Civil Rights Leaders, Progressives, Family, Will Again Betray Martin Luther King on His Birthday
By Jay Janson | Dissident Voice | January 13, 2015
January 18 is Martin Luther King’s birthday and will occasion another three day official national holiday with TV specials of criminal deception limiting King to having been merely a hero of the civil rights movement period. Another year’s deceitfully erasing from history King’s condemnation of his country’s government as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and his having held himself and his fellow Americans responsible for “atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945 in order to maintain unjust predatory investments.”
For a near half-century, King’s outrage, King’s hellish description of America’s wars on innocent people in the third world, have been meticulously whisked out of existence. But not without the help of the silence of Kings own family, comrades, fellow civil rights leaders, peaceniks, and progressives, who have mounted no serious effort to expose wars-supporting corporate media’s iron tight blackout of what King said during his last year before receiving that ‘shut him up’ bullet to his brain.
To no avail, did America’s beloved peoples historian, Howard Zinn, for years, end every one of his daily radio programs with a plea to journalists and antiwar organization leaders to quote King continually in order to break the blackout of King’s powerful words and defeat the supporters of US wars.
If the prediction in the title of this article turns out to be wrong, the co-founders of the Martin Luther King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign (former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and yours truly) will of course be thankful beyond words, but astounded as well. For it is nearly forty-eight years since King shook the world, made large type bold headlines in newspapers across the planet with his blistering New York sermon, ‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,’ was vilified in US media, and criticized by his fellow leaders of the civil rights movement. With enthusiastic support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Ramsey Clark had for some years envisioned a ‘Break the Blackout of MLKjr Condemnations’ event with speeches by luminaries like Harry Belafonte, Jessie Jackson, Andrew Young — now long Representative of Georgia, John Lewis, Cornel West, Joan Baez and others, who had been close to King, but was unable to find any interest in it. I feel it will, however, happen one day.
Since King’s assassination (within a year of King’s ‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence’ sermon), the silence of his closest comrades and even his own family, a silence that King had called “betrayal,” (King had even agonized over his own previous silence), has been, in effect, a noticeable collaboration with the utter and absolute blackout and erasing of King’s scathing words from popular history by criminal US media, monolithic media that has hyped and justified the US committed holocaust in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and the dozens of subsequent US murderous invasions of dozens of equally innocent nations.
At the 2012 unveiling and dedication ceremony of the King Monument in Washington, the wealthy white elite emoted over how they had been moved by King’s words about equality and freedom, as they pretended to have been deaf to King’s bitter denouncing of the immoral business of inhumane materialism and genocidal violence in desperate accumulation of capital and its twin evil racism. With sour stomach did one listen to the dissimulating, vibrant with emotion, eulogies of King’s daughter, sister, son, African American celebrities, and even the two men who had held the dying King in their arms (and who had gone on to successful political careers in the US war establishment). In these speeches by King’s beloved people, there was not a single world regarding King’s condemnation of Americans putting atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945. Their embarrassing calculated omission of King’s condemnation of US wars on innocent nations was an obvious collaboration with an insane wars-managing elite’s intentions in staging this despicable and farcical event. It was a collaboration, not only by the King family, civil rights leader friends and African American celebrities, who spoke at the monument, but by progressive journalists the next day, who did not rise up with a unanimous commentary of condemnation of their own for the calculated omission of King’s scathing words, poignantly stern warnings and moral demands, which King bravely intended to lead the stopping of the slaughter of the Vietnamese, just as King had led the stopping of legalized death and discrimination of African Americans at home.
It simply does not seem to be important to American dissidents, progressives, African American celebrities and even America’s best anti-imperialist journalists of the left, that citizens in militarized America, and the world audience victims of US media psyop mind control, have been tightly blocked and prevented from hearing or seeing videos of King sounding off with the truth,
The Vietnamese people proclaimed their independence in 1945, after a combined French and Japanese occupation … we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.… For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam…. After the French were defeated, … we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man.… Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops, as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals, children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. … we ally ourselves with the landlords … we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land, their crops. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.
Americans shall never hear these words of King, if the desperate managers of present society have anything to do with it. Knowledge of national hero King having preached to extend the justice he was determined to get of for his African Americans to the infinitely more deadly injustice the Vietnamese had been suffering from his fellow Americans, including forcibly drafted African America soldiers, would be dangerously confusing for tens of millions of young men and women presently participating in, supporting, or indifferent to the dozen ongoing US bombings and invasions and unnerving for older Americans who had participated in, supported, or were indifferent during to all the wars since King was taken out forty-seven years ago. Confusing and unnerving because, after all, Martin Luther King is America’s number one hero, in whose name everyone gets a day or two off work every year.
Perhaps, even more important for the war establishment is that school children now being indoctrinated to look forward to patriotically manning the high tech killing machine that insures future American world domination, be protected from the horrible truth that Martin Luther King spoke of so eloquently and convincingly.
