over time, guerrilla tactics tend to frustrate conventional troops, which are increasingly likely to overreact by humiliating men and offending women and thereby alienating the local population.
Though Iraq guerrillas lack the necessary firepower and manpower to forcibly remove the Americans, Lawrence would argue that should not be their proper objective. Even while suffering tactical defeats, the guerrillas could erode the will of the Americans and thereby achieve a strategic victory. As Henry Kissinger succinctly stated: "The guerrilla wins by not losing. The army loses by not winning."
After liberating the region from the Turks in World War II, Britain ruled the newly-formed country of Iraq under a mandate from the League of Nations. The population's gratitude for having been freed from 400 years of Ottoman oppression was short-lived. There were uprisings and assassinations of British soldiers and civilian administrators.
Lawrence was sent back to Baghdad to report on conditions there.
He wrote these haunting words: "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. ... Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. ... We are today not far from a disaster."
Michael Keane, a lecturer on strategy at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, is also a fellow of the US Department of Defense's National Security Education Program.

-- Reprinted from the October 17th Australian On Target Bulletin

Being wise after the event
World events are moving so rapidly that we forget it was a mere seven months ago that massive anti-war protests -biggest ever seen -- rocked the globe. Polls everywhere showed that people did not want the war.
But our leaders knew better. Peter Hartcher (The Australian Financial Review 5/9/03), quoted Bush at that time:
"... 'At some point, we may be the only ones left. That's OK with me. We are America,' he said ..."
Bush was not alone in believing he could belittle and ignore other nations. ...
Ignoring the widely-expressed views of the masses, George (Bush), John. (Howard, Australian PM) and Tony (Blair) went to war in the battle for "good against evil" and "to make the world a safer place." They seem to have made a mess of it. The polls showing support for the war have disappeared. Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State under Clinton, in a three-page article in The Australian Financial Review (5/9/03), gave this picture:
"... According to the recent findings of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which surveyed 16,000 people in 20 countries and the Palestinian Territories in May, the percentage of those who have a favourable view of the United States has declined sharply (15 percentage points or more) in nations such as Brazil, France, Germany, Jordan, Nigeria, Russia and Turkey. In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority state, the view of the US plunged from 75 per cent favourable to 83 per cent negative between 2000 and 2003. Support for the US-led war on terrorism has declined in each of the countries listed above, along with pivotal Pakistan, where it stands at a disheartening 20 per cent. The citizens of such NATO allies as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy rated Russia's Vladimir Putin more highly as a world leader than Bush ..."
But then Bush, until quite recently, was contemptuous of such opinions, and was prepared to go it alone, if necessary ...
So Bush has asked Congress to agree to a further debt increase of $US130-billion to finish the war in Iraq ...
--Jeremy Lee, Australian OT, 19/9/03
COMMENT (by R.G.): Now, President Bush is asking the United Nations countries, who opposed his three-nation 'coalition of the willing' attack on Iraq, to help him pay for his criminal military aggression and destruction and bail him out of the mess created.
We've never been a supporter of most of Mr. Chretien's policies and shenanigans, but our country should be thankful that he declined to push Canada into this Iraqi mess, despite the pro-war antics of the Official Oposition. Are you listening, Messrs Harper, MacKay and Stockwell Day!

Supplementary Section No. 1

In Defence of Freedom
A top lawyer says terrorists win
when due process is subverted
Maclean's magazine, July 28, 2003, under the above caption and subhead, published the following essay by Edward L. Greenspan, Canada's renowned legal authority.
There is a land where the government can arrest non-citizens, throw them in jail for an indefinite period of time, and then remove them from the country, all in virtual secrecy. This is a land where, for certain people, civil liberties and rights of due process don't exist. No, this is not China or Cuba. This is Canada -- a country I believed understood the transcendent importance of safeguarding civil liberties. But against those whom Ottawa secretly determines are a threat to national security, the government can act, and is now acting in alarming ways. Has Canada gone mad? Shades of Guantanamo Bay -- where the U.S. has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists without trial -- colour the government and the judiciary.
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act allows the immigration minister and solicitor general to sign a "security certificate" against a foreign visitor or an individual with permanent resident status, declaring that person "inadmissible" to Canada. The certificate, based on information provided by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, has been used 27 times in the last 10 years, including five times since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The security concerns listed in the act are general and vague, and include "engaging in terrorism, or acts of violence that would or might endanger the lives or safety of persons in Canada," or simply being a "danger to the security of Canada." Under the certificate, a foreign visitor is immediately subject to arrest and can be held indefinitely without bail. For a person with permanent resident status, a Federal Court judge must start a review within 48 hours. If the judge finds the detention warranted, the permanent resident can be held without review for six months. Incredibly, neither the accused nor his lawyer is entitled to be present when the judge determines if further detention is warranted.
