A new beginning for the United States and Muslims

June 8, 2009

In 1743 a goldsmith named Amschel Moses Bauer opened a coin shop in Frankfurt, Germany. He hung above his door a sign depicting a Roman eagle on a red shield. The shop became known as the Red Shield firm. The German word for 'red shield' is Rothschild.

Amschel Bauer had a son, Mayer Amschel Bauer. At a very early age Mayer showed that he possessed immense intellectual ability, and his father spent much of his time teaching him everything he could about the money lending business and in the basic dynamics of finance.

Meyer Amschel Bauer changed his name from Bauer to Rothschild (”Red Shield”) and added five golden arrows held in the eagle’s talons, signifying his five sons who operated the five banking houses of the international House of Rothschild: Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna, and Naples.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild was to becomed the founder of the Rothschild family international banking dynasty that became one of the most successful business families in history. In 2005, he was ranked 7th on the Forbes magazine list of "The Twenty Most Influential Businessmen Of All Time". The business magazine referred to him as a "founding father of international finance."

June 8, 2009

You liberals can rewrite history all you want. I think this Rothschild is right on the mark.

Obama, Like Bush, Bends a Knee to King Abdullah
By Matthew Rothschild, June 3, 2009

There’s something more than a little unseemly about one American President after another going to Saudi Arabia to kiss the ring of King Abdullah.

This is a kingdom where “women continue to face severe discrimination in law and practice,” says Amnesty International’s latest annual report.

This is a kingdom where “torture and other ill-treatment of detainees were widespread and systematic,” but who are we to talk?

This is a kingdom where, according to Amnesty International, “human rights activists and peaceful critics of the government were detained or remained in prison.”

This also happens to be a kingdom that finances the most reactionary madrassas around the world.

And, as if we needed bin Laden’s new tape as a reminder, this is a kingdom that supplied 15 of the 19 mass murderers on 9/11.

It was hard to stomach watching Bush palling around with King Abdullah all those years.

And it was equally hard to stomach watching Obama salute “the long history of friendship” between the United States and Saudi Arabia and debase himself by saying he was there “to seek his Majesty’s counsel.”

Hell, less than a week ago in Riyadh the government conducted a public execution that featured a beheading followed by the crucifixion of the man’s body.

What a friendship to uphold.

June 8, 2009

In 1836 President Andrew Jackson finally succeeds in throwing the Rothschilds central bank out of America, when the bank's charter is not renewed. It would not be until 1913 that the Rothschilds would be able to set up their third central bank in America, the Federal Reserve, and to ensure no mistakes are made, this time they will put one of their own bloodline, Jacob Schiff, in charge of the project.

Jacob Henry Schiff, born Jacob Hirsch Schiff (January 10, 1847 – September 25, 1920) was a German-born New York City banker and philanthropist, who helped finance, among many other things, the Japanese military efforts against Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.

From his base on Wall Street, he was the foremost Jewish leader in what became known as the "Schiff era," grappling with all major issues and problems of the day, including the plight of Russian Jews under the tsar, American and international anti-Semitism, care of needy Jewish immigrants, and the rise of Zionism. He also became the director of many important corporations, including the National City Bank of New York, Equitable Life Assurance Society, Wells Fargo & Company, and the Union Pacific Railroad. In many of his interests he was associated with E.H. Harriman.

When World War I finally did break out, he used his reputation and influence to urge President Woodrow Wilson, and others, to put an end to the war as quickly as possible, even without an Allied victory. He feared for the lives of his family, back in Germany, but also for the future of his adopted land. He engineered loans to France, and other nations for humanitarian purposes, and spoke out against submarine warfare.

As a prominent businessman of Jewish origin, Schiff was accused, along with other famous Jews of the time, of being one of the key players in a powerful Jewish cabal conspiring to dominate the world. The international loans he brokered, along with his involvement with several companies and organizations around the world made him a person of interest for conspiracy theorists.

In 1837 the Rothschilds send one of their own, August Belmont, an Ashkenazi Jew, to America to salvage their banking interests defeated by President Andrew Jackson.

August Belmont, Sr. (December 8, 1813 - November 24, 1890), was born in Alzey, Hesse, to a Jewish family. He immigrated to New York City in 1837 after becoming the American representative of the Rothschild family's banking house in Frankfurt. On receiving his American citizenship, he married Caroline Slidell Perry, daughter of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry.

As a delegate to the Democratic Convention of 1860, he supported Stephen A. Douglas, who subsequently named Belmont the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee the same year in Baltimore. He energetically supported the Union cause during the Civil War as a War Democrat, conspicuously helping Missouri Congressman Francis P. Blair raise and equip the Union Army's first predominately German-American regiment. Belmont also used his acumen with European business and political leaders on behalf of the Union Cause, dissuading the Rothschilds and many other bankers from providing the Confederates with loans, and meeting personally with the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and various members of Napoleon III’s French government.

1864: Rothschild, August Belmont, who by now is the Democratic Party's National Chairman, supports General George McClellan as the Democratic nominee to run against President Abraham Lincoln in this year's election. Much to the anger of Belmont, President Lincoln wins the election.

1875: On January 1 of this year Jacob Schiff, now Solomon Loeb's son-in-law after marrying his daughter, Teresa, takes control of the banking house, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. He goes on to finance John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, Edward R. Harriman's Railroad Empire, and Andrew Carnegie's Steel Empire. This is all with Rothschild money.

1907: Rothschild, Jacob Schiff, the head of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., in a speech to the New York Chamber of Commerce, warns that,

"Unless we have a Central Bank with adequate control of credit resources, this country is going to undergo the most severe and far reaching money panic in its history."

Suddenly America finds itself in the middle of another typical run of the mill Rothschild engineered financial crisis, which ruins as usual ruins the lives of millions of innocent people throughout America and makes billions for the Rothschilds.

In November of 1910, some of these vultures came together at the Jekyl Island Hunt Club on Jekyl Island, Georgia. What were they hunting? The biggest prize of all, the absolute and complete control of all the money in America which means control of all America and with it the power to make slaves of all the people.

Those who attended were: Senator Nelson Aldrich (Nelson Rockefeller's maternal grandfather); A. Piatt Andrew, Economist and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; Frank Vanderlip, President of the National City Bank of New York; Henry P. Norton, President of Morgan's First National Bank of New York; Paul Moritz Warburg, a German who was partner in the New York banking house of Kuhn, Loeb Co.; Benjamin Strong, an aid to J. P. Morgan.

Paul Warburg was credited as the architect of the bill which was passed by Congress and signed by traitorous Woodrow Wilson. It was entitled the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. America once again had a central bank but this time they had placed America under an absolute dictatorship. President James Garfield had insight into this situation:

• "It must be realized that whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolutely master of all industry commerce."

The Federal Reserve was incorporated in 1914 and has been creating a completely unnecessary national debt ever since. In simple terms, the Fed creates money as debt. They create money out of thin air by nothing more than a book entry. Whenever the members of the Fed make any loans, that debt money is our money supply.

There are now only 5 nations on the world left without a Rothschild controlled central bank: Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya.

http://www.iamthewitness.com/DarylBradford..._Rothschild.htm

June 8, 2009

The Rothchilds are Sabatai Zewist not Jews. They are occultists. Don't be confused. They send propagandists into both Palestinians and Israelites to make them fight each other. Their way of control is to divide people into two fighting groups and control both of them into their goal.

Zebi, Sabbatai (Jewish heretic) was a false messiah who developed a mass following with Turkish Jews and threatened rabbinical authority in Europe and the Middle East. Sabbatai was born in Smyrna in 1626. He spent his youth learning Cabbalistic mysticism. He regarded himself as the Messiah, and revealed himself as such in the year 1648. The false Messiah's fame spread throughout Europe. The Rabbis of Prague and Hamburg were suspected by the Orthodox Christians as being secret adherents of the Zebi. Sabbatai was resolved to regain control of Constantinople, but was caught by the Turkish Grand Viziers guards and thrown into prison.

Some of his adherents believe that Zebi never died. The sect of these Hebrew Mohammedans, under the name of Dunmehs, or Converts, still endures.

Luke_Wilbur · June 8, 2009

It is a hard pill to swallow to assume the Rothschild family makes all the decisions in the world. It is even more difficult to believe that they are Illuminati occultists that want to profit by seeding wars to gain power in a New World Order with its capital in Israel. I did like reading the history. I wonder how much of it is just a conspiracy fantasy.

Edited June 8, 2009 by Luke_Wilbur

June 8, 2009

It's still Commerce with the Arab countries who are our ALLIES. Hey!!! Russia just signed a Nuclear deal with Oman.

June 8, 2009

Hey Barrack Obama, let me remind you that the greatest good in the 20th century came from American power! Who stopped the Nazis? The Japanese Empire? Listen Obama America sits at the head of the table not 2nd or 3rd, who do you want to take the lead? Russia? China? Iran? Get it through your head America leads and the world is a better place! No apologies! The greatest destruction to the Muslim nations through the centuries has been Islamic oppression! Do you still fly "the stars and stripes over the White House?

June 8, 2009

The late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said insisted that the events of 1947-1948 must be viewed in terms of “different but intertwined histories.” We could witness this in commemorations last year: If the Israelis celebrated the 60th anniversary of their state in 2008, the Palestinians worldwide mourned six decades of exile, provoked by the deliberate expulsion of their people from their land, under the command of then-Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion. The term they use is “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” a bit more apt than the euphemisms “dislocation” and “displacement.” But, call it what you will, what occurred was massive expulsions, or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their historic lands. Once the United Nations had decreed the partition on November 29, 1947(with questionable legal validity), the Zionist forces under Ben-Gurion launched the operational phase of their project to de-Arabize not only the land allotted to a Jewish state, but also other land they coveted. From late November until May 14, 1948, the date the complicit British had set for their withdrawal, the Zionists succeeded in moving, with military precision, to drive the native inhabitants from their land.

If one reads the accounts of these events, written by and about Ben-Gurion, one finds no trace of such a scheme. Instead, their fairy tale version has it that the Zionists would have welcomed Arab cooperation in building the new state, but the Palestinians preferred to leave; that force was never exerted to drive them out; that if any violence occurred, it was in only response to anti-Zionist attacks. And, besides, recounts Ben-Gurion in his memoirs, the Arabs who had been there for centuries, had been lazy do-nothings, had not cultivated the land or developed industry; therefore, it was better for the Zionists to take over. Moreover, the Jews, he wrote, had a biblical mandate to the land, having been there thousands of years before, whereas Arab nationalism was a recent phenomenon.(1)

In 1961, Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi published a major exposé of the real story, entitled, “Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine.” In it, he detailed how the Zionist movement had carefully planned the expulsions, according to Plan D (Dalet) and executed them. In 1988, on the fortieth anniversary of the Nakba, Khalidi’s groundbreaking research was reprinted in the Journal of Palestine Studies, and the text of the Zionists’ project, the original Plan Dalet, was published in English for the first time. In the 1980s, in response to his exposés, a number of Israeli historians, dubbed the “new historians,” made their debut, reviewing, or revising the official Zionist version of events. Among these scholars are Tom Segev, Simcha Flapan, and others.