No, not on your sweet life, are speculative investors, who own omnipresent mass media and create mega profitable genocidal wars, going to allow the American public that watches fellow Americans in uniform dispatch thousands of designated ‘bad guy’ men, women, and ‘accidentally their children, in their own beloved countries of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen while America funds goons to do it in Venezuela, Ukraine and Lebanon, Syria, Libya as well, hear King preaching a heart-rending history of the US holocaust in Vietnam and surrounding countries.
Instead this year, as for over forty years, corporate commercial TV channels will be televising King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, the ‘March on Washington’ demanding justice in America, and videos of King leading the civil rights struggle over many years. King will be made to look like someone who today would have been a close friend and supporter of Obama, a documented serial killer, and as outspoken Cornel West, Prof. Cornel West of New York’s Union Theological Seminar and
Princeton University’s Center for African American Studies has often called the President, “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats, now head of the American killing machine and proud of it.”
Our long-shot hope is that during this year’s Martin Luther King high profiled birthday celebrations, one of the various presidents or foreign ministers of nations presently threatened with US overt or covert attack, will think to praise on international media, Martin Luther Kings intensely devastating condemnations of America’s mad and genocidal foreign policy, and thereby throw a self-protecting monkey-wrench into America’s world deceiving criminal media, which projects an image of King as a loyal patriot of an America constantly at war with the world.
Prohibiting us from hearing King’s condemnations, so inconvenient to private investors, who rule society by scam and sword, will backfire in the long run. Words of wisdom have a life of their own, and King’s truthful words will one day be hear in countries on all five continents once bombed by US planes, and his words will promote prosecution of colonial and neocolonial imperialist crimes against humanity.
When that day of reckoning arrives King’s statue will be gazed upon as one of the whole meaningful Martin Luther King Jr., adorned with quotes mentioned in this article that are not there today.
For what it worth, those that know what King cried out against, and are still comfortably silent, might remember, Martin Luther King’s quoting from Inferno by the famous Italian poet Dante, “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”
Jay Janson can be reached at: tdmedia2000@yahoo.com.
Those who aren’t Charlie
By Richard Seymour | Lenin’s Tomb | January 15, 2015
Unfortunately, there are a few troublemakers in our midst, people who aren’t Charlie, who need to be rooted out and dealt with. As explained by Nathalie Saint-Cricq, chief political editor of France 2 (state-owned TV channel):
« C’est justement ceux qui ne sont pas “Charlie” qu’il faut repérer, ceux qui, dans certains établissements scolaires ont refusé la minute de silence, ceux qui “balancent” sur les réseaux sociaux et ceux qui ne voient pas en quoi ce combat est le leur. Eh bien ce sont eux que nous devons repérer, traiter, intégrer ou réintégrer dans la communauté nationale. Et là, l’école et les politiques ont une lourde responsabilité. »
“It is those indeed who are not “Charlie” who must be identified; those who in certain schools refused to observe the minute’s silence, those who “spout off” on social networks, and those who don’t see that this struggle is theirs. Well, they are the ones that we have to identify and treat, integrate or reintegrate into the national community. Schools and the politicians bear a heavy responsibility in this regard.”
In fact (a correspondent tells me, referring to this article), the provisions of recent legislation (13.11.2014) on the monitoring and reporting of school pupils’ speech and behaviour appear to have been put into effect for the first time as the names of children who failed to observe the minute’s silence were reported by teachers or supervisors to the head, then to the rectorat – the regional education administration – and on to the police and prosecuting authorities, to be analysed by the intelligence services, who decide whether the facts in question are serious enough to warrant formal investigation of the pupil and his/her family and social network.
More widely, there are a series of arrests and sentences being handed down for “justification/glorification of terrorism”, including that of a 28 year old man diagnosed with learning disabilities.
If you are not Charlie, would you please speak up so that we can have you arrested and flung in jail, or re-educated?
Watch Your Language!
(Even when speaking the undeniable truth)
By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | January 14, 2015
Poor Tim Willcox, now terrorised for doing a professional job at the Paris anti-terror march.
In a live TV report the BBC’s Willcox was interviewing people in the crowd and talking to a Jewish woman about her fears of persecution. She said: “The situation is going back to the days of the 1930s in Europe.”
Willcox replied: “Many critics, though, of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”
She countered: “We can’t do an amalgam.”
Willcox said: “You understand everything is seen from different perspectives.”
The reporter’s remarks were widely criticised by viewers, with some calling for his resignation.
According to the Express, historian Simon Schama accused Willcox of “appalling hectoring” before tweeting: “Then he had gall to patronise her at the end – ‘you see people see it from all sides’. That Palestinian plight justifies anti-semitic murder?”
Uh?
Anyway, poor Tim has had to apologise. Why? Did he say something untruthful? Was it indecent?
BBC Watch commented, without explaining the conversational context, by quoting from the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism: “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” and implying that this was what Willcox had done. But Willcox was talking about the Israeli regime’s policy, right? Not the collective responsibility of Jews worldwide.
BBC Watch is linked to CiF Watch, which is “dedicated to monitoring antisemitism and combating the assault on Israel’s legitimacy”. And to CAMERA. All three have the same two editors.