In both cases, by the seventh day of custody, a Federal Court judge must start to review the government's evidence. Again, neither the accused nor his lawyer is entitled to be present. The evidence can be hearsay, double hearsay, triple hearsay. It's the judge and government lawyers sitting together making fundamental decisions about someone's liberty, without them (sic) being there to listen, object, question, protest or even to agree.
A summary of the evidence must eventually be presented to the accused, but even then the government can withhold any or all evidence if a judge rules that providing the information risks national security. In a subsequent hearing, the accused is given an opportunity to be heard, but this hearing is inherently unfair because the accused can only respond to the summary of the allegations. At this hearing, the judge does not determine whether the accused is actually a security threat or whether the secret evidence is reliable. The judge's only role is to assess whether the issuance of the certificate was "reasonable." Only three times has a certificate been overturned on review. In one case, a certificate against Mahmoud Jaballah, an Egyptian refugee claimant, was overturned in 2000. However, Jaballah was arrested the following summer under a second security certificate, and the father of six has been held in solitary confinement in Toronto's Metro West Detention Centre ever since.
The accused cannot appeal and can be quickly deported, even to a country where he may be tortured. Worse, the accused's lawyer is kept in the dark about the evidence. Bruce Engel is a thoughtful Ottawa lawyer doing his best to represent Mohamed Harkat, a 35-year-old Algerian refugee who has been held in protective custody since his arrest in the capital in December 2002 on suspicion of being an al-Qaeda operative. He says the summary of the evidence against his client is pitifully vague. What, he wonders, if the government has arrested the wrong person? How can the wrongfully accused defend themselves if they have no idea what the evidence is?
It's astounding that we are living under a government that, in defence of freedom and liberty, can keep someone not charged with any crime in solitary confinement for years based on secret information. It's terrible to contemplate that people can lose their livelihood based on information they cannot question. It's unthinkable that such people have absolutely no right of appeal or review, a glaring violation of a basic tenet of the rule of law: the right to appeal the decisions of a lower court.
We are living in a time when the defeat of terrorism is on everyone's mind. But that doesn't mean we are supposed to simply trust the government to act wisely on correct information. The rule of law is the bedrock of our nation, not blind faith in the unchecked judgment of government officials. Any country that lives by a rule of "trust us, there is no need for due process," is totalitarian. We should be ashamed that there is a process in security cases that can be compared to the ignominious Star Chamber, a medieval English court that was dismantled by Parliament in 1641, but whose name survives to describe arbitrary, secretive proceedings.
The challenge is to figure out a way to deal with the threat of terrorism without losing the freedoms that make Canada the great nation it is. Everyone must be able to respond to their accusers, whether in the realm of a criminal trial or a security hearing. We must demand that persons threatened with loss of liberty, livelihood and possibly life, be provided with someone in this process who can protect them from false and unsupported allegations. Let the lawyer for the accused participate in the meetings with judge and government. Let a lawyer have some opportunity to effectively question the accusations. I shudder at the thought of those who have suffered wrongful convictions. It's terrifying that in ordinary criminal cases, following a trial by judge and jury, after a full opportunity to cross-examine one's accusers and question all the government's evidence, mistakes are still made.
How many mistakes could the government be making in security cases? Agents working for CSIS respond to tips. False tips in criminal cases can be uncovered through independent investigation and cross-examination. But with security issues shrouded in secrecy, there is virtually no way of knowing whether the tipster has run amok in the desperate fight against terrorism. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that a security certificate is issued based on information from corrupt government agents.
History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. When our nation allows fundamental freedoms to be sacrificed, we invariably come to regret it. Earl Warren, former chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote over 35 years ago: "It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defence, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defence of our nation worthwhile."
In the global struggle against terrorism, Canadians are in possession of the ultimate weapon. It's the weapon of an unassailable idea -- individual rights, liberty and the dignity of the individual. It would be a tragic paradox if we should surrender any part of this heritage, for we should then have done to ourselves from within what we fear most from without. We must remain forever vigilant about any encroachment on personal freedom and individual liberty, of citizens and non-citizens alike.
Terrorism is an acute danger and if al-Qaeda is operating inside Canada, it's a genuine danger -- a genuine fifth column. In fact, the U.S. continues to gather intelligence indicating that Canada may be a haven for certain terrorist cells. We should not forget people like Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested crossing the U.S. border from Canada in December 1999 with explosive material that he admitted was intended for the destruction of the Los Angeles airport. But, Ressam's conviction came without jeopardizing the rule of law. I wholeheartedly support the "lock them-up and throw-away-the-key" reaction. But I say, first provide them with the kind of justice that makes Canada great. As Benjamin Franklin said: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." We defeat our own ends if we adopt the techniques of totalitarianism. If we really believe in democracy, we must have faith enough to fight for its preservation with the tools of freedom.
