AAARGH

David Irving fait appel

Fighting my way into the Court of Appeal

This is me, David Irving, e-mailing you. I mention that I am doing it in person (I say that, because sometimes people ask: "Do you really do it all yourself? Is that really you answering?" -- "Yes!") (And incidentally, you will see that my personal website, which was shut off for two weeks until Monday under ADL pressure, is back online again at <http://www.fpp.co.uk/online.html>.

The Appeal.
You asked me some time ago to send you updates by e-mail on what's happening (and there is an "appeal" at the end).
As you know I am engaged in probably the biggest legal action involving Real History that has ever been fought: the battleground is the Law Courts building in London; the opposing lines drawn up are in some ways more formidable than at Agincourt, or Waterloo, or Kursk.
On the one side, skulking in the darkness, are the massed battalions of the old version of history, as propagated by the traditional enemies of the truth: their champion is the unlikely figure of a professor of religion, or of history, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her name is Deborah Lipstadt, but that is unimportant -- what matters is the sinister people lurking behind her, who have funded the action against me so far to the extent of Six Million dollars.
We won all the initial rounds (up to April last year) before the lower judges; we then stunningly lost the crucial battle before Mr Justice Gray, a novice judge in the High Court. We have won every further round since then, and as recently as last Friday March 2 we persuaded the Court of Appeal to abandon the ambush it had mysteriously set, under which the appeal hearing was suddenly announced for March 19 -- this coming March 19! -- a date we could not possibly have met, as we are still briefing our trial counsel.
The Court of Appeal, confronted with our expert lawyers' arguments, has agreed to a new later date, June 11, and this is so much in our favour that Lipstadt's junior Counsel, the renowned Anthony Julius (who negotiated Princess Diana's divorce for her), was heard to turn to his senior Counsel and bleat: "That is a disaster!"
And a disaster it is for them. After the extraordinary and perverse judgment handed down by Sir Charles Gray in April last year, which resounded around the world, none of my enemies expected me to fight back. They at once began a round of lectures around the world -- particularly in Europe and North America, gloating over the judgment, smearing my name (they hoped irrevocably), and revealing piece by piece their own tactics, their own venality, and, as is now clear, their stupidity too.
Their expert witnesses, who were paid up to a quarter of a million dollars each to give their "neutral" evidence, have now revealed themselves in their true colours: Prof. Richard Evans wrote a book about me titled "Lying about Hitler." It was so libellous that his U.K. publishers Wm. Heinemann have just announced that they will not publish it for that reason; Prof. Hajo Funke, the defendants' "neutral" German expert on rightist organisations, gave his first and so far as we know only interview about the trial for Neues Deutschland, the former East German Soviet newspaper!
More dramatically, their own behind-the-scenes experts revealed that they all realised what a close shave they had had, and that until Gray read out his judgment they had seriously feared defeat at my hands. Professor David Cesarani, a historian dubbed "Ratface" even by his friends, told Die Zeit, a liberal German magazine, that my cross examination of their Auschwitz expert Prof. Van Pelt caused them scary moments when Pelt proved incapable of explaining the logistics of disposing of fifty thousand tons of corpses in three weeks in one building at Auschwitz using only a small Sonderkommando; fortunately for them, the judge willingly overlooked Pelt's failure to explain.
Lipstadt herself explained to an all-day Toronto university seminar on the trial, three or four weeks ago, that the reason that her legal team had decided not to call any Auschwitz survivors into the witness stand was that they knew that "Mr Irving would tear them to shreds" in cross examination. [...]
I can safely reveal those two bits of Intelligence to you because you have shown an early and honest and genuine interest in this case. The rest of our proposed legal tactics we are keeping to ourselves.