Hadar Sela is Managing Editor. She “has lived in Israel for over three decades… and has written pre-emptive reports on several anti-Israel campaigns, including the flotillas and the Global March to Jerusalem in March 2012”. Funny, I thought the flotillas were bringing humanitarian aid to the desperate civilians cruelly imprisoned, blockaded and bombarded in the tiny enclave of Gaza. How is that deemed to be anti-Israel unless you’re a paranoid Zionist or one of the mindless criminal thugs imposing the blockade?
The other is Adam Levick, also Managing Editor of CiF Watch. He “made aliyah” in 2009. Aliya is moving your home to Israel. Since when did we or our national broadcaster take orders from a couple of Israelis?
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the self-styled “voice of British Jewry”, can usually be relied on to jump in on these occasions, and they obliged. Quoting the same antisemitism definition they go on to say: “Not only was this remark irrelevant – after all the target of Friday’s attack were not Israeli but French Jews – it also conflates Middle Eastern politics with the murder of innocent French Jews, and implies that there was some kind of justification for the attack. This was bad, biased reporting and an attempt to misrepresent the events of Friday afternoon… Please take the opportunity to complain about Tim Willcox. You can use the the BBC’s complaints procedure…”
This is so confusing. Israel demands to be recognised as the Jewish State and has just passed laws to that effect. It claims to speak and act for Jews worldwide. Inevitably Israel’s behaviour influences how Jews are regarded locally.
Tim Willcox will remember what happened to another good BBC man, Jeremy Bowen, who was put through the mangle a few years ago by the Zionist mafia, and his caved-in bosses, for honest reporting. No doubt they have tried to “re-educate” and re-program him. .
A kindly member of our group sent Tim a word of encouragement:
Thank you very much for saying publicly that Palestinians also suffer at the hands of Jews. I am sorry you have had to apologise; in my view those who need to apologise are those who do NOT say this at every opportunity.
I added:
I second Elizabeth’s remarks. Truth doesn’t count for much at the BBC any more, sadly.
Came the reply:
It’s been quite a heavy few days.
Thank you for your support.
Best wishes,
Tim
If you wish to tell the BBC what you think, here is the link .
“Playing fast and loose with the language of the Holocaust”
All this is reminiscent of the flurry of outbursts early last year. The head of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollock, succeeded in wringing an apology from a British MP for remarks in a parliamentary debate about what happened to Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe and what is happening now to Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank.
Yasmin Qureshi, MP for Bolton South East, told the House that the suffering in Gaza was intolerable.
The state of Israel was founded because of what happened to the millions and millions of Jews who suffered genocide. Their properties, homes and land — everything — were taken away, and they were deprived of rights. Of course, many millions perished. It is quite strange that some of the people who are running the state of Israel seem to be quite complacent and happy to allow the same to happen in Gaza.
The issue is not just about Gaza; let us think about the West Bank and Jerusalem as well. Many Palestinians are being turfed out of their homes in Jerusalem. The Israelis are the occupying power in the West Bank, where they have got rid of Palestinian homes and replaced them with hundreds of thousands of settlements, recognised by the United Nations as illegal…. The policy pursued by the state of Israel is not helping to lead to a two-state solution… Let us face it: if what is happening to Gaza, done by Israel, were happening to any other nation, the whole world would be up in arms, and rightly so.
Fair comment? Or something to apologise for?
As reported in The Guardian Ms Pollock accused the MP of making “offensive and inappropriate comparisons” about the Middle East. “We expect our politicians to speak responsibly and sensitively about the past and about events today. These lazy and deliberate distortions have no place in British politics… It is astonishing to think that anyone could visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, learn about the industrial nature of the Nazis’ murderous regime, even walk through a gas chamber – and then make these offensive and inappropriate comparisons.”
In the Jewish Chronicle Labour Friends of Israel director Jennifer Gerber strongly condemned the comparisons between the Holocaust and the situation in Gaza. “In her remarks, she [Qureshi] directly links Israeli policies towards the Palestinian people to the Nazis’ efforts to exterminate world Jewry. This is both deeply offensive to the memory of the Holocaust and its millions of victims, but also wilfully ignorant of the actual situation in Gaza. We would ask Ms Qureshi to apologise for her remarks, and to cease using such upsetting and offensive comparisons.”
Has Ms Gerber been to Gaza to see the “actual situation”? Ms Qureshi replied that she had not intended to draw a direct parallel especially as she had visited one of the most notorious death camps. “The debate was about the plight of the Palestinian people and in no way did I mean to equate events in Gaza with the Holocaust. I apologise for any offence caused.” She didn’t withdraw the remark, however.
Two years ago Liberal Democrat MP David Ward was in hot water for his “use of language” in condemning the Jewish state’s atrocities against the Palestinians while the horrors of their own suffering at the hands of the Nazis were still fresh in memory. He wrote on his website a few days before Holocaust Memorial Day: “Having visited Auschwitz twice — once with my family and once with local schools — I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”
The sky immediately fell on him. Karen Pollock and Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, launched a vicious attack with Pollock claiming that Ward “deliberately abused the memory of the Holocaust” and his remarks were “sickening” and had no place in British politics.