Most recently, one extremely courageous “new historian,” Ilan Pappe, published his research on the Nakba, in a volume entitled (without euphemisms), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which has also happily been issued in German. Pappe documents in painstaking detail how Ben-Gurion and his “Consultancy” (the general staff group he put together for the task), planned the Nakba. With geographical-strategic profiles of the cities and towns, their political, religious and ethnic composition, their economic activities, and so forth, they drew up a master plan for attacking, occupying, emptying and destroying one locality after the other. They gave specific orders to their armed bands (Haganah, Stern Gang and Irgun) to attack Palestinian cities and towns, terrify the residents, round up the civic leaders, executing some, blow up homes and other buildings, in order to cause the panicked residents to flee. The documentation he provides from primary sources like Ben-Gurion’s diaries, is as unassailable as it is chilling. And it confirms, in spades, the research of Walid Khalidi, this time from an Israeli source.

All this has been known to Palestinians and other Arabs, who lived through these traumatic events, for decades. It has also been known to those Israelis involved, but has been deliberately covered up by the official, mythological account.

Now, in walks an American President who, in an address to the Muslims of the world, touches upon the Nakba. To be sure, not in so many words, but, a rose by any other name is still a rose, and anyone who knows anything about the history of Israel, knows what he was referring to. He did not speak of 1967 as a landmark, but referenced “60 years,” i.e. going back to 1948.

Thus, the hysterical reaction by Rush Limbaugh and Liz Cheney, to Obama’s having presented the suffering of the Jews and of the Palestinians as “morally equivalent.” Bush’s former speech-writer David Frum, the man credited with having coined the provocative term “axis of evil,” was also apoplectic. This is taboo: although it has not been so openly debated in the U.S. media, the issue of the Nakba is fundamental for Arabs. And it carries with it the issue of the right of return, i.e. the right of those Palestinians driven out in 1948, to return to their homes in what is present-day Israel.

Obama’s mention of this highly sensitive issue should have an impact inside Israel. In fact, in the last weeks, the Nakba has become a political football. A number of Knesset members presented a bill in late May, calling for any commemoration of the Nakba to be banned and punishable by a penalty of up to three years in prison. The move, subsequently watered down to deny government funds to anyone honoring the Nakba, was supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is interesting, indeed. Whenever a political body, be it a government or parliament, calls for something to be penalized, one must take a closer look at it, and ask why. This bill bears uncanny similarities to a law on the books in Turkey, to wit, the infamous Paragraph 301 of the Constitution, which makes it illegal to state or write anything about the genocide against the Armenians in 1915. This law has proven impotent in front of the growing ranks of Turkish intellectuals, among them murdered editor Hrant Dink, who have spoken out, to say the genocide occurred and demand it be dealt with by the Turkish political class and people.

The same is true in Israel. The Nakba occurred, and no law on the books can erase that fact. Herein lies the significance of Obama’s reference. Yes, the Israeli settlements must be frozen, as per prior agreements; in fact, to conform to international law, all the settlements on Palestinian land should be dismantled. And, yes, there must be a return to the negotiating table. The existing blueprints for peace (the Arab peace plan of 2000, the Road Map,) not to mention peace agreements already signed, provide workable solutions to end the conflict. But even if the new U.S. Administration were to wield the political clout it possesses, perhaps by withholding funds from Israel (as Washington did in 1991, to force Shamir to go to the Madrid peace conference) to extract an agreement, this would not mean peace. The historical truth must be acknowledged.

The current Israeli government is, at any rate, the least likely candidate to buckle under to U.S. pressures. Netanyahu, after all, is the man for whom the American neo-conservative faction of Richard Perle, et al, drafted a policy in 1996, one which he only too readily accepted. This was the “Clean Break” doctrine, which called for a “clean break” with the Oslo accords and everything they implied. The “Clean Break” document explicitly urged Israel to tear up the earlier agreements with the Palestinians, to engage in “hot pursuit” against them in the Occupied Territories as well as Gaza, and to promote regime change, in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, all to the greater glory of a Greater Israel, the new nuclear-armed hegemon in the region.(2) Judging from past performance, and recent statements, the Netanyahu-Lieberman government will under no circumstances acquiesce to any reasonable offer coming from the Arabs and backed by Washington. There will have to be a political change inside Israel, before such a peace plan could even be sketched on the agenda.

Even in the improbable case that Netanyahu, under duress, were to sign on the dotted line, such an agreement would be no more than a piece of paper. As earlier treaties, with Egypt and Jordan, have shown, peace is not merely the absence of war. It is a qualitatively new relationship between former adversaries, whereby each views the other as an equal human being, something which can certainly not be said of the way Egyptians, Jordanians and Israelis view one another today.

The peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended centuries of religious conflict, was forged on the basis of two noble concepts: that each side embrace the commitment to “forgive and forget” whatever atrocities occurred during conflict; and, that each strive to work to secure the benefit, or interest, of the other. Several nations in Europe, among them France and Germany, embraced this principle in making peace after having fought each other in two catastrophic world wars in the last century. Former enemies can become allies – if they face the truth.

In the Israeli-Palestinian case, this means that the historical record must be recognized. The Israeli policy has been to “forget” only too readily, in the sense of eradicating any record of what happened. But, to be able to “forgive and forget,” one must first acknowledge the wrongs done; Israel, its government and people must own up to the Nakba and to recognize its injustice. Then, and only then, could it be possible for Palestinians, three generations later, to pardon those responsible for their crimes.

Despite the loud noises coming from the extremist camps in Israel against any such development, there is the movement of the “new historians,” of Israeli intellectuals who have used their access to primary sources in the state archives, to document the ugly story of the ethnic cleansing that paved the way for the founding of the Israeli state. There is also the Zochrot, an organization committed to making the truth about the Nakba known. Not to mention the plethora of journalists, freedom activists, and cultural initiatives, spearheaded by Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, who are working to establish a new understanding between the two peoples, as a prerequisite to peace.

These processes are in motion, and can become powerful forces for change in political direction inside Israel. The shock of the war Israeli waged against Gaza at the end of 2008 into January 2009, fuelled this dynamic inside Israel, and abroad. That brutal aggression against a hapless civilian population, ripped up the taboos reigning in Europe, against any questioning of the wisdom or morality of Israeli policy. Ongoing investigations, sparked by the United Nations entities there (which were treated as an enemy force by Israel), will yield their fruits. Pressure will continue to mount, to bring to light the truth about that war, and the policy thinking behind it. Israel will continue to reject any cooperation with such investigations and to issue reports whitewashing the Israeli Defense Forces’ behavior in Gaza. Official Israel will continue to balk at any initiative to shed light on the Nakba. But to no avail. Truth has a way of making itself known.

Once the historical record of 1947-1948 becomes a matter for open public debate inside Israel, and internationally, then there will be hope that this centuries-long conflict, manufactured by imperial, geopolitical forces on a much higher level, may be overcome. If the American President contributed in any way to initiate this process of truth-seeking, he has done his part.

(As a postscript, it might be added that another, not insignificant comment that Obama made in Cairo, addressed the method of struggle in the resistance. Acknowledging Hamas as a political force with a Palestinian following (which also raised the blood pressure of some in Tel Aviv and Washington), Obama drew the comparison to the civil rights struggle of American Blacks, which was waged through the non-violent resistance of Martin Luther King and others. That resistance movement succeeded because it challenged the oppressor with a morally superior attitude, which proved to be unassailable. Obama’s brief reference here again echoed the lessons of Westphalia.)

NOTES

1. David Ben-Gurion, The Test of Fulfillment: Can Zionism Be Achieved? American Palestine Committee, New York, 1942; Recollections, Macdonald Unit 75 London, 1970.

2. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, 1996, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Stduies, Jerusalem, www.iasps.org/strat1.htm.

The author can be reached at mirak.weissbach@googlemail.com

June 9, 2009

The Arab League (Arabic: الجامعة العربية‎ al-Jāmiʻa al-ʻArabiyya), officially called the League of Arab States (Arabic: جامعة الدول العربية‎ Jāmiʻat ad-Duwal al-ʻArabiyya), is a regional organization of Arab states in Southwest Asia, and North and Northeast Africa. It was formed in Cairo on March 22, 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan after 1946), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a member on May 5, 1945. The Arab League currently has 22 members. The main goal of the league is to "draw closer the relations between member States and co-ordinate collaboration between them, to safeguard their independence and sovereignty, and to consider in a general way the affairs and interests of the Arab countries.

Mindful of their previous announcements in support of the Arabs of Palestine the framers of the Pact were determined to include them within the league from its inauguration. This was done by means of an annex that declared:

Even though Palestine was not able to control her own destiny, it was on the basis of the recognition of her independence that the Covenant of the League of Nations determined a system of government for her. Her existence and her independence among the nations can, therefore, no more be questioned de jure than the independence of any of the other Arab States. Therefore, the States signatory to the Pact of the Arab League consider that in view of Palestine's special circumstances, the Council of the League should designate an Arab delegate from Palestine to participate in its work until this country enjoys actual independence.

The Arab Peace Initiative

The Council of Arab States at the Summit Level at its 14th Ordinary Session,

Reaffirming the resolution taken in June 1996 at the Cairo Extra-Ordinary Arab Summit that a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East is the strategic option of the Arab countries, to be achieved in accordance with international legality, and which would require a comparable commitment on the part of the Israeli government,

Having listened to the statement made by his royal highness Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, crown prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in which his highness presented his initiative calling for full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, reaffirmed by the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the land-for-peace principle, and Israel's acceptance of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in return for the establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel,

Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties, the council:

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries.

5. Calls upon the government of Israel and all Israelis to accept this initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for peace and stop the further shedding of blood, enabling the Arab countries and Israel to live in peace and good neighborliness and provide future generations with security, stability and prosperity.

6. Invites the international community and all countries and organizations to support this initiative.

7. Requests the chairman of the summit to form a special committee composed of some of its concerned member states and the secretary general of the League of Arab States to pursue the necessary contacts to gain support for this initiative at all levels, particularly from the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the Muslim states and the European Union.

For purposes of comparison, the following is an earlier draft discussed by Arab foreign ministers on 25 March, 2002, in advance of the summit:

The Council of the Arab League, which convenes at the level of a summit on March 27-28, 2002 in Beirut, affirms the Arab position that achieving just and comprehensive peace is a strategic choice and goal for the Arab states.

After the Council heard the statement of Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz in which he called for the establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel, and that Israel declares its readiness to withdraw from the occupied Arab territories in compliance with United Nations resolutions 242 and 338 and Security Council resolution 1397, enhanced by the Madrid conference and the land-for-peace principle, and the acceptance of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state with al-Quds al-Sharif as its capital, the Council calls on the Israeli government to review its policy and to resort to peace while declaring that just peace is its strategic option.

The Council also calls on Israel to assert the following:

Complete withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including full withdrawal from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and the remaining occupied parts of south Lebanon to the June 4, 1967 lines.

To accept to find an agreed, just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in conformity with Resolution 194.

To accept an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the Palestinian lands occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and with Jerusalem (al-Quds al-Sharif) as its capital in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1397.

In return, the Arab states assert the following:

To consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over and to enter into a peace treaty with Israel to consolidate this.

To achieve comprehensive peace for all the states of the region.

To establish normal relations within the context of comprehensive peace with Israel.

The Council calls on the Israeli government and the Israelis as a whole to accept this initiative to protect the prospects of peace and to spare bloodshed so as to enable the Arab states and Israel to coexist side by side and to provide for the coming generations a secure, stable and prosperous future.

