Curiously, and perhaps not unrelately, Thursday’s session begins with the aggressively theatrical arrest of a spectator in the public gallery. An unnamed man is pointed out by the Judge who accuses him of insulting the Prosecutor yesterday on his way out at the end of the day. (Legal expert Sylvia Stolz points out to me that this Prosecutor is not a ‘State’ Prosecutor because the Federal Republic has no State status in law, for the Basic Law is a holding law since today’s Germany has no Constitutional sovereignty.) The unnamed man was said to have told the ’State’ Prosecutor that she should be ashamed of herself and experience prison from the inside. It’s a citizen’s harmless opinion – and was not made during the proceedings but afterwards – yet the exceedingly enraged judge ordered the man to spend 4 days in prison for his passing aside. With the tone of “off with his head!” the shouting judge’s behaviour was reminiscent of the playing cards Queen in Alice in Wonderland. He then turned on Alfred whom he accused of shaking his head into his hands. The judge seemed set upon strategically goading an hysterical atmosphere but Alfred did not rise to it, stating only that whatever he said in reply would be “twisted and weaponised” into seeming quite contrary to his character.
The histrionic judge required a brief recess to collect himself. The Prosecution will have to wind up Alfred if there is any hope of portraying this good-natured man as “aggressive” in order to fit the “menace” charge. (I witnessed this very technique with the judge at the trial in London of Jeremy Bedford-Turner who like Alfred, is good-natured and prompted by civic-conscientiousness not malice.) RA Nahrath called for a two hours’ interruption in which again to draw up a complaint about the bias of the leading judge. From 10 a.m. to noon the session was duly suspended to the purpose. When the trial resumed RA Miksche submitted his statement regarding the judge’s partiality, and was told the issue would be considered next week.
The session proper began with the screening of Alfred’s first film to show the commencement of his political awakening. Earlier the judge had tried to limit the viewing of Alfred’s video to the single frame where there appears the banned emblem of a swastika. Alfred succeeded to insist the court view his entire 63 minutes’ video – “The Gatekeepers of 9/11 – Controlled Opposition” . The facile cherry picking of the judge who had simply wanted to point to the swastika at minute 23 would have meant missing the point that at that period in 2013 Alfred was what he called “75% still indoctinated with anti-Fascist left-leaning sympathies”. Indeed in this first film, Alfred is using the swastika and referring to fascism and to Goebbels the propagandist in an entirely derogatory politically-correct manner! This film is in English, with German subtitles.
In this film (at minute 23) the sole purpose (in line with Alfred’s beliefs in 2013) of displaying the swastika is to draw an equivalence between Zionism and “nazism”, as differentiated from Jews and Germans.
Two professional translators will be given the task of producing German subtitles for the court, for each of Alfred’s films.
Following the screening, the Prosecution claims Alfred has deployed no facts to simply project upon others his own fantasies.
In “The Gatekeepers of 9/11” Alfred focuses on his former hero, famous linguistics professor Noam Chomsky. He describes the correspondence he had with Chomsky over 9/11 and the scientifically-discredited consensual opinion concerning why the third tower (‘Building 7’) collapsed, though no one even claims it had been struck by a plane. Alfred cites Russia Today who interviewed Jon Cole (of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth); Elizabeth Woodworth (of consensus911.org); and Dr Graeme Macqueen (Eyewitness Research) who relies on 118 witnesses which include the first fire-fighting responders. Alfred was prompted to write to his hero Chomsky after being “disappointed” with Chomsky’s “denigrating and dismissing” the status of the scientists, architects and engineers as a tiny bunch of “people who spend one hour on the internet and think they know everything”.
Chomsky’s recorded attitude towards those scientists whom he denigrates as unserious reminds me of The Holocaust Industry author Norman Finkelstein. During a 2006 television discussion between two guests – Finkelstein and myself – the self-promoting ‘political scientist’ disdained all participants (which included university professors) at the Teheran Conference 2006 (an all-sides, open debate on ‘The Holocaust – A Global Review’) as only “kitchen-sink people”. In his film Alfred says Chomsky displayed “evasive behaviour as well as denigrating the vast community of architects and engineers and other concerned citizens” as a mere “small, isolated clique – your problem, not mine”. The film continues with his being interviewed by Christopher Bollyn. The correspondence Alfred pursues with Chomsky is at no time anything other than respectful and cordial, never aggressive: even as Chomsky accuses him of “insults”, Alfred thanks him for “taking up so much of his precious time” to correspond with him. There is no basis for the Judge’s contention that Alfred was aggressive and disrespectful towards Chomsky.