Benjamin said he was outraged and shocked by Ward’s “offensive” comments. They demanded the party withdraw the whip. Such was the pressure that wobbly LibDem bosses appointed a team to lay down language rules, determine whether Ward was “salvageable” and then “re-educate” him.
After that, in Brighton, the Sussex Friends of Israel turned on MP Caroline Lucas. During a pro-Israel lobby day in Parliament Lucas accused Israel of “blocking humanitarian aid” and “humiliating” the people of Gaza. Simon Cobbs, a founding member of the Sussex Friends of Israel, told The Algemeiner: “The problem we have with Caroline Lucas is that she’s taken a side over and above her own constituency needs.”
Ms Lucas’s remarks were perfectly valid and there was no way Cobbs could deny it. He should have put his point to the 80 percent of Conservative MPs and MEPs who have signed up with Friends of Israel, an organisation that flies the Israeli flag in the British parliament and promotes Israel’s interests. Such activities are not only “above the needs” but very probably detrimental to the interests of their constituencies.
Then Colchester MP Sir Bob Russell, speaking during a debate on the national schools curriculum, put a question to Education Secretary Michael Gove about world history lessons, saying: “On the assumption that the 20th century will include the Holocaust, will he give me an assurance that the life of Palestinians since 1948 will be given equal attention?”
“These remarks are a shocking piece of Holocaust denigration,” said Jewish Leadership Council chief executive Jeremy Newmark. “There is simply no comparison between the two situations. It is worrying that so soon after the David Ward affair another MP thinks it is acceptable to play fast and loose with the language of the Holocaust in this context.”
Prickly Ms Pollock also pounced on Russell: “To try to equate the events of the Holocaust – the systematized mass murder of 6 million Jews – with the conflict in the Middle East is simply inaccurate as well as inappropriate.”
But, as everyone and his dog knows, it isn’t a “conflict”. It’s a brutal occupation and blockade in which millions of innocent civilians have been dispossessed at gunpoint and put to flight, or collectively punished for decades by a military force armed to the teeth with high-tech weaponry, and unable to move freely in their own country. BBC Watch should note that Israel is especially good at collectively punishing Gazans for the alleged crimes of Hamas.
As for the atrocities carried out in Nazi-occupied Europe and Israeli-occupied Palestine there is no equivalence in terms of scale. But some similarities are inescapable to those who go and see for themselves. The crucial message of the Holocaust, that such cruelty must never be allowed to happen again, seems lost already among those who are supposed to promote it.
And it’s that time of year again. Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK is 27 January. Stand by for more prickliness, more ructions and more “re-education”.
Postscript
As I was signing off, news came in that MP David Ward had landed himself in hot water again . The Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub has written to Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg expressing “abhorrence” at “offensive and shocking” comments made by Ward about Netanyahu’s presence at the solidarity march in Paris on Sunday.
Ward had tweeted: “#Netanyahu in Paris march – what!!! Makes me feel sick”.
Taub writes: “At a time when leaders were united in condemnation of extremist atrocities, Mr Ward’s statement is a disgraceful attempt to politicise suffering, delegitimise Israel, and justify acts of terror.” He also said that “more shocking still is the continued impunity that [Ward] seems to enjoy from his party”.
Taub himself would do well to curb his language. Israel is in no position to lecture on extremist atrocities or impunity. Many people, besides Ward, watching the march and Netanyahu’s antics must have kept a sick bag in reach. It was widely reported how the Israeli prime minister, who arrived uninvited (and, I hear, was actually asked to stay away), has been widely criticised for pushing his way to the front of the parade, positioning himself centre-stage, linking arms with the invited guests and waving inappropriately on such a solemn occasion to real or imaginary ‘admirers’ in the crowd.
On past form the LibDems will buckle and prostrate themselves before the Israeli bullies. Their spokesperson has already said the MP ‘s tweet was “clearly in bad taste”.
Poor David can look forward to more loony “re-education” in the LibDems’ house of correction, assuming they consider him “salvageable”. The party, however, isn’t. It’ll likely be wiped out at the coming general election.
Persecuted French revisionist scholar: Charlie Hebdo Before and After
On the Contrary | January 14, 2015
Dr. Robert Faurisson, the courageous octogenarian dean of European revisionists who has been repeatedly beaten, prosecuted, jailed and heavily fined in France for publishing doubts about the authenticity of the sacred relics of Holocaustianity, offers his insights into the situation in France in the aftermath of the attacks in Paris.
_________________________________________________________________________________
To Michael Hoffman:
These killings in Paris, at the office of Charlie Hebdo and elsewhere – with 20 dead in all, among whom five were Jews – rightly arouse widespread indignation but Jewish organizations have immediately exploited this indignation for their benefit. They forget that, in large part, it’s been under the pressure of international and French-Jewish groups that France has hastily engaged in all sorts of military expeditions causing so many deaths in the Arab-Muslim world. They forget this country’s responsibility for the creation of the bogus “State of Israel” – soon afterwards arming it with nuclear weapons – and in the appalling fate of the Palestinian people since at least 1948; as well as the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu at Sunday’s rally in Paris which was an affront to an entire Arab-Muslim world. Jewish organizations in France live in anger and war; that being the case, how can they be surprised if their adversaries live in anger and war as well?
