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From: mcgeer@ucbvax.ARPA (Rick McGeer)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Could D. Black have legal problems?
Message-ID: <10451@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 13:58:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10451
Posted: Mon Sep 23 13:58:21 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 12:37:24 EDT
References: <195@pyuxh.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer)
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 35

In article <195@pyuxh.UUCP> sdd@pyuxh.UUCP (S Daniels) writes:
>Mr. Black has written things that come close to denying the occurrence
>of the Holocaust.  He's certainly been supportive of the gentleman in
>Canada that was arrested on that charge, and denying the occurrence of the
>Holocaust is illegal in at least one country that receives this net (Canada).

That's right, and it's a disgrace.  When I lived in Canada, I used to maintain
that the (then-proposed) Charter Of Rights wouldn't mean a thing, since the
Canadian courts have a long history of deferring to Parliament.  And so, in
the first major tests of the free speech rights, a couple of Nazis get convicted
for saying that the Holocaust didn't happen.  Sic semper the benevolence of the
state...

Actually, in at least one of the cases, I'm told that Eddie Greenspan, Canada's
finest criminal lawyer, was prepared to defend the Nazi pro bono.  Greenspan's
defense plan was said to have been simple: either you have free speech or you
don't, and the truth, falsity or obnoxiousness of what the guy has to say is
all irrelevant.  However, the jerk said that he didn't want one of those Damn
Jews defending him, and instead hired a well-known right-wing nitwit named Doug
Christie.  Christie's defense was that well, maybe the guy is right. Since you'd
have to be a nut or a fool to believe that, the guy was convicted -- and now a
number of Western Canadian lawyers that I know won't talk to Christie, because
he blew the world's easiest case, and, incidentally, also set a rather nasty
precedent: that the Hate Laws stand up under the Charter.  For fairly obvious
reasons, few informed Canadians are happy about that.
>
>Question:  Is Mr. Black inviting a request to appear before
>a Canadian (or another country's) judge to answer to that charge?

I hope not.  Free speech is free speech, and while I think that what Black has
to say is about five degrees the other side of lunacy, he still has a right to
say it, lest you lose your right to speak.

						-- Rick.


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