It calls on the international community with all its organizations and states to support the initiative.

The Council calls on its presidency, its secretary general and its follow-up committee to follow up on the special contacts related to this initiative and to support it on all levels, including the United Nations, the United States, Russia, the European Union and the Security Council.

June 9, 2009

The Information and Decision Support Center for the Egyptian government did a snap public opinion survey after President Obama's speech, and thanks to the Arabist we can see the results:

* 81% of Egyptians surveyed were aware of Obama's visit and speech, including 92% of those in urban governorates. 93% said they learned about the speech on television, with the internet presumably falling into the 2% "other" residual category.

* 48% said the Palestinian issue was the most important issue Obama addressed in his speech, followed by 22% who said US-Muslim relations, 20% who said Islam in general, 18% who said Iraq, 7% who said Iran, and 3% who said democracy (among others -- multiple answers were allowed so it did not add up to 100%). The priority of the Palestinian issue will surprise nobody except those who have for years insisted that it isn't a priority against all available evidence. The Egyptian government is no doubt pleased at the low level of interest in democracy, but perhaps less pleased by the equally low level of concern about Iran despite months of its relentless anti-Iranian agitation and propaganda (a finding which matches that of numerous other surveys, supporting the view that the anti-Iranian focus in these Arab states is concentrated in the leadership rather than in the public).

* 37% said they totally believed what Obama said while only 5% said they totally disbelieved him, while 41% partially believed and 17% were undecided.

* 78% said the visit would improve US-Egyptian relations and 1% said it would make relations worse, with virtually identical numbers for US relations with the Islamic world (77% better, 1% worse).

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/..._on_obama_visit

June 9, 2009

In his speech, President Obama "was rather mild on Israel and did not tell us what he proposes to do if Israel rejects peace with its neighbors and continues to subjugate Palestinians and occupy their land," one Muslim said. Even though Americans would like to do everything we can to make peace in the mid-east, as the only nation that truly supports Israel, we will not abandon them. We must not abandon them.

June 9, 2009

On June 6, several hundred people gather4ed in the Israeli Embassy to protest the ongoing and deadly seige of Gaza and mistreatment of Palestinians by Isra-Hell. June 6 is the anniversary of the the anniversary of the 6th day war, in which Isra-Hell occupied Gaza and the West Bank.

The protesters denounced the seige of Gaza for what it is-a tactic drawn straight from medieval warfare, in which the goal is to starve a fortress, a town, or in this case, a people into submission.

A member of Code Pink who has just returned from Gaza, Palestine said she awoke to the sound of Isra-hell's bombs every night, and people have stopped even turning around when they hear one of these bombs, shells, or missile warheads go off.

Approximately FIVE right-wing counterprotesters were drowned out by hundreds of protesters against the seige. Included in the protest were representatives of the Neturei Karta, who hold that the establishment of Israel by ordinary men while the Jews are in diaspora violates the Torah.

After speeches at the Israeli Embassy, protesters set up on Connecticut Ave sidewalks so passing drivers would see-causin a fair amount of rubbernecking.

June 9, 2009

I support a free Palestine as much as the next guy, but your history is a little off here: the Palestinian occupation started on May 15th, 1948, known as al-Nakba day (Israel is currently in the process of passing a law making Nakba commemorations a crime, by the way)

June 6th is the anniversary of the 6th day war, in which Israel took the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt, respectively. No "State of Palestine" existed at (or before) that time.

June 9, 2009

All in all, a speech to woo everybody and offend nobody risks promising too much, a touchstone for Obama in the coming weeks is the nearly unsolvable Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, it's easier to make a foray into the unknown than to change the status quo, which was shaped in the past 60 years. So far, Obama is smart enough to avoid a showdown or a direct visit to the area, which would exhaust his diplomatic capital and kill his second term.

June 10, 2009

Muslims revere the historic city as the third-holiest after Mecca and Medina because it marks the site of Prophet Muhammad's ascendance to heaven and was the first "Qibla," the direction Muslims should face during daily prayers ("salah"). Here are some topics that might be of interest to this subject.

U.S. Condemned Muslim digging activities Jerusalem Temple Mount

American psychological warfare against Islam

What Really Happened During the 2006 Israel Lebanon War

Israeli Practices Affecting Human Rights of Arabs

NATO Expands into Arab South, signs of treaty with Egypt

What is Hezbollah?

Hizbullah attacks Northern Israel

Israeli Practices Affecting Human Rights of Arabs

Catholic - Muslim Leaders Will Attend Forum in Rome, November 4 - 6

Reconciling Islam With Democracy

Muslim Americans Prepare for Eid-ul-Fitr

June 10, 2009

The announcement by Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), to the effect that the PA is willing to transfer the holy places in Jerusalem to Islamic sovereignty in exchange for genuine Israeli compromises, was ostensibly supposed to constitute a breakthrough.

But that same Islamic sovereignty does not particularly thrill the foreign ministers of the 57 countries that met at the end of the week in Damascus for the Islamic Conference Organization. The proposal did not even come up for discussion. Instead, the participants mainly discussed the wording of the decisions condemning the construction and excavation activities being conducted by Israel in the Temple Mount area, whose purpose is the "Judaization of Jerusalem."

Not only can the proposal to transfer the Temple Mount to Islamic sovereignty not be defined legally - since what legal significance is there to the term "religious sovereignty" - it also angers some Fatah members, who say that "if the proposal really is valid, it overturns the vision of Yasser Arafat, who always adhered to the viewpoint that a Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital and the Palestinian flag on Haram al Sharif [the Temple Mount], is not a state."

Although Arafat had a relatively flexible viewpoint when it came to the religious status of Jerusalem, and always made a point of mentioning that it is holy to Christians and Muslims, in order to check any attempt to internationalize the city, when it came to control and sovereignty he was sharp as a razor.

East Jerusalem is a part of the territories occupied in 1967, and therefore sovereignty over them is Palestinian, not Islamic and not Arab.

This viewpoint was accepted years earlier by the Arab League, which granted the Palestine Liberation Organization headed by Arafat its status as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and as the sovereign in any territory released by Israel. In that way Arafat succeeded in pulling Jerusalem out of the hands of the Arab countries, and later out of Jordanian hands as well.

Technically, if the PA wants to surrender sovereignty over the Temple Mount in favor of Islamic representation, it will first have to go back to the Arab League in order for that body to make a decision.

One of the members of the Islamic Conference Organization is Iran, which in other times could have been considered an Arab ally and a country that could contribute to a diplomatic solution when it came to the places holy to Islam. However, when Egypt is conducting a fierce battle with Iran and its protege, Hezbollah, and when Islamic sovereignty is liable to grant Shi'ite Iran the status of a landlord in a place that is sacred to Sunni Islam, it is doubtful whether any of the leaders of the Sunni Arab countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Morocco, will agree to take a chance and to adopt Abu Rudeina's proposal, which is liable to bring Iran to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hatem Abdel Kader, the new minister for Jerusalem affairs in Salam Fayyad's government, this week explained the Palestinian proposal in somewhat deeper detail, claiming that it does not refer to an international body that will assume responsibility for the Temple Mount, but rather an Islamic country.

But even this explanation is not sufficient. Which country will it be? Will it be an Islamic Arab country or a non-Arab country, like Iran, Turkey or perhaps Indonesia? For now it looks as though this proposal, which has already been denied by another adviser to Abbas, Nimer Hamad, will be dead upon arrival, and not only for fear of Iran or for legal reasons. When it comes to Islamic sovereignty over the Temple Mount, Hamas will also have something to say, because it combines all the basic requirements: an Islamic, Arab and Palestinian organization.

June 10, 2009

The Qur’an portrays the Jews as the craftiest, most persistent, and most implacable enemies of the Muslims—and there is no Muslim equivalent of the Second Vatican Council to mitigate against destructive interpretations. The Qur’anic material on the Jews remains the prism through which far too many Muslims see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and Jews in general—to this day.

June 10, 2009

Lebanon’s crucial general elections that saw a surprising victory for the US-backed ruling bloc clearly bear the marks of President Barack Obama’s outreach campaign in the Arab and Muslim world, analysts believe, predicting more of the positive Obama effect.

"Lebanon is a telling case,” Osama Safa, director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies in Beirut, told the New York Times on Tuesday, June 9.

In a race viewed as setting the political course in the tiny Arab country, voters handed the ruling March 14 coalition an unexpected victory over the opposition led by Hizbullah, a Shiite group and political party labeled as a terrorist by the US.

The ruling coalition garnered 71 seats in the 128-member assembly against 57 for its rivals, though analysts had expected a narrow victory for Hizbullah and its allies.

Experts note that this is the first time that being aligned with the US in the Middle East did not lead to a defeat.

Many of them link that to Obama’s reconciliatory approach towards the region, recently consolidated by his last week Cairo speech on relations with Muslims.

"I think the speech of Obama in Cairo more likely played a role in neutralizing anti-Americanism,” said Khalil al-Dakhil, a sociologist from Saudi Arabia.

"It was a positive message. It was a conciliatory message."

Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at American University of Beirut, says that in addition to feeling less hostile to the US, many Lebanese may have feared becoming isolated like the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip if they had elected the opposition.

“Evidently the majority of the Lebanese have resolved their minds; they don’t want confrontation, they want peace.”

The Obama administration had warned that it would review aid to Lebanon in case the opposition comes to power.

After the results, Obama hailed the polls as a force for stability and affirmed that his administration would continue to support Lebanon.

June 10, 2009

http://www.vimeo.com/3206907

June 11, 2009

James W. von Brunn motivation for his coward act needs to be thouroughly reviewed. He coorelates the corruption Jesus found at the Temple of Solomon with our current Federal Reserve System.

know the blasphemy of them who say they are the Children
of God, but are of the Synagogue of Satan! For ye are of

your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He

was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth

for there was no truth in him... When he speaketh a lie he speaketh

of his own for he is a LIAR and the father of it.

JESUS, JOHN 8:1

Brunn cites Joseph G. Burg, author of “Zionist Nazi Censorship”; "Guilt and Fate," and discusses the Rothchild family history. There are other mentions of the family within this topic.

Amshel Mayer Rothschild, JEW, (1743-1810) patriarch
of the Frankfort, Germany, banking family, was intrigued by

ancient scrolls bearing Hebrew Protocols that he had

acquired for his library. He commissioned Adam Weishaupt,

an apostate Jesuit priest, to up-date them. In the fateful year,

1776 A.D., Weishaupt presented the Einigen Original-

Scripten (Protocols) to Rothschild accompanied by an organizational

paradigm, designed to implement the revised Protocols,

which he named “THE ILLUMINATI” after Lucifer

(Satan), “The Bearer of Light.” Its objective: ONE WORLD

ILLUMINATI GOVERNMENT.

The Weishaupt/Rothschild documents were revealed to

the world (1784) “by an act of God” when a Rothschild courier

and his horse were struck dead by lightning in Ratisbon

enroute to Paris. Bavarian authorities discovered a copy of

the Einigen Original-Scripten in the saddlebags. The ILLUMINATI

was promptly outlawed, and the Grand Orient

Lodges, wherein the conspirators met, were permanently

closed. The ILLUMINATI, then, quickly infiltrated Freemasonry

Lodges throughout Europe, from which the French

(JEW) Revolution was fomented and directed.