Such killings may bring to mind a number of murders committed by Jews who subsequently became “heroes” of Jewish history. On February 25, 1994 Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli army physician armed with an assault rifle, shot dead 24 Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron before being subdued and killed there himself. Goldstein’s nearby tomb is a pilgrimage site for many Jews.
The hysteria we are witnessing now in France, in this month of January 2015, has a precedent: that of May 1990 and the “profanation of the Carpentras cemetery” when Judaic graves were said to have been vandalized. It was the exploitation of that event that made it possible to intimidate the French parliament into enacting a law called “The Fabius-Gayssot Act” of July 13, 1990 — punishing by a term of imprisonment of from one month to one year and a fine of up to 300,000 francs (45,000 euros), along with several other sanctions — those who dispute “the existence of crimes against humanity” (that is, essentially, crimes against Jews), as defined and punished in 1945-1946 by a body that the winners of the recent war had dared to name the “International Military Tribunal” (three lies in three words) of Nuremberg. This law, totally contrary to the French constitution, came into effect by appearing in the Journal Officiel de la République Française of July 14, 1990, anniversary of the storming of the Bastille.
It was due to a fabrication on the part of the Socialist president of the French parliament, Jewish millionaire Laurent Fabius, which he conveyed to a national television audience, alleging that a Jewish cadaver in the Carpentras cemetery had been taken out of its grave and impaled through the rectum with a pole — that the French were stampeded into outrage and indignation which was cleverly exploited: Catholic authorities rang the great bell of Notre-Dame in Paris as a sign of an extraordinary sacrilege having occurred. The Socialist French President François Mitterrand led a march through the center of Paris at the head of the vast crowd of demonstrators. We have now, on January 11, 2015, seen the same scenario repeated in the same place: the Catholic Archbishop having taken the initiative of ringing the Notre-Dame’s bells, and Laurent Fabius, architect of the suppression of the rights of freedom of expression of revisionists in France, in the front rank of the “protesting” dignitaries marching through the streets — our Socialist President François Hollande together with Netanyahu — all supposedly in the cause of freedom of expression.
Moreover, those Jewish organizations pose as being in support of freedom of opinion and expression but, in reality, what they are demanding is increased repression against “Holocaust denial.” Revisionism has made significant progress in recent years here in France, thanks especially to the Internet. Certain Jewish organizations therefore, are working for laws aimed at the censorship of the Internet, of the Ferench-African comedian Dieudonné (who has some 80 legal proceedings pending against him), of the revisionists and of a number of other unbowed men and women.
In conclusion and for want of time, I shall allow myself just three remarks in response to the questions which you sent by e-mail: 1) the name Charlie-Hebdo has, apparently, nothing to do with Charles de Gaulle; it comes, I believe, from the Peanuts character Charlie Brown.
2) Gayssot is the surname of a former Communist MP and government minister, and the Fabius-Gayssot Act is sometimes called the “Faurisson Law” or “Lex Faurissoniana”; I have lost count of the times I’ve been ordered to pay fines or damages on the grounds of this law; other revisionists have been thrown into prison or, like Vincent Reynouard, a father of nine, will be returning to prison. For my part, I’ve endured ten physical assaults – of which eight took place in France. French police have carried out numerous searches and seizures, or attempted seizures, at my home. These police have often refused to protect me in the presence of threats and danger.
3) I hope to be able, before long, to send you an English version of my nine-page article (with illustrations) which I wrote on December 31, 2014. It is entitled: In 70 years, no forensic study proving the existence and operation of the “Nazi gas chambers”!
I dedicated this study to Professor Ben Zion Dinur (1884-1973), founder of Yad Vashem in 1953, who was forced to resign in 1959 for having preferred scientific history to Judaic memory.
http://robertfaurisson.blogspot.fr/2009/03/memoire-juive-contre-histoire-ou.html
I thank you, dear Michael, and congratulate you on the work you have done over so many years, and in such difficult conditions, for the just cause of historical revisionism.
Robert Faurisson, January 13, 2015
Islamic Human Rights Commission cuts ties with ‘Orwellian’ British government
RT | January 14, 2015
One of the UK’s biggest Islamic organizations has refused to participate in future government talks on anti-terror legislation, claiming their contributions to policy are being overlooked.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit campaign, research and advocacy organization,” said the British government has been “uncompromising” in its efforts to “legislate away fundamental freedoms in order to tackle terrorism over the last 18 years.”
In a statement released late Tuesday, an IHRC spokesperson said: “Such input perversely allows the government to claim that it has carefully considered the views of civil society organizations, when in fact the final policies were always a foregone conclusion.”
The statement comes at a time when a number of British Islamic organizations feel marginalized by the government, and in some cases have been accused of being linked to terrorist activities overseas.
In November, the Claystone think tank said “more than a quarter” of British charities under investigation by the charity commission were working on Muslim-related issues, and criticized the government for “excessive” surveillance of Islamic charitable groups.