Getting now to the point of this letter: In the first round of this battle, calculating that it was better to have a historian who was a poor lawyer than to have a lawyer who was a poor historian, I acted in person (and earned grudging praise in the newspapers even from the judge and opposing leading Counsel for this). This time round however we are engaging not only Adrian Davies as junior Counsel, who has already won every subsequent skirmish against these foes; we shall also instruct a leading Counsel (or "Silk" as he is called in the English bar) who is an expert in a very different field from libel. And this is something our enemies will not expect.
Which brings me back to the first words of this letter: "The Appeal." It is not only the appeal formally directed to begin on June 11 this year before the English Court of Appeal -- and I may add that the presiding judge, Lord Justice Pill, has already last week shown himself fairly disposed to our honest cause; it is a personal appeal to you, as a supporter of the fight that I am waging.
I have necessarily set a target of over $200,000 to be raised over the next five weeks to engage the legal experts and pay the costs of this appeal, which are already considerable. I started raising this sum when I came over to the West Coast of the USA last week. We are already nearly one-quarter of the way to this target. When the appeal is heard, over five days from June 11, it will become, just like the final days of the trial itself last April, the subject of the most intense media glare. TV cameras, transmitters, news teams, photographers, will line up all the way down the street outside the Law Courts.
The battle for true debate, which our enemies fought so hard to avoid, has forced them right out into the open. If it ends in victory, the appeal court judges will in fact there and then order the gloating "victors" of the moment, Lipstadt and her publishers, to pay colossal damages and put her book and the version of history that she peddles in the trashcan they deserve. Win or lose -- and perish the latter thought! -- this final superhuman battle hammers one more hefty nail into the coffin of the self-serving, phoney history that is now being forced upon us and our children. It will be the beginning of the end of what Norman Finkelstein has so rightly called an Industry.
But I can no longer carry this entire burden myself. I must turn to you, and all my other friends, with an appeal to support this battle not only to the best of your ability, but beyond. I and my legal team cannot a second time go into this battle under-armed and under-equipped with the means to fight. Give us the tools!
The other side have Stephen Spielberg, the World Jewish Congress and Edgar Bronfmann bankrolling them. I have behind me just a few great and courageous friends, and many hundreds of lesser but no less grave ones. I am not going to keep making appeals to you all: this is the only such appeal that I shall make for this big battle. This is the Big One. The contribution that I ask you to make today is one-of-a-kind; so please think of a figure, and then multiply it by a figure that takes that uniqueness into account. I pledge that I will never reveal your names, even if that refusal incurs the severest forms of punishment against me.
How can you contribute most swiftly? You can pledge for the future weeks, and you can send something right now. If you are on the Internet -- the weapon that our enemies have learned to fear the most -- you can go to my own personal website at http://www.focal.org/help and punch the appropriate buttons. Or you may prefer one of the options at the end of this letter. I will personally acknowledge all support that reaches me -- but it must be in good time!
Thanks,
David Irving, Saturday, March 17, 2001 <Focalp@aol.com>

Methods (anonymous if you wish): mail cash or check in any currency you choose to me at David Irving, 81 Duke Street, London W1K 5PE, or to my US address at P O Box 1707, Key West, FL 30041; Or: Transfer payments by bank transfer directly to: David Irving, Deutsche Bank, Essen, BLZ 360 700 50, Kto. Nr. 192 0929 (Verwendungszweck: "Gerichtskosten"); Or: Make a direct wire transfer to the account of "David Irving," at Barclays Bank plc, 212 Regent Street, London W1A 4BP (banking Swift-code BARC GB 22), sort code 20-71-74, account number 9026 3923, stating as the purpose: "Appeal Costs"; Or: Transfer payments by bank transfer directly to: "David Irving Legal Fighting Fund" at First State Bank, Key West, FL 33041-1579, USA, bank ref. number 067 000 438, account number 0100 297 447, stating as the purpose: "Appeal Costs".

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ARTICLE 19 <Tout individu a droit à la liberté d'opinion et d'expression, ce qui implique le droit de ne pas être inquiété pour ses opinions et celui de chercher, de recevoir et de répandre, sans considération de frontière, les informations et les idées par quelque moyen d'expression que ce soit>
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