Alfred’s two questions to “each and every one” of his viewers are:
1) When did you become informed about what really happened on 9/11?
2) What did you do with the knowledge?
These questions do not seem “incitement” to violence; rather they are “incitement” to intellectual enquiry.
Alfred questions Chomsky about his “denial” of the evidence that the official version of 9/11 depends on asserting facts that are scientifically impossible – that “are only possible if you believe in magic”.
This brings to mind the incident during the 1980s Toronto trials of Ernst Zündel. Canadian Attorney Douglas Christie cross-examined the doyen of “Holocaust” historians Dr Raul Hilberg. Christie asked whether this eminent academic can produce any form of written order to carry out industrial, mass homicidal gassing of Jews. Dr Hilberg replies: “I am at a loss.” Hilberg repeated his view that the “Holocaust” had been achieved by “an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus-mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy”. (He had first used these words in a lecture in 1982, and research for Zündel’s defence team by Prof. Robert Faurisson, a specialist in precise documentary analysis, had given Doug Christie the devastating material for his revelatory cross-examination.)
President Bush’s “Homeland Security” czar Michael Chertoff (a dual U.S.-Israeli national) is highlighted in Alfred’s film. Chertoff “allowed the crucial evidence to be destroyed” – physical evidence from the 9/11 scene, such as the buildings’ steel structures – rather than allowing it to be properly analysed. “Nearly all of this crucial evidence wound up being hastily chopped up into small pieces in New Jersey scrap yards and shipped to China, where it was melted down.” Alfred describes this as “a clear case of the criminal destruction of evidence”, for which Michael Chertoff (“the son of an Israeli Mossad agent, Livia Eisen”) was responsible.
Side-lining of evidence is standard practice in German courts. For example I witnessed the trial of Germar Rudolf, the Planck Institute chemist who had gone to Auschwitz following the pioneering example of U.S. execution technology expert Fred Leuchter. The evidential exhibits which Germar wished to present to the court in support of his case were in themselves disdained by the court as contravening the doctrine that orthodox “Holocaust history” is to be deemed “manifestly obvious” (“offenkundig”), hence escaping scientific scrutiny – any dissent being condemned as criminal heresy. Yet another example of where an attorney defending a case can face prosecution if appearing to “defend their client too well”.
In the manner of a schoolteacher giving “a lesson”, Alfred concludes: “one very positive thing about 9/11 (every cloud has a silver lining!) is that it has rekindled interest in other strange events of the past, such as Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty, which some people are not even aware of”.
Specifically addressing “my Jewish friends”, Alfred said “you are completely innocent of wrongdoing; you have only been deceived and brainwashed like almost all of us were. And now that you know, it is of utmost importance to reach out to your friends and neighbours [to inform them] before they come to you”. Yet the Judge accused Alfred of insulting Jews. It is likewise clear in the film that Alfred speaks in polite, non-threatening terms when, under the heading of “Chomsky Stumbles” he expresses his disappointment that “Chomsky places tribal instincts above his sense of humanity”.
The overall accusation seems to be, that Alfred’s behaviour and his videos are the product of an inherently aggressive nature, and that in his videos Alfred supposedly makes threats against people who have a different opinion. As evidence of the effects of this alleged “aggression” the Prosecution has pointed to the behaviour of the man in the public gallery who spoke after the close of yesterday’s proceedings to the Prosecutor. Obviously this little drama was being deployed in order to present Alfred as a very aggressive person, despite the evidence of this film that Alfred is clearly of a patient school teacher’s disposition.
During the trial session on Thursday July 5 the judge clearly tried to corner Alfred with this: he accused Alfred, after the German version of his video
“Ende der Lüge” (“End of the Lie”) was shown, of making threats in his video. Alfred answered, that there is a difference between threatening and warning.