Analysis conducted by the think tank found that out of 76 charities currently being investigated, 20 were led by Muslims, including the civil liberties organization CAGE.
In December, the Demos think tank also said British charities working in conflict zones in the Middle East were being cut off from “millions” of pounds in funding due to counter-terrorism legislation, with some having their private bank accounts closed down completely due to “credit risk.”
Tom Keatingue, a director at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and author of the report, said that the lack of financial access meant that charities were unable to carry out some medical projects overseas, or deliver adequate resources to vulnerable refugees.
The IHRC also hit out at the government’s Counter Terrorism and Security Bill, which is currently being debated in parliament, which the organization called “Orwellian.”
“The bill will introduce a raft of new measures to deal with terrorism and extremism in the UK. It is IHRC’s view that the current proposals are far and away the most Orwellian to date; they will erode civil liberties and turn the UK into a police state.
“Alongside the raft of new laws, we have also seen the government introduce and broaden its PREVENT program, which is aimed at both gathering intelligence on the Muslim community using public sector workers such as teachers and doctors and trying to socially engineer a more compliant Muslim community by legally defining the range of beliefs/views its members are allowed to hold.”
IHRC spokesperson Arzu Merali claimed the government’s ramping up of anti-terror measures were marginalizing British Muslims, and risked turning the UK into a “police state.”
“The anti-terrorism laws have served only to create a sub-par legal regime without due process that targets Muslims. It also demonizes Muslims further, causing backlash and discrimination. Off the back of these processes, we find the UK turning into a police state with little protest. We must stop this slide into authoritarianism,” she said.
Last month, two well-known British Muslim charities, the Muslim Charities Forum and the Birmingham based Islamic Help lost their government grants after being accused by the Department for Communities and Local Government of being linked to terrorist groups.
Both organizations say they were “surprised, dismayed and angered” by DCLG’s decision, which they insisted were based on “unfounded allegations.”
‘Snoopers’ Charter’ essential to counter terror threat – Home Secretary
RT | January 14, 2015
UK Home Secretary Theresa May has given her full support to the Communications Data Bill, colloquially known by its critics as the Snoopers’ Charter. She claims without it security agencies are unable to fully protect the public from terrorist attacks.
Giving her response to the Paris attacks in the House of Commons on Wednesday, May said it was imperative that surveillance agencies were able to intercept communications “where it is necessary and proportionate to do so” to monitor terrorist activity.
She also outlined further security measures put in place prior to and following the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
May acknowledged that during the time of the attack the government was reviewing the bill, and said that without the immediate implementation of the bill the security forces’ power was diminishing.
“Every day that passes without the proposals in the Communications Data Bill, the capabilities of the people who keep us safe diminishes,” she said.
“This important legislation will strengthen our powers to disrupt the ability of people to travel abroad to fight, and control their ability to return here … In particular, it will allow the relocation of people subject to Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures to other parts of the country.”
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg reaffirmed his party’s opposition to the bill on Tuesday. He claims the powers in the bill would “cross a line” and said privacy was a “qualified right.”
The LibDems made a move to block the bill in 2012, with Clegg saying no government would be able to store people’s personal correspondence while he was in power.
May used her speech in the Commons to reinforce the importance of the measures, saying the lack of cross-party consensus was hindering the implementation of the bill.
She further said its label as a “snoopers’ charter” was a misnomer.
“This is not – as I have heard it said – ‘letting the government snoop on your emails.’ It is allowing the police and the security services, under a tightly regulated and controlled regime to find out the who, where, when and how of a communication but not its content, so they can prove and disprove alibis, identify associations between suspects, and tie suspects and victims to specific locations,” she said.
She added that “it was likely” that such data was used during the Paris shooting, and said it was entirely necessary that UK security organizations have access to this data to prevent similar attacks.
During her speech, the Home Secretary reiterated points made previously by Prime Minister David Cameron and other senior figures in the wake of the Paris attacks.
She said the UK’s terrorist threat level would remain “severe,” meaning a terrorist organization “could attack at any point… without warning.”
ACLU Challenges Law that Outlaws Speech Causing “Mental Anguish”
By Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley | AllGov | January 14, 2015
A new Pennsylvania law has been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for trying to stifle the speech of those who cause “mental anguish” with their remarks.
Lawmakers adopted the Revictimization Relief Act (pdf) after Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, delivered a recorded commencement address to students at Goddard College in Vermont, where he had attended college. Faulkner’s widow said at the time that the speech was an “outrage,” but there was no evidence she attended the address, nor was there any mention of the murder or Faulker’s widow in the speech. Nonetheless, Republican state rep. Mike Vereb, a former police officer, proposed the legislation last Oct. 2, saying Abu-Jamal was continuing to traumatize Faulkner’s widow. Gov. Tom Corbett (R), who lost a re-election bid a couple weeks later in a landslide, signed the bill an extraordinarily short amount of time later, on Oct. 21.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania contends the law amounts to a “Silencing Act” on free speech. “Laws designed to silence anyone, even people society may find disagreeable, are unconstitutional and bad for democracy,” Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. “This law reaches broadly, and could prevent innocent prisoners from seeking clemency, journalists from using sources to expose prison abuse and formerly incarcerated persons from speaking publicly.”