(End of Mr. Greenspan's essay)
COMMENT: We commend both Mr. Greenspan for writing this timely and brilliant essay on respecting and upholding the rule of law, and Maclean's magazine for publishing it.

Ernst Zundel's imprisonment incredible miscarriage of justice
The exposure and warning of the dangers to freedom and justice in Canada of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, by Edward L. Greenspan, one of Canada's most respected and distinguished legal counsels, is most timely. He outlines precisely the totalitarian, barbarous nature of this Act, ostensibly designed to defend Canadian security from terrorist agents and activities, but which in fact violates all the principles of Canadian common law and due process, and denies all the rules and safeguards of our courts and justice system.
We published in Supplementary Section No.3 of our last July-August issue, "A Special Report on the 'Immigration Hearing' of Ernst Zundel," who is a classic example of a person both demonized and victimized by the criminal perversion of our Canadian justice system now being practised by our so-called Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. In our report we noted that:
Mr. Zundel was born in Germany about 1939, and spent his early childhood and teens during the difficult wartime and postwar years in that war-ravaged country.
About 1958 he migrated to Canada, and after a few years in Quebec moved to Toronto, where he established and operated for many years a successful graphic art business.
A reader, researcher and keen student of history, Zundel soon began to notice although the military war ended in 1945, a constant psychological war of smear and propaganda was still being waged in our newsmedia against Germany and what seemed everything German. And he began to resent this incessant guilt-promoting demonizing of his ancestral home and people. Until, in adulthood he became not only a talented writer and artist, but an outspoken defender of the German people and their fatherland. And it would appear from his writings and activities that increasingly his life's prime objective and commitment was to defend and re-establish the honour and dignity of the Germany people and culture.
His efforts to attain his objective, however, involved him in some rather contentious and controversial issues, especially with powerfully organized and influential Jewish groups. His problems in this respect are briefly outlined in our July-August report; and his arrest and incarceration in the U.S.A. early this year and deportation to Canada and, without any "due process," imprisonment in Ontario under most barbarous conditions, up to this past June, are briefly outlined therein.
Brief Update, Oct. 13, 2003
Based on reports from Paul Fromm, a prominent freedom of speech advocate who is acting as Mr. Zundel's agent in his case, from Ingrid Rimland (Zundel's wife), and from Zundel himself, his present condition in Toronto's Metro West Detention Centre is, at best, only marginally improved since our July report. For instance:
He now has a small 'table top' or tray that folds down from the wall of his cell, but still no chair! So he must stand to use the 'table.'
He's allowed no pen or pencil, but merely short crayon-type short pencil stubs which produce writing hardly readable and of little use in preparing notes and material for his hearing appearances.
He's being held in custody, facing no specific charge for an action or crime, but merely on a 'ministerial certificate' to the effect that he is thought to be a danger to national security because of possible past actions, associations, or even chance contact!
Zundel has had to attend during these past seven or eight months several judicial hearings before Mr. Justice Pierre Blais and Crown Attorney Donald MacIntosh. He's been humiliated by having to attend not only with armed guards, but in his brightly coloured prison suit. Denied even a belt for his over-sized prison pants; on one occasion his pants fell down right 'in court'! And while the Prosecutor comes in with carts of books, binders and briefcases of documents, Zundel has to carry in his papers and documents squeezed up in his pillowcase -- now that he's finally been given a pillow.
The ostensible purpose of these hearings is to determine whether Zundel is, in fact, a danger to Canadian security. Now, national security was tightly defined by the CSIS Act of 1982. Threats were espionage, foreign influenced activities, support of terrorism, or political activities that involved serious acts of violence against persons or property to achieve goals. The Act specifically stated that "lawful advocacy, protest and dissent" did not constitute a threat to national security.
Even Zundel's harshest critics admit that he is not a violent man. In fact, he comes from a Seventh Day Adventist family of pacifists. In over 25 years of political activity in Canada -- much of it under heavy police surveillance -- Zundel never practised or advocated violence; nor was he ever charged with any violent offense. Indeed, neither he nor his actions fit any of the qualifications of a security risk as spelled out in the CSIS Act itself.
However, these judicial hearings go on and on, the most recent last month for several days, with the Crown Attorney trying over and over again to associate Zundel with a veritable litany of questionable or disreputable persons or groups -nearly all on hearsay, without producing anything concrete or any witness who could be cross-examined on these allegations.
