Monday - April 13, 2009

Canada’s Green Party urges U.S. booksellers to ban hate material.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Oh good grief.  Do people actually believe that to be the truth, the whole truth and nothin’ but?  I know the answer before you tell me.
Unfortunately, yeah.  It is mind boggling that anyone today with all the research at hand, would still buy that out and out forgery. Even worse is the fact that if looked at rationally, it isn’t even logical. Ah, never mind.  The issue is censorship.  The kind of people who want to buy that, along with The Turner Diaries, already have their minds made up.  These books merely confirm for them what they already believe.

I have another issue though.  It’s The Green Party. My take on them is that they’re very left and I have this (I admit it) propensity to be against anything they are for.  And if they’re against it, well. There may be times I have ta be for it. 

They say (as does the Simon Wiesenthal Center) that the book sellers are “distributing hate material.” I say, NO THEY ARE NOT.  They are selling to individuals who are looking for and buying that material.  But I question the idea of distribution as it has connotations (to me anyway) of some sort of official agency of the govt. responsible for seeing to it that material is “pushed” on the public.  It’s commerce.  All the bans in the world will not stop people from reading what they want to.  Ban it and all ya do is build a conspiracy theory with people saying, ah ha. I knew it. They don’t want me to have any information. Why? Because it’s possible that it’s all true.

I think the Wiesenthal Center was correct in asking (ok, they demanded) that the seller in question also post a notice that the Protocols were a forgery.  Of course, that won’t make any difference to those buying the book who already “know” the truth.  Not to make light of a serious subject but I’m even surprised that so many of those folks can read at all. 

But I believe they were dead WRONG to insist that “Mein Kampf"not be sold in Germany.  It’s an over long and thoroughly boring book.  I tried to read the damn thing once in a school project.  Couldn’t finish it.  Have since read extracts and it’s still a bore and still badly written. The point is, I do know those who have read the whole damn thing (? How?) and they weren’t turned into raving anti-Semitic sword waving Nazis.

Honestly I don’t even think the ban that some countries have (Germany,Austria,France) on Nazis or on Nazi art and memorabilia and the Nazi salute (which we once used in America when pledging to our flag in school long before the NSDAP), I don’t believe that ban has any effect on those who are already predisposed that way.  On the other hand, perhaps their experience is different enough from ours, that is the USA, that they fear if allowed to be open then the hate mongers will again gain the upper hand.  I suppose because I am American and because all those things are easily available in the US, and so far we haven’t turned ourselves into a Nazi state, I guess I have a hard time understanding the extent of that censorship.

Or to put it another way, and pardon me please if I have to quote a Nazi to do this but it is appropriate in this case.
When the NSDAP (Nazis) were banned once, Dr. Gobbels issued the following line.

TROTZ VERBOT, NICHT TOT.

BANNED BUT NOT DEAD.

April 13, 2000 2:00 PM PDT
Canadian group urges U.S. booksellers to ban hate material
By Troy Wolverton
Staff Writer, CNET News

Leading Internet bookstores are under fire again for selling hate literature abroad, this time from Canada.

The Green Party of Canada has accused Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com of violating Canadian criminal and customs laws by selling racist and anti-Semitic books such as “The Turner Diaries” and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in the country. Party leaders say that although they notified the companies in February, Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com have not yet responded.

“It’s important that they take responsibility for what they are distributing out into the public,” Green Party spokesman Richard Warman said. “They have to respect the laws of other countries.”

But Canadian officials expressed doubts about whether the sale of such books over the Internet by foreign companies constitutes a crime.

“This is not straight cut,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman Paul Marsh said. “It’s not straight-forward when you look at the sections.”

Representatives for Amazon were not available to comment. A Barnesandnoble spokesperson declined to comment.

The controversy is the latest incident in which an e-commerce player has been taken to task for carrying hate-related merchandise. Last month, Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com agreed to post a statement from the Anti-Defamation League calling the “Protocols of Zion” an anti-Semitic forgery.

Earlier this year, online auction giant eBay bowed to pressure from outside groups and banned the sale of items that promote hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation.

And last August, Amazon, Barnesandnoble and Borders Online came under fire from the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center for selling Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in Germany. The companies later banned sales of the publication in the country.

Canada prohibits advocating genocide or publicly inciting hatred via spoken or written words. The country also bans the importation of hate propaganda.

The “Turner Diaries” and the “Protocols of Zion” are on a list of books that the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency consider illegal to import into the country, agency spokesman Michel Cl?roux confirmed. But with $1 billion worth of goods crossing the border from the United States into Canada every day, the agency cannot check every package that comes over the border, Cl?roux said. In any case, if the agency intercepted a shipment of banned books, it would contact the Canadian importer, not the U.S. exporter, he said. He added that the agency did not have authority to regulate the actual online sales of the books.

“Electronic commerce is outside our jurisdiction as customs officers,” Cl?roux said.

Complying with scores of complex international laws is a “classic issue” of doing business on the Internet, said Maureen Dorney, an attorney with Palo Alto, Calif.-based Gray, Cary, Ware & Freidenrich. Amazon and Barnesandnoble could have some criminal liability for the sales of banned books even if they don’t have a presence in the countries they are shipping to, she said.

“If you are willing to make your products available internationally, you are potentially subject to the laws of all those jurisdictions that you are shipping to,” Dorney said.

Regardless of whether the sales are illegal, Green Party officials said the companies had a moral obligation to refrain from profiting from the sale of hate literature.

“We would like to express our general concern about the decision by Amazon.com to carry works that are self-evidently racist,” the party said in a letter to the leading e-tailer. “We do not doubt the right of these individuals to hold racist ideas, but we do question the moral and ethical basis of Amazon’s decision to profit from their distribution and how this reflects upon Amazon’s presumed desire to be a responsible corporate citizen.”

CNET NEWS

Posted by peiper     on 04/13/2009 at 09:46 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Economics • Editorials • Racism and race relations •  
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