The ACLU was joined in the suit by journalists, news outlets and advocacy organizations, as well as four former convicts who fear the law will stifle their ability to speak publicly.
Abu-Jamal has become a cause célèbre for the right. President Barack Obama’s nomination of Debo Adegbile to be head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was blocked at least in part because Adegbile helped represent Abu-Jamal during his appeal.
To Learn More:
ACLU Lawsuit: PA Law To Silence Offenders’ Speech Violates First Amendment (by Andrew Staub, Pennsylvania Independent )
ACLU Calls PA ‘Silencing Law’ Prior Restraint (by Andrew Thompson, Courthouse News Service )
Goddard Commencement (pdf)
If It’s Okay that John Roberts Defended a Mass Murderer, Why was Debo Adegbile Rejected by the Senate for Defending a Cop Killer? (by Steve Straehley, AllGov )
Saudi Arabia Adds 5 Years to Human Rights Lawyer’s Prison Sentence
Al-Akhbar | January 13, 2015
A Saudi judge has sentenced a prominent human rights lawyer to an additional five years in jail, after he refused to show remorse or recognize the court that handed down his original 10-year term for sedition.
Waleed Abu al-Khair, founder and director of watchdog group Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (MHRSA), was sentenced last year to 10 years in jail on charges that included breaking his allegiance to King Abdullah, showing disrespect for the authorities and creating an unauthorized association.
The Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh also gave Abu al-Khair a five-year suspended sentence, fined him 200,000 riyals ($53,300), banned him from leaving the kingdom for a further 15 years after his eventual release, and shut down all his websites.
Abu al-Khair’s wife, rights activist Samar Badawi, said the court had decided on Monday to increase his sentence after an appeal by the public prosecutor, who had argued that the lawyer had failed to retract his views or express remorse over them. The judge accepted the request and increased the sentence to 15 years of imprisonment.
Badawi said her husband, who is 35, had long objected to the tribunal set up in 2008 to try terrorism suspects. It has since been used to send rights campaigners to prison.
“Waleed sees this court as lacking basic international standards for any tribunal and had objected to trying even terrorists in it, let alone rights activists,” she said.
Abu al-Khair has also been critical of a Saudi anti-terrorism law passed in early 2014, which is widely seen by activists as a tool to stifle dissent.
The anti-terrorism law says terrorist crimes include any act that “disturbs public order, shakes the security of society or subjects its national unity to danger, or obstructs the primary system of rule or harms the reputation of the state.” … Full article
Israel: ‘Je Suis Hypocrite’
By Rasha B. Foda • SHAREverything • January 12, 2015
It is no small irony that the West, who now so vociferously speak against the so-called “intolerance of Islam” (while practicing their own censorship), should seek comfort and support from Israelis, of all people, who now too eagerly sing the hymns of free speech, while being one of the most egregious perpetrators of violence against journalists the world has ever known. Indeed, last year alone, Israelis achieved the dubious honor of being named the world’s second most lethal state against journalists, according to the watchdog Reporters Without Borders. And that’s no small accomplishment given that thanks to ISIS, only war-torn Syria beat Israel, and apparently only because Syria is engulfed in armed conflict all year round, whereas all 15 journalists killed by Israel in 2014 (only 7 of which Reporters counted as having been killed on duty) were killed during the 50 days of Operation “Protective Edge.”
So basically, Israel is second only to ISIS, who they could have beat had their Operation against Gaza lasted a little longer. Meanwhile, israel never did anything to punish the IDF soldier who killed Welsh cameraman, producer, and director James Miller almost 11 years ago.
The documentary which Miller was making on the day of his death (Death in Gaza, released by HBO in 2004) depicts Miller and his colleagues leaving the home of a Palestinian family in the Rafah refugee camp after dark, carrying a white flag. They had walked about 20 metres from the veranda when the first shot rang out.[15] For 13 seconds, there was silence broken only by Shah’s cry: “We are British journalists.” Then came the second shot, which killed Miller. He was shot in the front of his neck.[15]
That is one strange bedfellow to choose in championing the cause of free speech for journalists.
‘Thought police’: Academic freedom threatened by anti-terror bill, MPs warn
RT | January 12, 2015
Universities should be exempted from new counter-terrorism laws because they will ‘restrict’ freedom of speech, the government’s human rights watchdog has said.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights said government plans to make universities legally obliged to refer suspected would-be terrorists to the authorities would undermine academic freedom.
Under the bill, Home Secretary Theresa May would be given authority to force universities to ban speakers who are considered “extremist.”
The warning comes before the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill’s second reading in the House of Lords on Tuesday.
May’s bill, introduced to Parliament in November last year, is likely to receive boosted support in the wake of the terrorist attacks in France last week, which left 17 people dead.
Committee members are concerned about a legal duty that would require universities to refer students at risk of becoming terrorists to external anti-radicalization programs.
Universities would also be required to ban ‘extremists’ from speaking on campuses.
Parliament’s human rights watchdog, made up of MPs and peers, says it is “concerned about the implications for both freedom of expression and academic freedom as a result of the applicability of the proposed new duty to universities.”