Reminiscent of Stalinist 'justice'
As Mr. Zundel, in ill-fitting prison garb, faces this seemingly endless medieval 'star-chamber' type of inquisition, he is obliged to have legal counsel -- no state-paid legal aid here - paid for by himself! In Toronto, that's $200 or more an hour! Yet, he's chained in prison, unable to work or earn even a dollar to pay for anything except by alms.
Worse still, for decades Mr. Zundel has suffered from cancer, which he's kept under control by diet and the use of herbal medicines. In prison he is denied this treatment, as his cancerous growth begins to spread and his health deteriorate.
Paul Fromm, in a Sept. 18th press conference stated: "Ernst Zundel has been held in prison since February 19. On May 1, he was served with a CSIS 'national security' certificate co-signed by Solicitor-General Wayne Easter and Immigration Minister Denis Coderre. Under the amended Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, this is the equivalent of a deportation order …"
Mr. Fromm then posed the rhetorical question: "How is a dissident publisher a threat to Canada's national security? National security is carefully defined in the CSIS Act ... (which) makes clear that protest and non-violent dissent, however controversial, are not threats to national security."
This whole case is fraudulent
The truth is that Ernst Zundel is a long-time resident of Canada, who for decades has strived to re-establish the honour and integrity of his fatherland (Germany), and in his efforts has incurred the bitter opposition of certain influential Jewish individuals and groups who want him silenced one way or another.
But the reality is that Mr. Zundel is no terrorist, no criminal, and no security threat to Canada whatsoever. His whole life and record in Canada attests to this fact. Yet, today, as we enjoyed Thanksgiving Day with our family and friends and now prepare for a joyous Christmas, 64-year-old Ernst Zundel, torn away from his wife, lies in torment, incarcerated in the chains of tyranny in a Toronto jail! This, my friends and compatriots, right here in Our Canada!!!
There is, indeed, in this whole fraudulent case, an act of criminal terror. But Ernst Zundel is not the criminal -- but the victim. And it's the responsibility of every Canadian, when made aware of this shameful situation, to write or contact their MP and others in authority demanding that this situation be rectified.

A Special Enterprise Report

Free speech falls prey to 'human rights'
The August 18th National Post published the following article by Ian Hunter, Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario.
Time was when freedom of speech was considered the cornerstone of democracy. No more -- at least not in Canada. Of course, Canadians are not very keen on democracy, either, being content to be ruled in perpetuity by a combination of courts and the Liberal party.
Freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and by Section 2 of our Charter of Rights. Everyone likes rights on paper; for that matter, we like free speech, too, as long as the speech in question is soothing, anodyne and we happen to agree with it. We don't much like freedom for speech that offends us, or with which we disagree.
Take the case of British Columbia high school teacher Chris Kempling. Mr. Kempling is an exemplary teacher, as principals and students, past and present, have attested. But Mr: KempIing is a Christian and, as such, he believes homosexuality is "not something to be applauded," to use his own words. A majority of Canadians may agree with Kempling on this, but the human rights industry and the pseudo-intellectuals do not agree with Mr. Kempling, and therefore we must all keep silent.
The British Columbia College of Teachers suspended Mr. Kempling for "conduct unbecoming a teacher." This decision just might be understandable if Mr. Kempling had expressed his views in school. But he didn't. He expressed them in a letter to the editor of his local newspaper. So, off with his head! -- well, not yet his head, so far just his teaching licence.
Then there was Hugh Owens, a Saskatchewan prison guard, fined for citing (not quoting, just citing) Bible verses that condemn homosexuality.
Then there was Toronto printer Scott Brockie, hauled before our version of the Inquisition -- a human rights tribunal -- and fined for turning down printing business from homosexual activists.
And the case of the Christian couple in Prince Edward Island who shut down their bed and breakfast rather than be forced to condone homosexual acts under their own roof.
But perhaps I had better stop there; I am no longer sure that mentioning the ham-fisted totalitarianism of Canadian human rights commissions is safe. Perhaps overnight it has become "offensive" (in Canada, synonymous with illegal) to point out what human rights commissions are up to. When you cease to be governed by the rule of law and are governed instead by the caprice of judges, you can't be too careful.
This trend to subordinate free speech to offending feelings is not confined to Canada, although this is one area (often, I think, the only area) where Canadians may justifiably claim to be world-beaters.
When the Vatican issued its categorical statement on homosexual unions last month, it was denounced-by all the sort of people the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would consider putting on a panel.
In The Globe and Mail, for example, columnist Heather Mallick warned the Pope henceforth to stay out of Canada -- on pain of, well, something akin to ex-communication from the sistership of all right-thinking (which is to say, left-thinking) cognoscenti. She also wrote: "Churchy people have no say in government," and that's all she wrote. I confess to finding that sentence frightening precisely because it is true.
