ZGram - 10/1/2001 - "Doug Collins passed away"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

October 1, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

The worldwide Revisionist community has lost a dear and valued friend.
Doug Collins, decorated WWII hero, legendary Canadian columnist, Defender
of Freedom of Speech and Foe of the Holocaust Lobby, died yesterday after a
very brief illness at age 81.

I checked the Zundelsite this morning to see how often I had written about
or mentioned this brave, exceptional man.  The count was 288 times!  It
shows how deeply involved Doug Collins was in what Revisionists are trying
to do:  Bring history in accord with the facts and preserve what is left of
freedom of speech in our ever more knavish, bootlicking, dishonest,
censorious Western countries.

I quote from a previous ZGram (expanded and updated a bit):

 [START]

 The first time I encountered Doug Collins was on a video tape which, to
this day, is one of my favorite Z=FCndel-Haus tapes.  Taped during the First
Great Holocaust Trial, Doug Collins made it very clear he had no use for
"Nazis" - or Z=FCndel, for that matter! - but even lesser use for censors
trying to gag those they had picked as their villains to feather their own
pockets.

 A magnificent, passionate speech!

Months after the Holocaust Trial, Doug Collins did a syndicated CBC
broadcast from  Toronto and took this occasion to cross swords with Ernst
Z=FCndel on the theme of Hitler versus Churchill.  Hour after hour the verba=
l
jousting match raged on.  The intellectual sparks were flying!  In the end,
Ernst drove Doug to the airport - they had become much closer.  They parted
with a firm handshake, with Mr. Z=FCndel giving Doug the Laser Stare and Dou=
g
reciprocating with a big, broad Collins Smile.

Some time later, the two felt they were not yet done and had themselves one
merry afternoon a follow-up session on the garden patio roof of the
Zundel-Haus.  With the help of two bottles of wine and salami, additional
disputes were settled, during which Doug's nose was getting redder and
redder.   Ernst thinks back on that session with relish!

Ever since, there had been between those two men a Mexican stand-off when
it came to the topic of Hitler and his NS regime versus Churchill and his
place in that war. Person-to-person, however, there seemed to have
developed a mutual respect and wary understanding - and when Doug Collins
won his hard-fought and expensive case against the British Columbia based
Provincial Human Rights Commission Kommissars, Ernst sent him a fax that I
cherish: "You are a man in a nation of wimps."

 [END]

 Indeed he was.  A man of steadfast principles.

I met Doug Collins face to face the first and only time in the late fall of
1996 when I was invited to be the keynote speaker for the Canadian Free
Speech League Annual Dinner - where the George Orwell Award would be given
out.  It was on the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria Island where my hosts
pointed Doug Collins out to me - a frail but gentleman-like, ramrod
oldster, refined and elegant.

I introduced myself and told him how much I admired his writing.  I could
tell by the look in his face he did not recognize my name, even though by
that time the cyber war had come and gone and the Blue Ribbons connoting
=46ree Speech on the Net were dressing up a million websites.

I remember this encounter now because it tells me that Doug Collins could
not have been that involved in free-speech matters on the Internet.  He was
a print journalist and probably did not relate at first to the brash power
grab of our Canadian enemies trying to capture and censor the net.

The George Orwell Dinner itself was an experience.  I described it in
another ZGram on October 31, 2001:

 [START]

As I was having my coffee this morning, trying to put my emotions for this
ZGram into gear, I saw myself again as I was more than three decades ago
when I first came to Canada - young, poorly educated, pregnant with my
second child, with a blue collar worker husband and a savagely handicapped
baby. I left behind a painful childhood and a hapless youth beneath the
shadows of four dictators: Stalin, Hitler, Stroessner and Peron. I thought
I had found freedom.

 I remember so clearly a lasting impression: That Canada was clean.
Pristine. That everything was orderly. That if you worked hard, lived by
the Golden Rule, obeyed the law and saved more than you spent - presto! One
day you would be rich.

 Now I came back to do a keynote for a group called The Canadian Free
Speech League, organized and headed by the legendary Battling Barrister,
Doug Christie - and what a legal swath he cuts across mendacity and
falsehood in the courts! (...)

The evening before, Doug had received a call there would be a disturbance
caused by his political foes. The location itself was kept secret; not even
I knew where it was going to be.

 About a hundred people met at a parking lot. From there, we went across
the street into a rented room inside a public library for a two-hour
seminar where several freedom fighters shared personal experiences about
vicious curtailment of speech. (...)

 At the conclusion of the seminar, participants were given maps. We were
told to disperse, travel by different routes and meet in yet another
parking lot. From there, we climbed a hill and, kind of through the "back
door," met at a friendly, private meeting hall where the dinner was going
to be. (...)

 At the dinner itself, a low-key and gracious affair, one of the long-term
freedom fighters was given an award and asked to make a speech, the gist of
which was that somehow we had lost our spirituality and had to get it back.
The speech was very moving and put real lumps in our throats. I had to
swallow several times, remembering my passages.

 Then I was introduced. I told them of my long, dramatic journey through
life of war and anarchy imported into European nations through no fault of
their own that made me end up having custody of the harassed and thoroughly
politically improper Zundelsite. In that room were many nationalities, some
of whom had fought against my country and my people. I am happy to tell you
I spoke to a standing ovation.

Afterwards, a person came to me and said in a shy voice: "We're brothers,
aren't we?" and I said: "Right. That is exactly right." And he replied:
"How come we only now find out?"

 [end]

 That person was Doug Collins.  Ever since, Doug and I have been friends.