Many years later the Protocols, again revised, reappeared

in St. Petersburg, Russia, around the time of the Bolshevik,

JEW, revolution there. Victor E. Marsden, correspondent for

the London Morning Post (during an era when integrity of

the press was considered sacrosanct) acquired a Russian edition

(Cionski Protocoli) of Weishaupt's work, in a cloak and

dagger caper, from Professor Sergyei Nilus, an Orthodox

Catholic priest. Marsden translated it into English, publishing

it under the title: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of

Zion. For his temerity Marsden was murdered. Nilus' original

copy of the Protocols, bearing the date August 10, 1906,

is now in the British Museum, London.

In the U. S. A., Henry Ford, Sr., founder of the Ford

Motor Company, ordered millions of copies of the Protocols

printed, in several languages, and distributed throughout the

world. World JEWRY vehemently protested the Protocols

were “forgeries” (sic). Ford replied, (New York World, 2-17-

21), “The only statement I care to make about the Protocols

is that... they have fitted the world situation up to this time.

They fit it now.” Senator Jacob Javits, JEW, chaired a U.S.

Senate Investigating Committee to report on the Protocols.

The U. S. Senate, who does what it is told, confirmed the

Protocols were “forged” (sic). Forgeries of what? No debate

was conducted on the correlation between the Protocols and

what has occurred on the World stage!

Brunn reveals the strength of his antisemitism in page 64

The ILLUMINATI, is headed by a KHAGAN. The
Khagan presides over the KEHILLA (Board of Directors),

composed of 13 JEWS, most of whom are International

Bankers. Each of these Directors heads a key organizations

within the World Revolutionary Movement. Directors rotate

as chairman of the ILLUMINATI which seats 300 influential

personages, not only JEWS, representing the most

important fields of human endeavor: finance, mass- media,

government, military, foreign affairs, science, industry, busiJAMES

W. VON BRUNN

65

ness, education, religion, and so on. However, because it is a

SECRET ORGANIZATION it is virtually invisible. Like

the wind it is revealed by its influence and damage, to wit:

Brun believed that Jewish power brokers manipulated World War I in their favor. He quotes an antisemetic remark of Henry Ford.

The Jews formed a solid ring around Woodrow Wilson.
There was a time when he communicated to the country

through no one but a Jew.

HENRY FORD, Sr., Volume II, The International Jew.

Brunn then cites a Congressional statement about who was to blame for World War I

The United States Congressional
Record (Senate, 6-15-33) places the blame for WWI directly

where it belongs — the International Bankers caused the war

and were its ultimate victors.

Brunn goes on and discusses Germany's bitterness of defeat and conveys that there was no Holocaust.

June 11, 2009

Supreme Court of Canada: 1992 Zündel Judgement

The judgment of McLachlin, La Forest, L'Heureux-Dube and Sopinka JJ. was delivered by

McLACHLIN J.:-- Four constitutional questions were stated by the Chief Justice on this appeal; the questions ask whether s. 181 (formerly s. 177), the "false news" provision of the Criminal Code, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46, violates s. 2 ( b ) or s. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and if it does, whether such violation is a reasonable limit upon these Charter rights within the meaning of s. 1. Section 181 reads:

181. Every one who wilfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

Neither the admittedly offensive beliefs of the appellant, Mr. Zundel, nor the specific publication with regard to which he was charged under s. 181 are directly engaged by these constitutional questions. This appeal is not about the dissemination of hate, which was the focus of this Court's decision in R. v. Keegstra, [ 1990 ] 3 S.C.R. 697, and the reasons of my colleagues Cory and Iacobucci JJ. here. In Keegstra, this Court ruled that the provisions of the Criminal Code which prohibit the dissemination of hate violated the guarantee of freedom of expression but were saved under s. 1 of the Charter. This case presents the Court with the question of whether a much broader and vaguer class of speech -- false statements deemed likely to injure or cause mischief to any public interest -- can be saved under s. 1 of the Charter. In my view, the answer to this question must be in the negative. To permit the imprisonment of people, or even the threat of imprisonment, on the ground that they have made a statement which twelve of their co-citizens deem to be false and mischievous to some undefined public interest, is to stifle a whole range of speech, some of which has long been regarded as legitimate and even beneficial to our society. I do not assert that Parliament cannot criminalize the dissemination of racial slurs and hate propaganda. I do assert, however, that such provisions must be drafted with sufficient particularity to offer assurance that they cannot be abused so as to stifle a broad range of legitimate and valuable speech.

THE BACKGROUND

The charge arises out of the publication by the appellant of a 32-page booklet seemingly entitled Did Six Million Really Die? which had previously been published by others in the United States and England. The bulk of the booklet, excepting the foreword and postscript authored by the appellant, purports to review certain publications in a critical fashion. On the basis of this review, it suggests, inter alia, that it has not been established that six million Jewish people were killed before and during World War II and that the Holocaust is a myth perpetrated by a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

The case comes to this Court after two trials, each of which resulted in a conviction. Although the first conviction was overturned, the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected the appellant's submission that s. 181 violated the Charter and sent the matter back for a new trial. This appeal is brought from the conviction on the second trial. Leave to appeal to this Court was granted on the general Charter issue only -- the constitutionality of s. 181 of the Criminal Code.

June 11, 2009

THE ISSUES

As stated, the issue is whether s. 181 of the Criminal Code violates the Charter. It is argued that it violates ss. 2( b ) and 7, and that these infringements are not justifiable under s. 1 of the Charter.

In the event the conviction is upheld, a subsidiary issue arises of whether the terms of the appellant's bail are too broad.

ANALYSIS

1. Section 181: Its History, Purpose and Ambit

Section 181 dates from the Statute of Westminster in 1275, which introduced the offence De Scandalis Magnatum or Scandalum Magnatum. It provided "that from henceforth none be so hardy to tell or publish any false News or Tales, whereby discord, or occasion of discord or slander may grow between the King and his People, or the Great Men of the Realm". The criminal offence was enforced by the King's Council, and later by the Court of Star Chamber, until the 17th century when its enforcement was taken over by the common law courts. It had as its primary aim the prevention of "false statements which, in a society dominated by extremely powerful landowners, could threaten the security of the state": see R. v. Keegstra, supra, at p. 722, per Dickson C.J.; and F.R. Scott, "Publishing False News" ( 1952 ), 30 Can. Bar Rev. 37, at pp. 38-39. As Holdsworth recounts, "[t]his was no vain fear at a time when the offended great one was only too ready to resort to arms to redress a fancied injury": A History of English Law (5th ed. 1942), vol. III, at p. 409. Nonetheless, De Scandalis Magnatum is not thought to have been a very effective instrument. Holdsworth refers to a "thin stream of...cases" from the 16th century onwards; by the time of its repeal in 1887 (Statute Law Revision Act, 1887 (U.K.), 50 & 51, Vict., c. 59) it had long been obsolete.

Although the offence of spreading false news was abolished in England in 1887, and does not survive in the United States, it was enacted in Canada as part of the 1892 Criminal Code. The reason for the offence's retention in Canada is unknown. Scott suggests that it may have been no more than oversight, with no one in Canada being aware that the English provision had been repealed four years previously: see Scott, supra, at p. 40. Certainly Burbridge, the drafter of the 1892 Code, was no enthusiast of the offence, commenting in his 1890 Digest of the Criminal Law in Canada that its "definition is very vague and the doctrine exceedingly doubtful": see Scott, supra, at p. 39. Be that as it may, the offence was retained, originally under the rubric of "Seditious Offences" (The Criminal Code, 1892, S.C. 1892, c. 29, s. 126; R.S.C. 1927, c. 36, s. 136 ) and more latterly as a species of "Nuisance" ( S.C. 1953-54, c. 51, s. 166 ). Until its revision in 1955, the Criminal Code provision read:

136. Every one is guilty of an indictable

offence and liable to one year's imprisonment who

wilfully and knowingly publishes any false news or

tale whereby injury or mischief is or is likely to be

occasioned to any public interest.

The substantive elements of the offence remained the same after Parliament's 1955 transfer of the provision to the 'nuisance' section of the Code, but the potential sentence was increased to two years. Neither documentary nor viva voce evidence has been proffered to explain why the section was retained in Canada when it had been dropped elsewhere or why it was moved from the offences dealing with "Sedition" to those dealing with "Nuisance". What is now s. 181 has been judicially considered only three times in Canada, excluding this case; the jurisprudence on it is virtually non-existent.

After considering the rather sparse history of the provision, Cory and Iacobucci JJ. conclude at p. 31 of their reasons that:

... a review of the historical development of the law's

response to false news reflects its role in prohibiting

the dissemination of false information which strikes at

important interests of society as a whole. Section 181

perpetuates one of the central functions of De Scandalis

in prohibiting public alarm and internecine hostilities

between and among social groups.

With the greatest respect, I find no support in the history of the provision for such a conclusion. The only lesson to be gleaned from the history of s. 181 is that the offence was aimed at protecting the rule of law and the security of the state, in the guise of the head of power whether that be the monarchy or later the government: see Drouin J. in R. v. Carrier (1951), 16 C.R. 18, 104 C.C.C. 75 (Que. K.B.). The fact that provocative racial statements have been, on the odd occasion in the past two hundred years, prosecuted as other criminal offences such as "public mischief" and "criminal libel" sheds no light on the objective behind the enactment of the "false news" provision. Moreover, as discussed below, the very cases referred to by Cory and Iacobucci JJ. to support their conclusions actually reveal the overinclusiveness of the provision.

I turn from history to the wording of s. 181 and the ambit of the section upon whose constitutionality this Court is asked to pronounce. The construction of s. 181 is not at issue in these proceedings, leave to appeal on those issues having been denied. The analysis of the constitutionality of s. 181 must therefore be based on the section as it was interpreted by the courts below.

As interpreted by the trial judge and the Court of Appeal below, the actus reus of the offence is the publication of "a statement, tale or news" that is false and that "causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest...". The mens rea lies in the knowledge that the statement is false. Thus the Crown, to succeed, must establish beyond a reasonable doubt the following propositions:

1. That the accused published a false statement, tale or

news;

2. That the accused knew the statement was false; and

3. That the statement causes or is likely to cause injury

or mischief to a public interest.

Each of the three elements of the offence created by s. 181 is capable of giving rise to considerable difficulty of application in the context of a trial. The question of falsity of a statement is often a matter of debate, particularly where historical facts are at issue. (Historians have written extensively on the difficulty of ascertaining what actually occurred in the past, given the difficulty of verification and the selective and sometimes revisionist versions different witnesses and historians may accord to the same events; see, for example, the now famous treatise of E.H. Carr, What is History? ( 1961 ) ). The element of the accused's knowledge of falsity compounds the problem, adding the need to draw a conclusion about the accused's subjective belief as to the truth or falsity of the statements. Finally, the issue of whether a statement causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to the public interest requires the identification of a public interest and a determination of whether it has been or is likely to be injured. In the case of each of the three elements of the offence, the not inconsiderable epistemological and factual problems are left for resolution by the jury under the rubric of "fact". Thus, both in its breadth and in the nature of the criteria it posits, s. 181 poses difficulties not usually associated with criminal prohibitions, which traditionally demand no more of a jury than common sense inferences from concrete findings on matters patent to the senses.