To Mallick I say, fair enough, this is why free speech exists: to allow people like you to sound off, restrained only by the law of defamation, without the fear that by speaking your mind you are likely to have your livelihood removed or wake to hear the midnight knock upon your door. But how come Heather Mallick enjoys that right but not Chris Kempling? Why is any form of rhetoric allowable so long as it is directed against the Roman Catholic Church, but fawning subservience is the only thing permissible when the subject is gay rights?
As soon as the Vatican's statement was released, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties warned Catholic bishops there that any distribution of it, even in churches, could lead to prosecution and jail under Ireland's "hate crime" laws. Likewise in Canada, any biblical or religious objection proffered against homosexual "marriage" is routinely decried either as "homophobic" or "hate."
This is an effective political technique because it scares many people into silence. But it is fatal to free speech and, ultimately, it is fatal to democracy.
We need to remember that free speech does not mean freedom for the speech we agree with. Such speech needs no legal protection. If free speech means anything, it means protecting the speech we find disturbing, abhorrent, offensive.
Put simply: In Canada it is the Chris Kemplings whom the law needs to protect, not the Heather Mallicks.
(End of Prof. Hunter's article)
More on this question:
EDITORIAL
Spiritual suicide
Politicians of faith should examine
their conscience on gay marriage
The Calgary Herald, August 3, under the above heading and captions, published the following editorial.
The emerging debate prompted by a recent papal directive concerning gay marriage to Roman Catholic politicians, reveals how contemporary society has forgotten what the separation of church and state actually means in practice and in history.
For example, on Wednesday, Canada's likely next Prime Minister, Paul Martin, said his role as a legislator will take precedence over his Catholicism as it concerns gay marriage. The implication is that faith -- any faith -- has no part in political decisions, or governance.
If that is Martin's argument -- and certainly, others have advanced it -- it shows a gravely mistaken, understanding about the proper role and influence of core beliefs in politics.
The original historical purpose of separating religion and state as advanced by the framers of the American republic in foundational documents was that there ought to be no institutional control of the organs of government by a particular denomination or any religion, or vice-versa.
The reason Americans set up their government as they did was in response to the conditions of the day. Then, as now, the Church of England was established as the official state religion in both Great Britain and its American colonies. (It remains so today in Great Britain.) This had critical implications in matters of worship for people of other faiths, and when the colonists had a chance to separate the church from the state, they took it.
That separation, however, was never intended to oblige politicians with faith to set it aside as they conducted affairs of state. Nor did they in America or Great Britain.
For example, 19th-century abolitionists, such as English parliamentarian William Wilberforce, were driven by their religious beliefs that slavery was un-Christian.
Indeed, both the U.S. constitution and British common law pervasively reflect the religious ethics of the Torah and the New Testament. Laws governing life and property and the principle of personal accountability, among others, are the work of legislators informed by what they believed to be divine precepts. True, some are universal, but they have their particular origins here in Judaism and Christianity and were not constructed in some sort of a vacuum absent motivations from faith.
Besides, if one were to banish religious impulses from decision-making in politics, why not banish irreligious convictions that originate in feminism, environmentalism or atheism? It is a mistake to force politicians to separate their decision making from their understanding of what is important in life -- no matter where their convictions originate -- as if the two ever could or should be so separated.
Instead, arguments from all motivations should be aired in the public square, and democratically elected politicians will then necessarily balance the competing claims of their own conscience, the citizens who elected them and the position of their party.
Finally, insofar as politicians with faith are concerned, there is the risk of great personal hypocrisy if they do not follow at least some teachings of their church in matters of state, presumably the ones that are grave. If politicians who claim to be Catholic blindly listen to their critics and not their consciences, and then endorse abortion on demand or homosexual unions, leaders in that church should consider whether they wish to allow such persons to continue to pretend they are in harmony with church teachings.
That is a matter for that church itself to decide, but people of faith bring their religion into their politics, and irreligious people bring their irreligion. Neither should feel constrained to be something other than the whole of what they offered to the voters.
Setting aside deeply held convictions for the sake of political expedience does not constitute the proper separation of church and state, but the separation of one's conscience from one's deeds. It is, in fact, intellectual and spiritual suicide.
(End of the Calgary Herald editorial)
The Bible warns that faith without works is dead. Those who feign religion and faith that do not impact and influence their decisions and actions are both hipocrits and cowards.

Nazi hunter
Disbarred in Washington,
U.S. lawyer once advised
Canada's Justice Department
The October 5th Toronto Sun, under the above caption and subheading, published the following column by Peter Worthington.
In 1997, our federal Justice Department hired Neal Sher, former head of the U.S. Justice Department's Nazi-hunting agency, to help root out war criminals and deport those accused of working for the Nazis in World War II.