Failure to comply with the new duties would result in direct intervention by the secretary of state, and “ultimately, a mandatory court order backed by criminal sanctions for contempt of court.”
The committee also argued that terms such as ‘extremist’ are ambiguous.
“Broad terms such as ‘extremist’ or ‘radical’ are not capable of being defined with sufficient precision to enable universities to know with sufficient certainty whether they risk being found to be in breach of the new duty.”
Dr Hywel Francis, Labour MP and chair of the committee, said: “As open and rigorous debate about ideas is itself one of the most powerful tools in the struggle against terrorism, and the extremism which often breeds terrorism, this is surely counter-productive.”
Martin Hall, former vice-chancellor of the University of Salford, also voiced opposition to the proposed bill, calling it “draconian.”
Writing in the Times Higher Education on Thursday, Hall warned that such legal obligations on universities could “be used against opponents of fracking, or animal rights activists, or anti-nuclear movements, or any radical opposition to the status quo.”
“There is a danger of us being turned into a thought police,” he added.
Hall also cautioned against what he sees as a disproportionate response to terrorism by the state.
“Given that the 2011 census recorded 2.7 million Muslims living in the UK and that the Home Office is currently concerned about 500 individuals, there is a question of effectiveness and proportionality.”
The warning by the Joint Committee on Human Rights comes as Prime Minister David Cameron says he will re-introduce the ‘snooper’s charter’ bill if the Tories win the general election in May.
Speaking to ITV News on Sunday, he said: “We cannot allow modern forms of communication to be exempt from the ability, in extremis, with a warrant signed by the home secretary, to be exempt from being listened to.”
The Draft Communications Data Bill would require internet and mobile phone companies to maintain records – but not the content – of customer’s internet browsing history, email correspondence, phone calls and messages.
It was previously blocked by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the grounds it would infringe on people’s right to privacy.
READ MORE: Military intelligence get £100m anti-terror fund, hunt ‘self-starter’ extremists – Osborne
Four Charged with Violating Utah’s “Ag-Gag” Law
By Ken Broder | AllGov | January 11, 2015
Four Californians stopped in Utah for taking pictures of agricultural buildings last September are apparently the first non-residents to be charged with violating the state’s controversial “ag-gag” law.
It has been against the law in Utah since 2012 to photograph agricultural operations, including the mistreatment of animals. Utah and a half a dozen other states have enacted laws to crack down on animal rights activists and others who have documented cruel and unsanitary conditions around the country.
The four, members of the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), were each charged with one count of misdemeanor criminal trespass on agricultural land and agricultural operation interference, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune. They said they were aware of the ag-gag law and were filming a documentary tracing pigs’ journey from Utah to a Los Angeles slaughterhouse.
Sarah Jane Hardt, one of the defendants, told the Tribune they planned to legally record events at the Circle Four pig farm from vantage points on public property, not surreptitiously. But someone ratted them out and deputies handed them citations. The other three charged are Robert Penney, Harold Weiss and Bryan Monell. Circle Four is owned by a Chinese company, the Shuanghui Group.
A lawsuit (pdf) challenging the statute as unconstitutional was filed in July 2013 by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and others. One of the plaintiffs, Amy Meyer, was arrested five months earlier after she used her cellphone to record images while on private property next to a slaughterhouse.
One of the pictures was of a sick cow being pushed by a bulldozer. The charge against her was dismissed after three months. Will Potter at Green Is the New Red says that the two Utah cases are the only ag-gag enforcements, nationally.
The Utah law defines four activities that are used by whistleblowers to uncover illegal behavior as, themselves, illegal: recording an image or sound without the operator’s permission; gaining “access to an agricultural operation under false pretenses;” asking for a job at a place for the purpose of making recordings; and making a recording while trespassing.
The lawsuit says the statute threatens groups like PETA as well as the investigators and whistleblowers they support:
“These statutes have the effect of criminalizing undercover investigative activities targeting agricultural operations, as well as the planning and assistance of such activity, thereby making the investigations and the journalism surrounding such events virtually impossible.”
The format for Utah’s ag-gag law was drafted in 2002 by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded conservative political organization that brings lawmakers and lobbyists together to draw up model legislation that can be adopted in multiple venues.
To Learn More:
California Activists Charged under Utah’s “Ag-Gag” Law for Photographing Pig Farm (by Jessica Miller, Salt Lake Tribune )
4 People Prosecuted Under #AgGag Law for Photographing Factory Farm from the Road (by Will Potter, Green Is the New Red)
Judge Won’t Toss Suit Challenging Utah’s “Ag Gag” Law (by Marissa Lang The Salt Lake Tribune )
An Overview of “Ag-Gag” Laws (by Jeff Zalesin, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press)
Animal Rights Groups Sue Utah over Law Criminalizing Undercover Photography of Farm Abuse (by Matt Bewig, AllGov )
Animal Legal Defense Fund, et al v. Governor Gary R. Herbert and Attorney General Josh Swallow (U.S. District Court District of Utah Central Division) (pdf)