At pages 6-16 of their reasons, Cory and Iacobucci JJ. summarize and interpret in detail the s. 181 trial process in the case at bar, the goal being to show that s. 181 did not theoretically or practically preclude the accused Zundel from raising a reasonable doubt on each element of the offence -- a basic requirement of fundamental justice. The argument, as I understand it, would appear to be that if s. 181 occasioned no unfairness in this case, it never will. One doubts the validity of such an inference, given the acknowledgement that this was a clear, simple case on the facts. But that aside, I do not share my colleagues' view that as a practical matter the Court can be certain, even in this instance, that the defendant was accorded procedural justice. On the contrary, it is my view that the difficulties encountered in this case underline the inherent vices of s. 181.

Difficulties were encountered at trial with respect to all three elements of the offence -- with respect to what constitutes a "statement, tale or news", interpreted as constituting an assertion of fact as opposed to opinion; what constitutes injury or mischief to a public interest; and what constitutes proof of knowledge of falsity of the statement. The courts below resolved the difficult issue of the distinction between a statement and an opinion by treating it as a question of fact for the jury to resolve. While this is true in a technical legal sense, in a practical sense the jury was told that the publication at issue was a false statement. By applying the doctrine of judicial notice and telling the jury that the "mass murder and extermination of Jews in Europe by the Nazi regime" was an (historical) fact no "reasonable person" could dispute, the judge effectively settled the issue for them. Moreover, I am unable to agree with my collegues (see p. 8 of their reasons) that the trial judge instructed the jury that the "onus of differentiating fact from opinion" lay with the Crown. Judge Thomas's direction that the Crown must prove "that the pamphlet, in essence, is a false statement of fact" does not impose upon the Crown the more difficult burden of first explaining to and then convincing a jury of the distinction between historical fact and historical opinion regarding events almost fifty years old. This might be forgiven, given the elusiveness of distinguishing historical fact from historical opinion. But it shows the danger in criminalizing "false statements". The contention is that expressions of opinion are not caught by s. 181. The reality is that when the matter is one on which the majority of the public has settled views, opinions may, for all practical purposes, be treated as an expression of a "false fact".

The question of knowledge of falsity was similarly left as a question of fact for the jury to decide. But this too was not a question of fact in the usual sense. The jury was instructed that it was entitled to infer from the judge's instruction that because the Holocaust must be regarded as proven, the accused must have known it to be proven and must be taken to have published his pamphlet deliberately for personal motives, knowing the falsity of his assertion to the contrary. Judge Thomas added, albeit as only one factor in this assessment, the principle that the "more unreasonable the belief, the easier it is to draw the inference that the belief is not honestly held". In the context of a sexual assault trial such an instruction would be unlikely to mislead the jury, both because questions of consent and perceptions of consent are far more common place than questions of the sincerity of an accused's belief in esoteric or outlandish historical "facts", and because the jury is likely to have the assistance of the viva voce evidence of both the complainant and accused in determining whether the inference that the accused's unreasonable belief in the complainant's consent was not an honest one ought to be drawn. But in the context of a prosecution under s. 181 a jury is, in the face of such instructions, unlikely to be able to evaluate or accept the accused's assertion that he believed the truth of his publications. The logic is ineluctable: everyone knows this is false; therefore the defendant must have known it was false.

On the final question of injury or mischief to a public interest, the trial judge told the jury that it was sufficient if there is a likelihood of injury or mischief to a particular public interest and directed the jury on the "cancerous effect of racial and religious defamation upon society's interest in the maintenance of racial and religious harmony in Canada." Judge Thomas further instructed the jury that "[t]here can be no doubt ... that the maintenance of racial and religious tolerance is certainly a matter of public interest in Canada". Once again, the jury's conclusion may have flowed inevitably from the trial judge's instruction.

One is thus driven to conclude that this was not a criminal trial in the usual sense. The verdict flowed inevitably from the indisputable fact of the publication of the pamphlet, its contents' divergence from the accepted history of the Holocaust, and the public interest in maintaining racial and religious tolerance. There was little practical possibility of showing that the publication was an expression of opinion, nor of showing that the accused did not know it to be false, nor of showing that it would not cause injury or mischief to a public interest. The fault lies not with the trial judge or the jury, who doubtless did their best responsibly to inform the vague words of s. 181 with meaningful content. The fault lies rather in concepts as vague as fact versus opinion or truth versus falsity in the context of history, and the likelihood of "mischief" to the "public interest".

Against this background, I turn to the question of whether the conviction and imprisonment of persons such as the appellant under s. 181 violate the rights which the Charter guarantees. The first question is whether the Charter's guarantee of free speech protects the impugned publication. If the answer to this question is in the affirmative, the second question arises of whether prohibition of the publication by criminal sanction can nevertheless be maintained as a measure "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society".

June 11, 2009

I believe there is some truth in everything. But, the question is how much false truths there are and should we reveal them.

June 11, 2009

2. Does the Charter's guarantee of freedom of expression protect Mr. Zundel's right to publish the booklet Did Six Million Really Die?

Section 2 ( b ) of the Charter provides:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

. . .

( freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression,

including freedom of the press and other media of

communication;

The Court must first ask whether a publication such as that at issue is expression protected by s. 2( of the Charter. If so, the Court must ask the further question of whether the purpose or effect of s. 181 is to restrict such expression. If so, it will be found to violate s. 2 ( b ) of the Charter: see Irwin Toy Ltd. v. Quebec (Attorney General), [1989] 1 S.C.R. 927.

This Court has held that s. 2( is to be given a broad, purposive interpretation: Irwin Toy, supra. Even prior to the Charter, this Court recognized the fundamental importance of freedom of expression to the Canadian democracy; see Reference re Alberta Statutes, [1938] S.C.R. 100; Switzman v. Elbling, [1957] S.C.R. 285. I can do no better than to quote the words of my colleague Cory J., writing in Edmonton Journal v. Alberta (Attorney General), [1989] 2 S.C.R. 1326, at p. 1336:

It is difficult to imagine a guaranteed right more

important to a democratic society than freedom of

expression. Indeed a democracy cannot exist without that

freedom to express new ideas and to put forward opinions

about the functioning of public institutions. The concept

of free and uninhibited speech permeates all truly

democratic societies and institutions. The vital

importance of the concept cannot be over-emphasized. No

doubt that was the reason why the framers of the Charter

set forth s. 2( in absolute terms which distinguishes

it, for example, from s. 8 of the Charter which guarantees

the qualified right to be secure from unreasonable search.

It seems that the rights enshrined in s. 2 ( b ) should

therefore only be restricted in the clearest of

circumstances.

The purpose of the guarantee is to permit free expression to the end of promoting truth, political or social participation, and self-fulfilment. That purpose extends to the protection of minority beliefs which the majority regard as wrong or false: Irwin Toy, supra, at p. 968. Tests of free expression frequently involve a contest between the majoritarian view of what is true or right and an unpopular minority view. As Holmes J. stated over sixty years ago, the fact that the particular content of a person's speech might "excite popular prejudice" is no reason to deny it protection for "if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought -- not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate": United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (1929), at p. 654. Thus the guarantee of freedom of expression serves to protect the right of the minority to express its view, however unpopular it may be; adapted to this context, it serves to preclude the majority's perception of 'truth' or 'public interest' from smothering the minority's perception. The view of the majority has no need of constitutional protection; it is tolerated in any event. Viewed thus, a law which forbids expression of a minority or "false" view on pain of criminal prosecution and imprisonment, on its face, offends the purpose of the guarantee of free expression.

The jurisprudence supports this conclusion. This Court in Keegstra held that the hate propaganda there at issue was protected by s. 2( of the Charter. There is no ground for refusing the same protection to the communications at issue in this case. This Court has repeatedly affirmed that all communications which convey or attempt to convey meaning are protected by s. 2(, unless the physical form by which the communication is made (for example, by a violent act) excludes protection: Irwin Toy, supra, at p. 970, per Dickson C.J. and Lamer and Wilson JJ. In determining whether a communication falls under s. 2( b ), this Court has consistently refused to take into account the content of the communication, adhering to the precept that it is often the unpopular statement which is most in need of protection under the guarantee of free speech: see, e.g., Keegstra, supra, at p. 828, per McLachlin J.; R. v. Butler, [1992] 1 S.C.R. 452, at p. 488, per Sopinka J.

The respondent argues that the falsity of the publication at issue takes it outside of the purview of s. 2( of the Charter. It is difficult to see how this distinguishes the case on appeal from Keegstra, where the statements at issue were for the most part statements of fact which almost all people would consider false. That aside, I proceed to the arguments advanced under the head of falsity.

Two arguments are advanced. The first is that a deliberate lie constitutes an illegitimate "form" of expression, which, like a violent act, is not protected. A similar argument was advanced and rejected with respect to hate literature in Keegstra on the ground that "form" in Irwin Toy refers to the physical form in which the message is communicated and does not extend to its content. The same point is determinative of the argument in this case.

The second argument advanced is that the appellant's publication is not protected because it serves none of the values underlying s. 2 ( b ). A deliberate lie, it is said, does not promote truth, political or social participation, or selffulfilment.

Therefore, it is not deserving of protection.

Apart from the fact that acceptance of this argument would require this Court to depart from its view that the content of a statement should not determine whether it falls within s. 2 ( b ), the submission presents two difficulties which are, in my view, insurmountable. The first stems from the difficulty of concluding categorically that all deliberate lies are entirely unrelated to the values underlying s. 2 ( b ) of the Charter. The second lies in the difficulty of determining the meaning of a statement and whether it is false.

The first difficulty results from the premise that deliberate lies can never have value. Exaggeration -- even clear falsification -- may arguably serve useful social purposes linked to the values underlying freedom of expression. A person fighting cruelty against animals may knowingly cite false statistics in pursuit of his or her beliefs and with the purpose of communicating a more fundamental message, e.g., 'cruelty to animals is increasing and must be stopped'. A doctor, in order to persuade people to be inoculated against a burgeoning epidemic, may exaggerate the number or geographical location of persons potentially infected with the virus. An artist, for artistic purposes, may make a statement that a particular society considers both an assertion of fact and a manifestly deliberate lie; consider the case of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, viewed by many Muslim societies as perpetrating deliberate lies against the Prophet.

All of this expression arguably has intrinsic value in fostering political participation and individual self-fulfilment. To accept the proposition that deliberate lies can never fall under s. 2 ( b ) would be to exclude statements such as the examples above from the possibility of constitutional protection. I cannot accept that such was the intention of the framers of the Constitution.

Indeed, the very cases relied upon by Cory and Iacobucci JJ. to support their position reveal the potential of s. 181 for suppressing valuable political criticism or satire. In R. v. Hoaglin (1907), 12 C.C.C. 226, cited at p. 28 of their judgement, the "false" publication asserted "Americans not wanted in Canada". The injury to public interest was, in the words of Harvey J., that "if [Americans] investigate they will find conditions such as to prevent them investing and taking up homesteads" (Hoaglin, supra, at p. 228). Even if one accepts the finding that the statement was undoubtedly "false", it arguably represented a valuable contribution to political debate on Canadian immigration policy. Yet the accused was convicted for publication of such statements contrary to s. 136 (now s. 181). Similarly, in R. v. Kirby (1970), 1 C.C.C. ( 2d ) 286 (Que. C.A.), a case involving prosecution for publication of political satire in the Montreal Gazette, (cited at p. 30 of their judgement), Hyde J.A. accepted that the publication fell within the satirical tradition of Chaucer, Swift and Addison. In reversing the trial judge's conviction, he observed that the section may capture "pranks" and that the "prank" in question was "very close to the border" (p. 290).