By that time, our courts had thrown out most war crimes cases, so the government, led by then-immigration minister Elinor Caplan, apparently zeroed in on deporting people (mostly old Ukrainians, as it turned out) who as teenagers had been forced to work for the Nazis, and after the war came to Canada.
It is alleged that many, like Toronto's Wasyl Odynsky, did not tell the RCMP they'd been forced to serve in Nazi auxiliaries.
Mr. Justice Andrew MacKay, who went to Ukraine to investigate the Odynsky case, found nothing to suggest he had done anything resembling a crime against humanity.
Because Justice MacKay felt it was "probable" that Odynsky had not told of his background, Caplan -- and now her successor, Denis Coderre -- want Odynsky deported without the basic human right of an appeal.
Many MPs and others favour an appeal process but this is denied in present legislation.
While all this was going on, Sher was hired as a consultant by then-justice minister Anne McLellan to help the war crimes unit with prosecutions and deportations. McLellan praised Sher as a "talented and highly competent adviser."
Elinor Caplan echoed the praise.
Irving Abella, chair of the war crimes committee for the Canadian Jewish Congress, was quoted as saying: "They could not have made a better choice."
At the time, I scolded that Sher was an appalling and unnecessary choice. I (and others) felt he was biased, unfair and had ill-served "justice" in the U.S., where he headed the Office of Special Investigation (OSI) from 1983 to 1994.
In 1998, an American court concluded the OSI -- both before and during Sher's watch -- had all but fabricated the case against retired Cleveland auto worker Ivan Demjanjuk, insisting he was "Ivan the Terrible," a sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp.
While not holding Sher personally responsible for wrongdoing, the Ohio court, in restoring Demjanjuk's citizenship at the time, ruled the OSI had withheld key evidence, acted with "reckless disregard for their duty to the court" and perpetrated "further fraud upon the court that ... infects the whole justice system." The judge's findings supported an earlier appeals court decision that had reached similar conclusions.
Conviction overturned
Prior to this ruling, Demjanjuk had been extradited to Israel, where he had been sentenced to death.
Through the tireless efforts of Demjanjuk's son-in-law, Ed Nishnic, evidence was gathered that persuaded the Israeli Supreme Court to overturn that conviction in 1993.
Ironically, Demjanjuk, who returned to America following the decision of Israel's Supreme Court, was again stripped of his citizenship last year, after a judge concluded there was compelling evidence he was a Nazi death camp guard.
Demjanjuk, who has been locked in a 25-year battle with the U.S. Justice Department, is appealing that ruling.
By the time Canada hired Sher, he'd been replaced as head of the OSI.
Sher went on to become executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and later, chief of staff of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), formed to ensure Holocaust victims collected on insurance policies.
The Baltimore Sun (as well as The Los Angeles Times, Forward magazine and others) have reported that Sher resigned after being accused of misappropriating over $136,000 in fraudulent travel expenses.
The ICHEIC raised some $40-million -- much of which went for administration costs while only $18-million to survivors.
(One report claimed that of $33-million raised, $30-million went for administration.)
On Aug. 28, Sher was disbarred in Washington.
Sher did not defend himself and filed "a motion to accept consent to disbarment." He said he agreed to this because the cost of fighting disbarment "would be absolutely prohibitive." Sher made full restitution of the $136,000. The chairman of ICHEIC, former U.S, secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger, called the case a "tragedy." Because Sher voluntarily accepted disbarment, details remain closed.
In the disbarment papers, Sher agrees his consent "is freely and voluntarily rendered," that he knows there is "currently pending an investigation into ... allegations of misconduct," that the "allegations of misconduct ... are true," that if disciplinary proceedings were investigated, he "could not successfully defend against them."
$200 an hour
Some think Sher got off lightly, others think disbarment is too severe. He cannot apply for reinstatement for at least five years.
This, then, is the guy Canada once thought a perfect choice to help get rid of aging Ukrainians who are guilty of nothing except being Ukrainians forced, or coerced, as youths into working for the Nazis.
As a consultant, Canada paid Sher $200 an hour.
When asked about Sher, the Justice Department would only say he is no longer employed there.
In a Jan. 22, 1998, column I wondered, 'Why do we need an American to help investigate war crimes?'
The shame of Neal Sher doesn't help Wasyl Odynsky and others, but it should embarrass Canada for hiring the wrong man.
(End of Mr. Worthington's column)
COMMENT (by R.G.): Canada's callous treatment and deportation of victims of totalitarian tyranny in eastern European countries who fled to Canada following World War II, is a shameful betrayal of every value our war veterans laid down their lives for.

Supplementary Section No. 3

After California -- Who?
The following item, under the above caption, is republished from the August 1st issue of the Australian On Target newsletter published in Melbourne.