The judge asked him to explain this and Alfred gave a perfect example without hesitating. He said: if you want to swim across the lake on a cold winter’s day
I will tell you that you should not do this, because you will drown. This is a warning, not a threat! Frau Schaufer, Alfred’s wife, told me that “The judge began playing around with words like “freiwillig”, which means voluntary, or not “freiwillig”. Even I couldn’t quite follow his train of thought. How should Alfred. The language Alfred mainly grew up with – at school, university, in his jobs and in everyday and social life – is English. One can clearly notice this, when he speaks openly in German. He is not as fluent and eloquent as he is, when he speaks openly in English. He is not familiar with the subtleties of the German language”.
The explanation by Alfred during the trial, about the difference between a threat and a warning, appears to have something to do with his current arrest, though I do not understand the circumstances.
I heard two non-political locals from Munich with whom I got chatting in a cafe say they would not dare take an interest in the trial because they must show their passports to obtain entry to the public gallery. This they feared might put them on some watch list even though they are in no way party to the issues. Terror. I am sure that if citizens in England were legally obliged to submit to revealing their identities before showing an ordinary curiosity about the goings-on in our courts, that many of them, too, would shy away from attending any politically related trial. Terror, the ‘lynch’-pin of a police-state. All Alfred is trying to teach would seem to be that legal and ‘State’ prejudice against political free-will to hold and advance an opinion is no longer to be ignored by the citizens.
The same is true of Jeremy Bedford-Turner who said to his fellow citizens, “did you know about this?”. This is public need-to-know. Curiouser and curiouser is this “first the verdict” conduct in “Muppet Show” bewilderland. Heresy fear and persecution avoidance was foreshadowed so aptly by the Monty Python sketch when the Pavlovian trigger response to “Jehovah!” releases a barrrage of stones upon the offending heretic. This response is no longer restricted to satirical sketches. I have had my house windows literally stoned repeatedly by Antifa simply for my Telling Films which attempt to record these Trials and tribulations of the likes of the late attorney Manfred Roeder and the late publicist Ernst Zündel. On such occasions these stonings occurred to mark the death of these, in fact, harmless international peace-through-open-debate warriors.
RA Nahrath has succeeded after asking the Court to have all Alfred’s videos translated into German. This means that the Trial dates are now extended into August. The case continues on Thursday July 12th, Friday 13th, Monday 16th, plus dates to be announced in August.
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Friday afternoon update, July 6th 2018
New police raid during thought-crime trial in Munich of Canadian-Germans Monika and Alfred Schaefer
Alfred Schaefer seized in Police raid at his home
At the home of Alfred Schaefer he and I had just finished watching and discussing matters re his videos he was succeeding to screen in full in the Munich courtroom …and then his wife laid table for lunch after I removed my laptop …and so I went to wash my hands. I then heard Police, at 2 pm, knocking on my bathroom door announcing their arrival. It was as if one were suddenly in a nightmare Hollywood movie about a police state action! At first I thought maybe high-spirited Alfred was playing a joke. On opening my bathroom door, there stood 2 armed officers awaiting me.
I handed over my passport; they said they’d come to arrest Alfred. I saw 5 of them handcuff my host.
Taking with him the little packed cheese lunch his experienced wife swiftly made and handed to one officer for her husband, Alfred was hauled away for reasons the police declined to explain to me. Possibly it was about something he had perhaps said when yesterday he had duly turned up at the police station, as he has to do twice per week since he is out on bail. Whatever this “crime” was, he’s again in a police cell now. His wife advised that I and HH should disappear asap in case police returned knowing now that we two were there, easy to haul in for good measure. Vot a business. Cat and mouse – but at least valiant Frau Schaefer made sure we each retrieved the cheese!
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Sunday update, July 8th 2018
Yesterday the magistrate decided that Alfred has to remain in custody in Stadelheim Prison in Munich until the next day of his trial begins, which is Thursday July 12th. Alfred is now ‘next door’ to Monika! On Thursday the Court will decide upon Alfred’s freedom again, whether he is to be allowed to sleep at his home during his exhausting Court appearances or returned each night, inexplicably, to a cell. He is no ‘flight risk’. The accusations made against Alfred, which led to his latest arrest are (as far as his wife can see) is that there is “a danger of suppression of evidence” and that Alfred “would try to influence people who are involved in the proceedings”. Which “witnesses” should he be allegedly “influencing” no one knows.