The second difficulty lies in the assumption that we can identify the essence of the communication and determine that it is false with sufficient accuracy to make falsity a fair criterion for denial of constitutional protection. In approaching this question, we must bear in mind that tests which involve interpretation and balancing of conflicting values and interests, while useful under s. 1 of the Charter, can be unfair if used to deny prima facie protection.

One problem lies in determining the meaning which is to be judged to be true or false. A given expression may offer many meanings, some which seem false, others, of a metaphorical or allegorical nature, which may possess some validity. Moreover, meaning is not a datum so much as an interactive process, depending on the listener as well as the speaker. Different people may draw from the same statement different meanings at different times. The guarantee of freedom of expression seeks to protect not only the meaning intended to be communicated by the publisher but also the meaning or meanings understood by the reader: Ford v. Quebec (Attorney General), [1988] 2 S.C.R. 712, at p. 767, and Irwin Toy, supra, at p. 976. The result is that a statement that is true on one level or for one person may be false on another level for a different person.

Even a publication as crude as that at issue in this case illustrates the difficulty of determining its meaning. On the respondent's view, the assertion that there was no Nazi Policy of the extermination of Jews in World War II communicates only one meaning -- that there was no policy, a meaning which, as my colleagues rightly point out, may be extremely hurtful to those who suffered or lost loved ones under it. Yet, other meanings may be derived from the expressive activity, e.g., that the public should not be quick to adopt 'accepted' versions of history, truth, etc. or that one should rigorously analyze common characterizations of past events. Even more esoterically, what is being communicated by the very fact that persons such as the appellant Mr. Zundel are able to publish and distribute materials, regardless of their deception, is that there is value inherent in the unimpeded communication or assertion of "facts" or "opinions".

June 11, 2009

A second problem arises in determining whether the particular meaning assigned to the statement is true or false. This may be easy in many cases; it may even be easy in this case. But in others, particularly where complex social and historical facts are involved, it may prove exceedingly difficult.

While there are Criminal Code offences under which a person may be prosecuted for libel -- defamatory, blasphemous and seditious (all of which appear to be rarely if ever used and the constitutionality of which may be open to question) -- it is the civil action for defamation which constitutes the only other significant branch of the law in which a jury is asked to determine the truth or falsity of a statement. But the difficulties posed by this demand are arguably much less daunting in defamation than under s. 181 of the Criminal Code. At issue in defamation is a statement made about a specific living individual. Direct evidence is usually available as to its truth or falsity. Complex social and historical facts are not at stake. And most importantly the consequences of failure to prove truth are civil damages, not the rigorous sanction of criminal conviction and imprisonment.

Before we put a person beyond the pale of the Constitution, before we deny a person the protection which the most fundamental law of this land on its face accords to the person, we should, in my belief, be entirely certain that there can be no justification for offering protection. The criterion of falsity falls short of this certainty, given that false statements can sometimes have value and given the difficulty of conclusively determining total falsity. Applying the broad, purposive interpretation of the freedom of expression guaranteed by s. 2( b ) hitherto adhered to by this Court, I cannot accede to the argument that those who deliberately publish falsehoods are for that reason alone precluded from claiming the benefit of the constitutional guarantees of free speech. I would rather hold that such speech is protected by s. 2 ( b ), leaving arguments relating to its value in relation to its prejudicial effect to be dealt with under s. 1.

Such an approach is supported by the language of the Charter and the relationship it establishes between s. 1 and the enumerated rights. We start from the proposition that legislation limiting the enumerated rights may be unconstitutional. (There is no presumption of constitutionality: Manitoba (Attorney General) v. Metropolitan Stores Ltd., [1987] 1 S.C.R. 110, at p. 122, per Beetz J.). If a limitation on rights is established, the onus shifts to the Crown to show that the legislation is justified under s. 1, where the benefits and prejudice associated with the measure are weighed. The respondent's s. 2( arguments would require evaluation of the worth of the expression which is limited at the first stage. This is an approach which this Court has hitherto rejected and one which I would not embrace.

In concluding that the publication here in issue is protected by s. 2( of the Charter, I rely in the final analysis upon the words of Dickson C.J. in Keegstra, supra, at pp. 765-66:

...it must be emphasized that the protection of extreme

statements, even where they attack those principles

underlying the freedom of expression, is not completely

divorced from the aims of s. 2 ( b ) of the Charter.... t

is partly through clash with extreme and erroneous views

that truth and democratic vision remain vigorous and

alive.... [C]ondoning a democracy's collective decision to

protect itself from certain types of expression may lead

to a slippery slope on which encroachments on expression

central to s. 2( b ) values are permitted. To guard against

such a result, the protection of communications virulently

unsupportive of free expression values may be necessary in

order to ensure that expression more compatible with these

values is never unjustifiably limited.

Having concluded that the publication here at issue is protected by s. 2( of the Charter, I come to the question of whether the purpose or effect of s. 181 of the Criminal Code is to restrict this sort of expression.

The respondent correctly concedes that the Government's purpose in and the effect of s. 181 is to restrict expressive activity. The argument of the intervener, the Canadian Jewish Congress, that the purpose and effect of s. 181 are not to restrict expression but rather to prevent the harmful consequences of publications such as the one at issue, misses the point. First, this Court has never focused upon a particular consequence of a proscribed act in assessing the legislation's purpose; the Court examines what might be called the 'facial' purpose of the legislative technique adopted by Parliament to achieve its ends: see, for example, Irwin Toy, supra at pp. 973-76. Second, a legislative provision may have many effects. One demonstrated effect of s. 181 in the case at bar is to subject Mr. Zundel to criminal conviction and potential imprisonment because of words he published. In the face of this reality, it is undeniable that s. 181, whatever its purpose, has the effect of restricting freedom of expression.

I conclude that s. 181 violates s. 2 ( b ) of the Charter.

3. Is the Limitation which Section 181 of the Criminal Code Imposes on the Right of Free Expression Justified under Section 1 of the Charter?

Section 1 of the Charter provides:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees

the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such

reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably

justified in a free and democratic society.

The first question is whether s. 181 represents a "limit prescribed by law". It was argued that the difficulty of ascertaining what constitutes a "statement, tale or news" as opposed to an opinion, as well as the vagueness of the term "injury or mischief to a public interest", render s. 181 so vague that it cannot be considered a definable legal limit. Preferring as I do to deal with the matter on its merits, I assume without deciding that s. 181 passes this threshold test.

Section 1 requires us to weigh the intrusion of rights represented by the impugned legislation against the state's interest in maintaining the legislation. In this case that translates to weighing the state's interest in proscribing expression which it deems 'likely to cause injury or mischief to a [matter of] public interest' on pain of criminal sanction against the individual's constitutional right to express his or her views. Where a law restricts an express constitutional right, as in this case, the Charter permits the limitation to be maintained only if the Crown shows that the restriction is "demonstrably justified" in a "free and democratic society" -- that is, a society based on the recognition of fundamental rights, including tolerance of expression which does not conform to the views of the majority.

I turn first to the state's interest in prohibiting the expression here at issue -- the question of whether the Crown has established an overriding public objective, to use the language of R. v. Oakes, [1986] 1 S.C.R. 103. In determining the objective of a legislative measure for the purposes of s. 1, the Court must look at the intention of Parliament when the section was enacted or amended. It cannot assign objectives, nor invent new ones according to the perceived current utility of the impugned provision: see R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., [1985] 1 S.C.R. 295, at p. 334, in which this Court rejected the U.S. doctrine of shifting purposes. Although the application and interpretation of objectives may vary over time (see, e.g., Butler, supra, per Sopinka J., at pp. 494-96), new and altogether different purposes should not be invented. The case is quite different from the anti-obscenity legislation in Butler where the goal historically and to the present day is the same -- combatting the "detrimental impact" of obscene materials on individuals and society -- even though our understanding or conception of that detrimental impact (a "permissible shift in emphasis") may have evolved, as Sopinka J. noted. My colleagues say that it is a permissible shift in emphasis that the false news provision was originally focused on the "prevention of deliberate slanderous statements against the great nobles of the realm" and is now said to be concerned with "attacks on religious, racial or ethnic minorities": (see p. 56 of their reasons). But this is no shift in emphasis with regard to the purpose of the legislation -- this is an outright redefinition not only of the purpose of the prohibition but also of the nature of the activity prohibited. To convert s. 181 into a provision directed at encouraging racial harmony is to go beyond any permissible shift in emphasis and effectively

It is argued that this interpretation represents a mere shift in emphasis because the thrust of s. 181 and its predecessors, like the obscenity provisions in Butler, disclosed a single goal: "the protection of the public interest from harm" or from that which would "threaten the integrity of the social fabric" (at p. 56 of the reasons of Cory and Iacobucci JJ.). Yet, all Criminal Code provisions -- as well as much statutory regulation in the public and private law spheres -- have as their basic purpose the protection of the public from harm and the maintenance of the integrity of the social fabric. Indeed, one might argue that such was the goal of the obscenity provisions under review in Butler, yet the Court did not adopt that as the legislation's objective. Instead, it relied upon a specific objective concerning the effect of pornographic materials on individuals and the resultant impact on society. If the simple identification of the (content-free) goal of protecting the public from harm constitutes a "pressing and substantial" objective, virtually any law will meet the first part of the onus imposed upon the Crown under s. 1. I cannot believe that the framers of the Charter intended s. 1 to be applied in such a manner. Justification under s. 1 requires more than the general goal of protection from harm common to all criminal legislation; it requires a specific purpose so pressing and substantial as to be capable of overriding the Charter's guarantees. To apply the language used by Sopinka J. in Butler (at p. 496); s. 181 cannot be said to be directed to avoidance of publications which "seriously offend the values fundamental to our society", nor is it directed to a "substantial concern which justifies restricting the otherwise full exercise of the freedom of expression".

It is impossible to say with any assurance what Parliament had in mind when it decided, contrary to what had happened in other democracies, to leave s. 181 as part of our criminal law. Five parties made written submissions on this issue; five different objectives were posited by them. Those supporting the legislation offer the following three theories as to the purpose of s. 181:

1. to protect matters that rise to a level of public

interest from being jeopardized by false speech

(respondent);

2. to further racial and social tolerance (Canadian Jewish

Congress); and

3. to ensure that meaningful public discussion is not

tainted by the deleterious effects of the wilful

publication of falsehoods which cause, or are likely to

cause, damage to public interests, to the detriment of

public order (Attorney General for Canada).

The difficulty in assigning an objective to s. 181 lies in two factors: the absence of any documentation explaining why s. 181 was enacted and retained and the absence of any specific purpose disclosed on the face of the provision. We know that its original purpose in the 13th century was to preserve political harmony in the state by preventing people from making false allegations against the monarch and others in power. This ostensibly remained the purpose through to the 19th century. However, in the 20th century, Parliament removed the offence from the political "Sedition" section of the Code and placed it in the "Nuisance" section, suggesting that Parliament no longer saw it as serving a political purpose. It is to be further noted that it does not appear in that part of the Criminal Code dedicated to "Offences Against the Person and Reputation", in which both the hate propaganda and defamatory libel provisions appear. Beyond this all is speculation. No Parliamentary committees commented on the matter; no debates considered it. Nor do the vague, general words employed in the text of s. 181 offer insight into what purpose Parliament might have had in mind in enacting and retaining it.