As the financial year came to an end on June 30th, California officially declared itself bankrupt. With an economy bigger than Australia's - in fact, the world's fifth largest economy - and a population nearly twice the size (35 million), the State is too indebted to meet its bills.
California blames the Federal Government, which has cut its budget allocation to the States so that it can expand its war programme. The Californian government refused to pass the Budget, and there is now a free-for-all as attempts are made to oust the Governor and find some new leader. By midnight on June 30th no way of balancing the Budget had been found, no area of budget cuts feasible. The State is poised to run out of money altogether by September.
Although California's budget deficit ($US38.2 billion) is larger than all the other State deficits combined, a host of other States are in deep trouble. 46 out of the 50 States have crippling budget deficits and are attempting desperately to find ways to cut back. But California is shutting down many essential services. Legislators and the Government have had their pay suspended. Educational establishments and other essential services have either been cut to the bone or shut down altogether. Queensland's Courier-Mail commented:
"... 'It's ironic that almost all states in the world's richest nation are broke, and California, the wealthiest among them, is in the worst state of all,' said University of Southern California politics expert Sherry Jeffe.
"The crisis also left law-makers in Nevada and Pennsylvania unable to pass a formal budget for the new fiscal year.
"And Oregon, Connecticut and New Hampshire managed to approve only stop-gap plans that all their governments continue functioning while legislators thrash out a proper budget. Connecticut Governor John Rowland deployed State troopers yesterday to force state legislators to find a way out of the crippling crisis after he threatened to veto a $US400-million 'mini budget' passed on Monday night.
"He issued an executive order funding essential services for the next week and dispatched the troopers to deliver subpoenas ordering legislators to return to the state assembly and continue the debate until a budget was finalized."
Only one American State that we are aware of -- Alaska, the 49th -- is not in immediate trouble. Since 1976 it has been squirreling part of its oil royalties away in The Alaska Permanent Fund for such a rainy day. Without State income taxes or sales taxes, the Alaska Permanent Fund now has assets worth over $US27-Billion, which, for a state population of 620,000 is not too bad! But over the period the Fund has also paid an annual dividend to Alaskan citizens over the age of six months averaging some $US2,000 per head each twelve months.
The Alaskans made a wise decision when their Fund was established by referendum -- the management and constitutional legislation prevented elected politicians getting their hands on the people's money!
How Do States Go Broke? ... The combination of all debts in the US now exceeds $US49-trillion -- a sum incapable of repayment. The much anticipated but totally illusory 'recovery' which all the pundits are praying will arrive within the next 12 months, can only be achieved by American exports large enough to repay debt and Interest. With the largest Current Account Deficit in US history with the rest of the world this year -- $US500-billion -- and an increase in unemployment of 2.1 million in the last 12 months -- PLUS a rapacious and bottomless military budget as George Bush tries to be the world's policeman, the Ides do not look auspicious for America in the period ahead. ...
One thing we can be sure of: the money-lenders will be gathering, as they do with ever-increasing frequency, and going through California's remaining assets to see what they can seize or acquire. They might even call in the International Monetary Fund, as they have done in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. If that doesn't wake Americans, and especially Californians, to the whole question of usury and debt finance, nothing else will.
(End of the Australian On Target item)

Depleted Uranium: Weapon of (Long-Term) Mass Destruction
The July 2003 New Times Survey, published in Melbourne, carried a report under the above caption, authored by "Felicity Arbuthnot, veteran Middle East reporter, May 30, 2003." Following, are excerpts of this report.
BAGHDAD (Panos): The small city of Diwania in southern Iraq is home to ten-year-old Mustafa Ali who has acute myeloid leukemia.
Wan and wide-eyed, the cancer has affected a nerve in his right eye. His embarrassment at losing his hair because of chemotherapy is evident. His father, Ali Ismael Tamader Ghalib, gives up work a week every month to bring his son to Baghdad for treatment. "If there is another war, more children will suffer," he said weeks before the latest war. "We must stop this slaughter of innocents; what have the children done to deserve this?" Tears stream down his wife's face, dripping onto her immaculate black abaya. The Al Mansour Teaching and Paediatric Hospital in Baghdad is Iraq's foremost medical teaching centre. When the twice-weekly cancer clinics are held, it is near impossible to squeeze through the crowds that spread into the grounds; parents holding, carrying, clutching their children for diagnosis and treatment. After the 1991 Gulf War, Al Mansour filled with a disproportionately high number of patients from heavily bombed cities in the south of Iraq. Between 1978 and 1992 there were 270 cancer and leukemia cases recorded there. But between November 1992 and October 2002, the hospital recorded 1,714 cases, a six-fold increase.