In Canada and way beyond, Doug became known as the journalist who had
called the film "Schindler's List" "Swindler's List" and had said other
things contemptuous of the Holocaust Lobby agenda.

It didn't take long for the censors to start harassing this man for "hurt
feelings" - and with Doug Collins, it was always tit for tat.

 Here is one worthy sample of how he dished it out, writing to Conrad
Black.  This Jewish Canadian media giant had called Doug Collins
"disreputable" in several of his papers - and here's what Doug said to him:=
=0B

 [START]

"I should like to know when I became disreputable.

"Was it when I was the youngest sergeant in any front-line unit in the
British Army; when I was awarded the Military Medal; when according to my
discharge papers, my conduct in six years of war had been "exemplary"?

"Was it when I got a National Newspaper Award for exposing George Dupre,
Canada's phony S.O.E. agent in France, as a fake, after Quentin Reynolds
the American author had written a book about Dupre's fictitious exploits;
or when the MacMillan Bloedel Award for Senior Journalism came my way for
exposing big-scale corruption at the University of British Columbia?

"Was it when a non-political committee on the North Shore recommended me
for the Canada 125 Medal, which I duly received, courtesy of the Governor
General?

 "Or was it perhaps when the residents of the North Shore, being easily
duped, contributed over $150,000 to the North Shore News Defence Fund after
that newspaper and I were hauled before that first "Human Rights" Tribunal
in 1997?

"At the risk of appearing to be somewhat smug, I can report that none of
the several employers I have had in Canada during the last half century has
considered me to be disreputable. I have often been in hot water with the
usual pressure groups, but it is a bland soul who annoys no-one.

"I have twice been hauled before our misnamed "rights tribunals" for being
politically incorrect. In the first instance, the complaint by the Canadian
Jewish Congress was dismissed, the "adjudicator" knowing that the complaint
would not stand up in a court of law. It is true that the carefully chosen
"judge" said my column on "Hollywood Propaganda" was "mean-spirited and
"anti-Semitic". But, obviously, it was not anti-Semitic enough for a
different verdict. (...)

To answer my own question, it is clear that the findings of the kangaroo
courts known as rights tribunals, plus the views of axe-grinding pressure
groups, are the sources of my being disreputable, although in the view of
many it is they who are such.  (...)

* Under the B.C. Human Rights Code, the truth is no defence, which means
that the lie can prevail.

* The adjudicator is judge, jury and prosecutor.

* Fair comment is no defence.

* Publication in the public interest is no defence.

* Research done for academic purposes is no defence.

* Fines can be unlimited and are awarded for "hurt feelings".

* Newspapers can be told what to print (as happened in the North Shore News
case).

* "Adjudicators" have limited tenure, which makes them the creatures of
government.

* Complainants are entitled to legal aid no matter how wealthy they are.
You could get it, for instance. But defendants are denied it unless they
are virtual paupers.

* Court rules of evidence do not apply.

* Within the framework of the Code, no appeal is possible. Defendants, at
their own cost, can only ask the courts for a "judicial review" of the law.
Which is what I am doing, at great financial risk. (...)

I do not write hate literature. That is why there has been no action
against me under the federal hate laws, which make "hatred" a criminal
offence. So the solution for the worst government this Province has seen in
living memory was to write its own, catch-all hate law.

 Incidentally, I have long been an admirer of your wife, Miss Barbara
Amiel. She has until now always been a fervent defender of freedom of
speech. When she was writing for the Toronto Sun she - like me - deplored
the attempts to put Ernst Zundel into jail for "spreading false news".

So I was disappointed to hear from Paul Fromm that she told him, "We just
can't get into the Holocaust thing," or words to that effect.

 [END]

Doug Collins got into the "Holocaust thing" all right.  The Holocaust Lobby
saw to that - with a relentless Talmudic vengeance that is the hallmark by
which they will be remembered.

The story of Doug Collins' persecution and prosecution is long and
detailed, and I won't summarize it here.  Thanks to the misnamed "Human
Rights" Tribunal Kommissars who saw fit to torment this old gentleman for
some 5 or so years with its hypocrisy and bile, it stands as a Memorial of
Shame.

 Doug Collins fought back like a man.  He did so again and again.  He
fought in many courts and and many a tribunal session.  He fought back when
Bernard Klatt in BC was attacked by the Holocaust Lobby for politically
incorrect websites, and he fought back when his paper, the North Shore
News, was under savage political attack.  He spoke up for Ernst Zundel,
again and again.  He bravely spoke his mind to the day that he died, and
people respected and loved him.  They respected and loved him more than
they will ever respect and love the ones who tried to silence him.

I have in my possession a tape where his detractors unleashed on him and
other free speech advocates the mob of Canada - the filthiest dregs out of
the sewers of the underworld to disrupt a library meeting.  These hoodlums
shrieked and howled and shouted and banged on furniture and doors
throughout the entire 2-hour meeting.  It is a remarkable document of what
happens when anarchy is permitted to reign.

Doug stood like a rock, ignoring that pack of nose-ring hyenas and finished
what he had to say.  Then he sat down and just glared.  The noise and the
banging grew louder and louder, and finally Doug Collins had it with the
pack of Untermenschen!  This elegant, refined old British gentleman jumped
up - and gave the mob the finger!

It was a hilarious moment!  The video is priceless as a document how manly
rage will in the end deal with the scum of the earth!

Doug Collins is no more, but he won't be forgotten.  He was a man in a
nation of wimps.

Beloved warrior - rest in peace!  The Zundelsite salutes you!

Ingrid Rimland and Ernst Z=FCndel