All this stands in sharp contrast to the hate propaganda provision of the Criminal Code at issue in Keegstra -- s. 319 ( 2 ). Both the text of that provision and its long and detailed Parliamentary history, involving Canada's international human rights obligations, the Cohen Committee Report (Report of the Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada (1966)) and the Report of the Special Committee on the Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society (Equality Now! (1984)), permitted ready identification of the objective Parliament had in mind. Section 319(2), under challenge in Keegstra, was part of the amendments to the Criminal Code "essentially along the lines suggested by the [Cohen] Committee ..." (per Dickson C.J. in Keegstra, supra, at p. 725). The evil addressed was hate-mongering, particularly in the racial context. The provision at issue on this appeal is quite different. Parliament has identified no social problem, much less one of pressing concern, justifying s. 181 of the Criminal Code. To suggest that the objective of s. 181 is to combat hate propaganda or racism is to go beyond its history and its wording and to adopt the "shifting purpose" analysis this Court has rejected. Such an objective, moreover, hardly seems capable of being described as a "nuisance", the rubric under which Parliament has placed s. 181, nor as the offence's target of mere "mischief" to a public interest.

The lack of any ostensible purpose for s. 181 led the Law Reform Commission in 1986 (Working Paper 50: Hate Propaganda) to recommend repeal of the section, labelling it as "anachronistic", a conclusion which flies in the face of the suggestion that s. 181 is directed to a pressing and substantial social concern. It is noteworthy that no suggestion has been made before this Court that Canada's obligations under the international human rights conventions to which it is a signatory require the enactment of any provision(s) other than that section which was under review in Keegstra: s. 319. The retention of s. 181 is not therefore necessary to fulfil any international obligation undertaken by Parliament.

Can it be said in these circumstances that the Crown has discharged the burden upon it of establishing that the objective of the legislation is pressing and substantial, in short, of sufficient importance to justify overriding the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression? I think not. It may be that s. 181 is capable of serving legitimate purposes. But no objective of pressing and substantial concern has been identified in support of its retention in our Criminal Code. Other provisions, such as s. 319 ( 2 ) of the Criminal Code, deal with hate propaganda more fairly and more effectively. Still other provisions seem to deal adequately with matters of sedition and state security.

Parliament's enactment of s. 319 of the Criminal Code, a provision carefully tailored to combat the propagation of hate -- the evil at which my colleagues believe s. 181 now also to be directed, should not be overlooked. The "further[ance of] racial, religious and social tolerance" and the "safeguard[ing of] the public interest against social intolerance and public alarm", the goals ascribed to s. 181 by my colleagues, are the focus of the Code's proscription of hate propaganda. Racial minorities, as "identifiable groups" within the meaning of s. 319, are not "stateless" persons like those referred to in the powerful remarks of Professor Mari Matsuda quoted in the reasons of Cory and Iacobucci JJ. Like my colleagues, I readily acknowledge the pernicious effects of the propagation of hate; such effects are indeed of relevance to a s. 1 analysis of s. 319, as was evident in this Court's decision in Keegstra, supra. I concur, as well, with the dicta in R. v. Wholesale Travel Group Inc., [1991] 3 S.C.R. 154, that the Charter should not be used "as a weapon to attack measures intended to protect the disadvantaged", but I find the principle's application in this context ironic. Section 2( b ) of the Charter has as one of its fundamental purposes the protection of the freedom of expression of the minority or disadvantaged, a freedom essential to their full participation in a democracy and to the assurance that their basic rights are respected. The proscription of false news was originally intended to protect the mighty and the powerful from discord or slander; there is nothing to suggest any legislative intention to transform s. 181 from a mechanism for the maintenance of the status quo into a device for the protection of "vulnerable social groups".

In the rational connection portion of their analysis (pp. 67-69), Cory and Iacobucci JJ. rely upon the Report of the Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada, which impugned the "19th century belief" that man was a "rational creature" who could distinguish between truth and falsity. We are told that "we cannot share this faith today in such a simple form" - - thus, a limitation of this type of speech is rationally connected to the goal of furthering racial tolerance. This lesson of history is paid heed to, but no credence appears to be given to the similar lesson (or warning) of history regarding the potential use by the state (or the powerful) of provisions, such as s. 181, to crush speech which it considers detrimental to its interests, interests frequently identified as equivalent to the "public interest". History has taught us that much of the speech potentially smothered, or at least 'chilled', by state prosecution of the proscribed expression is likely to be the speech of minority or traditionally disadvantaged groups.

The fact that s. 181 has been so rarely used despite its long history supports the view that it is hardly essential to the maintenance of a free and democratic society. Moreover, it is significant that the Crown could point to no other free and democratic country which finds it necessary to have a law such as s. 181 on its criminal books. I would be remiss not to acknowledge here the provisions which my colleagues' research has discovered, under the heading "Legislative Responses in Other Jurisdictions" (pp. 45-48 of their reasons). A review of these examples reveals their minimal relevance to this appeal. The Italian provision, although not reproduced for our inspection, has clearly been limited in its scope to the preservation of the rule of law or the legal order by the Italian constitutional court referred to by my colleagues; there is no indication that the provision extends to the promotion of racial harmony. Even less relevant are the Danish Criminal Code provisions to which Cory and Iacobucci JJ. refer. On a plain reading, s. 140 of the Danish Code is directed not to false statements of fact, but to insulting remarks about the religious practices of others; s. 266(, on the other hand, is equally clearly a proscription of hate propaganda similar to s. 319 of our Criminal Code, upheld in Keegstra. Of the German offences mentioned, only that dealing specifically with Holocaust denial would appear to be directed to false statements of fact, a much more finely tailored provision to which different considerations might well apply. As indicated above, the forerunner of our s. 181 was repealed in England over a century ago, leaving no apparent lacunae in the criminal law of a country that has seen its share of social and political upheavals over the ensuing period. It is apparently not to be found in the United States. How can it be said in the face of facts such as these and in the absence of any defined evil at which the section is directed that the retention of the false news offence in this country is a matter of pressing and substantial concern justifying the overriding of freedom of expression? In Butler, this Court, per Sopinka J., at p. 497, relied on the fact that legislation of the type there at issue, pornography legislation, may be found in most free and democratic societies in justifying the restrictions it imposes on freedom of expression. The opposite is the case with s. 181 of the Criminal Code.

In the absence of an objective of sufficient importance to justify overriding the right of free expression, the state's interest in suppressing expression which may potentially affect a public interest cannot outweigh the individual's constitutional right of freedom of expression and s. 181 cannot be upheld under s. 1 of the Charter. But even if one were to attribute to s. 181 an objective of promoting social and racial tolerance in society and manage the further leap of concluding that objective was so pressing and substantial as to be capable of overriding entrenched rights, the Crown's case under s. 1 of the Charter would fail for want of proportionality between the potential reach of s. 181 on the one hand, and the "evil" to which it is said to be directed on the other.

Assuming a rational link between the objective of social harmony and s. 181 of the Criminal Code, the breadth of the section is such that it goes much further than necessary to achieve that aim. Accepting that the legislative solution need not be "perfect", it nevertheless must be "appropriately and carefully tailored in the context of the infringed right": Reference re ss. 193 and 195.1( 1 )( c ) of the Criminal Code (Man.), [1990] 1 S.C.R. 1123, at p. 1138. The effect of s. 181 is to inhibit the expression or publication of any statements which may be found by a jury to be factual, false and likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest. The territory covered by this prohibition can only be described as vast, as revealed by a brief look at the key phrases on which guilt or innocence turns.

The phrase "statement, tale or news", while it may not extend to the realm of true opinion (wherever the line is to be drawn, itself a question of great difficulty), obviously encompasses a broad range of historical and social speech, going well beyond what is patent or provable to the senses as a matter of "pure fact". Indeed, one of the cases relied upon in support of the proposition that the section deals only with statements of fact and not with expressions of opinion, R. v. Hoaglin, supra, demonstrates just how slippery the distinction may be. If the expression in issue in that case, in which a disaffected American settler in Alberta had printed posters which stated "Americans not wanted in Canada. Investigate before buying lands and taking homesteads in this country" is an example of a "false statement of fact" falling within the prohibition, one shudders to consider what other comments might be so construed. Nor are the difficulties confined to determining what is a factual assertion as opposed to an expression of opinion. What is false may, as the case on appeal illustrates, be determined by reference to what is generally (or, as in Hoaglin, officially) accepted as true, with the result that the knowledge of falsity required for guilt may be inferred from the impugned expression's divergence from prevailing or officially accepted beliefs. This makes possible conviction for virtually any statement which does not accord with currently accepted "truths", and lends force to the argument that the section could be used (or abused) in a circular fashion essentially to permit the prosecution of unpopular ideas. Particularly with regard to the historical fact -- historical opinion dichotomy, we cannot be mindful enough both of the evolving concept of history and of its manipulation in the past to promote and perpetuate certain messages. The danger is not confined to totalitarian states like the Nazi regime in Germany or certain communist regimes of the past which blatantly rewrote history. We in Canada need look no further than the 'not so noble savage' portrayal of Native Canadians in our children's history text books in the early part of this century. Similarly, in the United States, one finds the ongoing revision of the historical representation of African Americans, whose contribution to aspects of the history of the United States, such as their contribution to the North's victory in the Civil War, is only now being recognized.

But perhaps the greatest danger of s. 181 lies in the undefined and virtually unlimited reach of the phrase "injury or mischief to a public interest". Neither the respondent nor its supporting interveners has proffered any case law in which this phrase has been applied to a given factual circumstance in a clear and consistent manner. My colleagues refer to the "serious harm" and "serious injury" caused by deliberate falsehoods, but this begs the question of what sort or degree of harm is necessary in order to bring the section into play. Indeed, the limited jurisprudence on s. 181 evidences conflicting opinions on what constitutes a threatened or injured "public interest" justifying criminal sanction. It is difficult to see how a broad, undefined phrase such as "public interest" can on its face constitute a restrained, appropriately limited measure which impairs the right infringed to the minimum degree consistent with securing the legislation's objectives. Any deliberate lie (potentially defined as that which does not accord with accepted truth), which causes or is likely to cause "injury" or "mischief" to any "public interest" is within the potential reach of the section. The interpretation given to "public interest" in this case may not have been objectionable. But that is not the issue in determining whether a legislative restriction of rights is overbroad. The issue is whether the provision permits the state to restrict constitutional rights in circumstances and ways that may not be justifiable. The vague and broad wording of s. 181 leaves open that possibility.