Worst fears
Those patients include 10-year-old Mustafa, other children of Diwania and other heavily bombed areas. With the war in Iraq and the post-war looting, treatment at Al Mansour will have ceased, effectively condemning Mustafa, other children of Diwania and all the first Gulf War's cancer victims to death. This war has confirmed Ali Ismael's worst fears. Just ten months after the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi doctors were already bewildered at the rise in rare cancers and birth deformities. They were comparing them to those they had seen in textbooks relating to nuclear testing in the Pacific in the 1950s. That Depleted Uranium weapons had been used in Iraq was then unknown. Basra, southern Iraq, was in the eye of the original Desert Storm. In 1997, senior paediatrician at the Basra Maternity and Paediatric Hospital, Dr. Jenan Hussein, completed a thesis comparing the effects there with Hiroshima. Cancers, leukemias and malignancies believed linked to DU, she found, had risen up to 70 per cent since 1991. "There is every relation between the congenital malformations, cancer and depleted uranium. Before 1991, we saw nothing like this. Most of these children have no family history of cancer," she said.
Deadly waste product
DU, or Uranium 238, is a waste product of the uranium enrichment process. It has little commercial value, but when conventional bullets and shells are coated with DU, it makes them armour-piercing. Radioactive particles from spent DU shells do not disappear after explosion. The Pentagon says there are some 320 tonnes of DU left over from the 1991 war. Three weeks into the latest war, independent Britain-based DU researcher Dai Williams said 2,000 tonnes of residual DU dust is a conservative estimate. In April 1991 the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority sent a report to the Ministry of Defence warning of a health and environmental catastrophe in Iraq. It estimated that a residual of 50 tonnes of DU dust could now lead to half a million "potential deaths" from cancer "in the region" within 10 years. With estimates of 2,000 tonnes of DU residue, the "potential deaths" could be astronomical.
Clear evidence
The evidence on the destructive nature of DU is clear. Sick Gulf War and Balkans veterans, tested in 2000 at the World Depleted Uranium Centre in Berlin, were found to have three times more radioactive contamination than the residents of Chernobyl, Ukraine, site of the world's worst nuclear accident. In 1996 a survey that studied the families of 267 United States Gulf veterans showed that 67 per cent of children conceived after their fathers had returned from the Gulf, had rare birth deformities. DU has thrice been condemned as Weapon of Mass Destruction by United Nations subcommittees. Even the United States Army Environmental Policy Institute agrees: DU, it said in 1995, is "radioactive waste and, as such, should be deposited in a licenced depository." But in spite of all the evidence, or perhaps because of it, DU continues to remain an integral part of the NATO arsenal. And now, attempts are being made to cover up its devastating effects.
Covering up
When, in 1999, Finland's Minister of Environment, Dr. Pekka Haavisto, was appointed chairman of the United Nations Environment Programme Unit investigating the use of DU in Kosovo, doors slammed in the face of this highly respected expert. In Washington, declassified documents relating to DU use were suddenly reclassified, a pattern followed in all the NATO countries he doggedly visited, Haavisto told a United Nations Conference in 2001. When his team arrived in Kosovo, their movements were restricted by the military, but they still managed to produce a 71-page report outlining deep concerns. However, by the time it underwent the tortuous United Nations "editorial" process, it was reduced to two pages. In an internal memo from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (the laboratory that brought the world the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs) headed "The Effectiveness of Depleted Uranium Penetrators," the reason for the apparent cover-up becomes clearer. Dated 1st March 1991, the day after the Gulf ceasefire, a Lieutenant-Colonel Larson wrote to a Major Ziehman: "There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes the case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and therefore be depleted from the arsenal."
The memo ends: "I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when, after action, reports are written." With hospital records in Iraq being destroyed while United States troops stand by and do nothing, it is now unlikely we will ever know the true extent of the health effects caused by the last war.
(End of the New Times Survey report)
COMMENT (by Ron Gostick): It was apparently the result of DU used in the US arsenal during the brief 1991 Gulf War, that many tens of thousands of American soldiers (and many of their offspring) suffered such debilitating medical problems in the 1990s after returning home -- not to mention the horrible consequences to the millions of Iraqis subjected to this deadly radioactive dust for more than a decade following the Gulf War!
And now, after the longer and more widespread Bush/Blair attack on Iraq using the deadly DU weapon -- considered by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction -- the effects on all military forces involved will be with them for years to come. But the effects on the Iraqi people, largely destitute and without adequate medical facilities, will be catastrophic, for not only themselves but generations yet unborn.
Mr. Bush implies that God is using him to battle terrorism. My simple question is: What 'god' is he listening to ... and precisely who, in this past year, has been directing the greatest onslaught of terrorism in recorded history?