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Monday update, July 9th 2018
Readers might expect that Alfred and Monika could seek protection from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – adopted by the United Nations in 1966 and supposedly in force since 1976, protecting basic human rights such as freedom of expression. Article 19 of this Covenant states “Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.” It continues: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”
The third paragraph of Article 19 then qualifies these rights by accepting that they can be restricted, but only by laws which are necessary “for respect of the rights or reputations of others” or for protecting national security, public order, public health or morals. Article 20 goes on: “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”
There are obvious problems and potential contradictions here, and it is not surprising that there have been attempts to clarify the Covenant’s meaning. The UN’s Human Rights Committee has periodically issued commentaries for this purpose, and in 2011 the Committee’s “General Comment 34” offered some hope to criminalised dissident historians and others by stating: “Laws that penalise the expression of opinions about historical facts are incompatible with the obligations that the Covenant imposes on States parties in relation to the respect for freedom of opinion and expression.” A footnote referred specifically to the case of the French revisionist historian and expert on documentary analysis Professor Robert Faurisson.
On 22nd December 2011 Prof. Faurisson wrote to the Office of the UN High Commissioner asking whether the so-called Gayssot Act of 1990, a French law specifically designed to target Prof. Faurisson by criminalising sceptical enquiry into “Holocaust” history, contravened Article 19. He pointed out that France was “a charter signatory to the 1966 Covenant but a country which, nevertheless, sentences peaceable citizens to imprisonment for their writings on history.”
In particular, Prof. Faurisson drew attention to the admonition in the UN Human Rights Committee’s “General Comment 34” that “a law may not confer unfettered discretion for the restriction of freedom of expression on those charged with its execution.” He suggested that French law had done just that:
“With respect to paragraphs 35 and 36 I submit that France, in its checks on public expression of views on history under the Gayssot Act, has failed to “demonstrate in specific and individualised fashion the precise nature of the threat” to the rights and reputation of persons or to public order (Covenant, article 19) purportedly constituted by utterances and writings contravening the said Act, and has failed as well to demonstrate “the necessity and proportionality of the specific [restrictive] action taken, in particular by establishing a direct and immediate connection between the expression and the threat.””
Almost seven years later Germany’s courts continue to ignore this human rights Covenant. Though Monika Schaefer has been held in prison for the past six months, there has been no attempt to demonstrate any precise threat, or any incitement of violence. Monika’s video is entirely non-threatening and pacific in its presentation, whatever one’s estimation of the “Holocaust”. Instead the German courts (in their customary fashion) rely on an “unfettered” general prohibition of certain historical opinions, in complete disregard of the Human Rights Committee’s warning.
The UK courts are by no means perfect (as we have seen in the recent prosecution of Jeremy Bedford-Turner), but the German law and German courts are far worse. In the UK it would be necessary to demonstrate either that the “criminal” words were “intended” to stir up racial hatred, or that “having regard to all the circumstances” they were likely to do so. Additionally the words must be found by the court to be “threatening, abusive or insulting”.
In Germany the courts hold that in and of itself “Holocaust denial” is a criminal incitement. There is no requirement to prove intention or likelihood to stir up hatred; and no requirement to prove that the words used were “threatening, abusive or insulting”. The expression could be entirely mild: so long as the content involves “Holocaust denial” it is deemed criminal in Germany – despite the failure of courts or legislators to define exactly what they mean by “the Holocaust”.
In the case of Alfred Schaefer, prosecutors in the present trial are seeking to bundle together a series of videos and present Alfred as “aggressive” and threatening. So far he has succeeded in playing the entire “9/11 Gatekeepers” video to the court, which cannot reasonably be viewed as aggressive, but prosecutors are persisting with their strategy of piecing together rhetorical expressions excerpted from different videos and speeches. This is an effort to criminalise a broader range of dissident political expressions, some of which are not covered by the “catch-all” prohibition of “Holocaust denial”.
The outcome of the Schaefer siblings’ trial will have vital implications for the liberties not only of Germans but of all visitors to European Union countries.
“No surrender”!
Michèle Renouf