Cory and Iacobucci JJ. propose to overcome this difficulty by defining the phrase "public interest" in accordance with selected Charter values. Two observations are relied upon -- that courts regularly define phrases in legislation, and that the courts have not, thus far, adequately defined "public interest" -- as the justification to define anew "public interest" in the context of s. 181's purported application to Mr. Zundel. Although the section's "legislative history" and the "legislative and social context in which it is used" is said by my colleagues to govern the definitional process, their interpretation focuses upon a select range of Charter values, values which do not include freedom of expression. In support of this technique, reliance is placed upon the following authorities: Hills v. Canada (Attorney General), [1988] 1 S.C.R. 513; Slaight Communications Inc. v. Davidson, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1038; and R. v. Salituro, [1991] 3 S.C.R. 654. These authorities confirm the following basic propositions: that the common law should develop in accordance with the values of the Charter (Salituro, supra, at p. 675), and that where a legislative provision, on a reasonable interpretation of its history and on the plain reading of its text, is subject to two equally persuasive interpretations, the Court should adopt that interpretation which accords with the Charter and the values to which it gives expression (Hills and Slaight, supra). None of these decisions stands for the proposition that an age-old provision whose aim and scope was created pre-Charter can, as of 1982, be redefined by reference to a present-day perception of utility.

The result of my colleagues' redefinition is the equation of "public interest" with "the protection and preservation of those rights and freedoms set out in the Charter as fundamental to Canadian society". Thus, for example, whenever the Crown can establish that the publication of a false statement is likely seriously to injure the dignity and equality of those whom ss. 15 and 27 of the Charter are intended to protect, the offence is made out. In so doing my colleagues have arguably created a new offence, an offence hitherto unknown to the criminal law. The promotion of equality and multiculturalism is a laudable goal, but, with respect, I can see no basis in the history or language of s. 181 to suggest that it is the motivating goal behind its enactment or retention. To import it is to engage not in a valid process of statutory interpretation, but in impermissible reading in of content foreign to the enactment; Salituro, Slaight and Hills were never intended to be taken this far.

Section 181 can be used to inhibit statements which society considers should be inhibited, like those which denigrate vulnerable groups. Its danger, however, lies in the fact that by its broad reach it criminalizes a vast penumbra of other statements merely because they might be thought to constitute a mischief to some public interest, however successive prosecutors and courts may wish to define these terms. The danger is magnified because the prohibition affects not only those caught and prosecuted, but those who may refrain from saying what they would like to because of the fear that they will be caught. Thus worthy minority groups or individuals may be inhibited from saying what they desire to say for fear that they might be prosecuted. Should an activist be prevented from saying "the rainforest of British Columbia is being destroyed" because she fears criminal prosecution for spreading "false news" in the event that scientists conclude and a jury accepts that the statement is false and that it is likely to cause mischief to the British Columbia forest industry? Should a concerned citizen fear prosecution for stating in the course of political debate that a nuclear power plant in her neighbourhood "is destroying the health of the children living nearby" for fear that scientific studies will later show that the injury was minimal? Should a medical professional be precluded from describing an outbreak of meningitis as an epidemic for fear that a government or private organization will conclude and a jury accept that his statement is a deliberate assertion of a false fact? Should a member of an ethnic minority whose brethren are being persecuted abroad be prevented from stating that the government has systematically ignored his compatriots' plight? These examples suggest there is merit in the submission of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association that the overbreadth of s. 181 poses greater danger to minority interest groups worthy of popular support than it offers protection.

These examples illustrate s. 181's fatal flaw -- its overbreadth. At pp. 70-73 of their reasons, Cory and Iacobucci JJ. attempt to alleviate the fears associated with the problem of overbreadth by arguing that the Crown will always bear a heavy onus in proving all of the elements under s. 181. It is argued that any danger is limited by the phrase "public interest" because even those publishing known falsehoods will not be prosecuted where their lies have an "overall beneficial or neutral effect". In this way, Cory and Iacobucci JJ. claim that the examples proffered above raise no practical problem (see p. 81 of their reasons).

I, for one, find cold comfort in the assurance that a prosecutor's perception of "overall beneficial or neutral effect" affords adequate protection against undue impingement on the free expression of facts and opinions. The whole purpose of enshrining rights in the Charter is to afford the individual protection against even the well-intentioned majority. To justify an invasion of a constitutional right on the ground that public authorities can be trusted not to violate it unduly is to undermine the very premise upon which the Charter is predicated.

Cory and Iacobucci JJ. make no mention of the reality that the decision to prosecute must, by necessity, be made by state agents and that the issue must be adjudicated upon by a judge and jury in a particular locale with a particular conception of a benefit to the public. All it takes is one judge and twelve jurors who believe that certain 'falsehoods' compromise a particular "public" interest, and that such falsehoods 'must have been' known to the accused, in order to convict. A jury in Port Alberni, B.C., may have a very different view of the overall beneficial impact of false statements of fact impugning the lumber industry than a jury in Toronto. Finally, Cory and Iacobucci JJ. fail to address the argument that the danger raised by these examples, the 'chilling effect' of s. 181, outweighs its minimal benefit given the alternative means of prosecution of speech detrimental to racial tolerance under s. 319 of the Criminal Code.

Not only is s. 181 broad in contextual reach; it is particularly invasive because it chooses the most draconian of sanctions to effect its ends -- prosecution for an indictable offence under the criminal law. Our law is premised on the view that only serious misconduct deserves criminal sanction. Lesser wrongs are left to summary conviction and the civil law. Lies, for the most part, have historically been left to the civil law of libel and slander; it has been the law of tort or delict that has assumed the main task of preserving harmony and justice between individuals and groups where words are concerned. This is not to say that words cannot properly be constrained by the force of the criminal law. But the harm addressed must be clear and pressing and the crime sufficiently circumscribed so as not to inhibit unduly expression which does not require that the ultimate sanction of the criminal law be brought to bear: see Dickson C.J. in Keegstra, supra, at p. 772. The Criminal Code provisions against hatemongering met that criterion, focusing as they did on statements intended to cause "hatred against any identifiable group". The broad, undefined term "mischief to a public interest", on the other hand, is capable of almost infinite extension.

It is argued that the expression here at issue is of little value and hence is less deserving of protection under s. 1 than expression which directly engages the "core" values associated with freedom of expression as identified in Irwin Toy. The short answer to this contention is that expression which a jury might find to be a deliberate lie likely to injure a public interest and which would therefore be inhibited by s. 181 may well relate to the "core" values protected by the guarantee, as the examples cited earlier in these reasons demonstrate. The provision at issue in Keegstra, s. 319(2) of the Criminal Code, was confined to hate propaganda, and hence restricted only speech of low or negative value. That cannot be said of s. 181, which may catch a broad spectrum of speech, much of which may be argued to have value. I add that what is at issue is the value of all speech potentially limited by the provision at issue. In assessing this, the Court must not be diverted by the offensive content of the particular speech giving rise to the Charter challenge of the legislative provision.

In summary, the broad range of expression caught by s. 181 -- extending to virtually all controversial statements of apparent fact which might be argued to be false and likely do some mischief to some public interest --, combined with the serious consequences of criminality and imprisonment, makes it impossible to say that s. 181 is appropriately measured and restrained having regard to the evil addressed -- that it effects a "minimal impairment" to use the language of Oakes. Section 181 is materially different, in this regard, from s. 319(2) -- the provision upheld under s. 1 by the majority of this Court in Keegstra.

The same considerations lead to the conclusion that the gravity of the restriction on the right of freedom of expression is not proportionate to s. 181's putative objective. In Keegstra (at pp. 762-63) the majority of this Court, per Dickson C.J., held that given the important and documented objectives of s. 319(2) and the minimal contribution to the values underlying the freedom made by the narrow range of expression caught by that provision, the restriction was proportional to the furtherance of the democratic values upon which s. 319(2) is based. In the case on appeal, the same test leads to the contrary result. Any purpose which can validly be attached to s. 181 falls far short of the documented and important objective of s. 319(2). On the other side of the scale, the range of expression caught by s. 181 is much broader than the more specific proscription of s. 319( 2 ). In short, s. 181 fails the proportionality test applied in Keegstra.

When one balances the importance of the objective of s. 181 against the potentially invasive reach of its provisions, one cannot but conclude that it "overshoots the mark". It fails the tests for minimal impairment and proportionality by which this Court upheld the criminalization of hate propaganda under s. 319( 2 ) of the Criminal Code. The value of liberty of speech, one of the most fundamental freedoms protected by the Charter, needs no elaboration. By contrast, the objective of s. 181, in so far as an objective can be ascribed, falls short of constituting a countervailing interest of the most compelling nature. In Oakes, supra, Dickson C.J. made it clear that the less important the provision's objective, the less tolerable is an adverse effect upon the fundamental freedom. Section 181 could support criminalization of expression only on the basis that the sanction was closely confined to situations of serious concern. In fact, s. 181 extends the sanction of the criminal law to virtually any statement adjudged to be falsely made which might be seen as causing mischief or likely to cause mischief to virtually any public interest. I cannot conclude that it has been shown to be "demonstrably justified" in "a free and democratic society".

To summarize, the restriction on expression effected by s. 181 of the Criminal Code, unlike that imposed by the hate propaganda provision at issue in Keegstra, cannot be justified under s. 1 of the Charter as a "reasonable limit prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". At virtually every step of the Oakes test, one is struck with the substantial difference between s. 181 and the provision at issue in Keegstra, s. 319(2) of the Code. In contrast to the hate propaganda provision (Keegstra), the false news provision cannot be associated with any existing social problem or legislative objective, much less one of pressing concern. It is, as the Law Reform Commission concluded, "anachronistic". But even if the Court were to attribute to s. 181 the objective of promoting racial and social tolerance and conclude that such objective was so pressing and substantial as to be capable of overriding a fundamental freedom, s. 181 would still fail to meet the criteria of proportionality which prevailed in Keegstra. In Keegstra, the majority of this Court found the objective of the legislation to be compelling and its effect to be appropriately circumscribed. The opposite is the case with s. 181 of the Criminal Code. Section 181 catches not only deliberate falsehoods which promote hatred, but sanctions all false assertions which the prosecutor believes 'likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest', regardless of whether they promote the values underlying s. 2(. At the same time, s. 181's objective, in so far as an objective can be ascribed to the section, ranks much lower in importance than the legislative goal at stake in Keegstra. When the objective of s. 181 is balanced against its invasive reach, there can in my opinion be only one conclusion: the limitation of freedom of expression is disproportionate to the objective envisaged.

In their laudable effort to send a message condemning the 'hate-mongering' of persons such as the appellant by upholding s. 181 as a reasonable limit, it is my respectful opinion that my colleagues Cory and Iacobucci JJ. make three fundamental errors. First, they effectively rewrite s. 181 to supply its text with a particularity which finds no support in the provision's history or in its rare application in the Canadian context. Second, they under-rate the expansive breadth of s. 181 and its potential not only for improper prosecution and conviction but for 'chilling' the speech of persons who may otherwise have exercised their freedom of expression. Finally, they go far beyond accepted principles of statutory and Charter interpretation in their application of s. 1 of the Charter. While I share the concerns of my colleagues, I fear that such techniques, taken to their ultimate extreme, might render nugatory the free speech guarantee of the Charter.

DISPOSITION

I conclude that s. 181 of the Criminal Code infringes the right of free expression guaranteed by s. 2 ( b ) of the Charter and that the infringement is not saved by s. 1 of the Charter.

I do not find it necessary to deal with the arguments under s. 7 of the Charter.

I would allow the appeal, enter an acquittal, and answer the first constitutional question in the affirmative and the second in the negative. In the result, I need not consider whether the terms of the appellant's bail infringed his rights under the Charter.

It is going to take some time for all of us to understand the action of James W. von Brunn today. I hope it leads to a greater understanding of the causes of rifts between our cultures. We are all Human.

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