Newsletter No 337

                                                                               ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                    July 2007
                                                                  No 337

Think on these things - a preamble :

Jacques Barzun: Culture High and Dry

By now the word culture has been used with so many different meanings that its use creates in the alert reader a degree of confusion. The anthropologists started the trouble by using culture to mean all the modes of belief and behaviour of a tribe or people. The word society was available, but it looked as if pre-empted by the sociologists; the younger science wanted a word of its own. From the anthropologists the public picked up the word culture in its overarching meaning, and then proceeded to reapply it for various purposes. For example, the artist is >>conditioned by his culture<< - meaning social circumstances; he also fights against his culture – meaning certain beliefs and mores. Again, culture – meaning social restraint – makes neurotics—they are the ones who can’t fight back. Not long after such twists and turns the term culture began to split like the atom, and we have had to cope with the two cultures, the counterculture, ethnic culture, and any number of subcultures. Culture now is a chunk of social reality you like or dislike.

In the present discussion I mean by culture the traditional things of the mind and spirit, the interests and abilities acquired by taking thought; in short, the effort that used to be called cultivation—cultivation of the self. This original meaning, as used, say, by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy, is obviously a metaphor. It is based on agriculture—the tilling of the soil, planting of seeds, and reaping a harvest of nourishing things. We still acknowledge that meaning when we use the phrases >>a man or woman of culture,<< >>a cultivated person.<< The implication is that the raw substance of the creature has been turned over, ploughed, and seeded with good germs, and in such a way that the potentialities of both the human being and what has been implanted are visible and usefully realized.

Since culture is no longer clear, why not simply say >>the educated man or woman<<? The answer is that the word educate has been just as badly tossed about as the other. No need to give a parallel account of its tribulations. Today anybody with a diploma from any institution calling itself educational is counted among the educated, while the disparate doings of our elementary and high schools are also called education. The difference between instruction and education has been forgotten, and it is usual, commonplace, to hear people say that in this or that school or college, students are given and education.

My concern, then, is with something other than culture and education as these terms are bandied about. Culture and education are qualities found in persons who have first been taught to read and write and then have managed, against heavy odds, to cultivate their minds, to educate themselves. In every generation persons are born with the desire for this kind of exercise, just as others are born with true that many others, if encouraged, can develop these same desires and become, in their measure, athletic or cultivated or both.

If for any reason we are curious about this component of civilization—of present or past civilizations—we try to guess at the number of such people compared with the size of the population, and we look into the institutions that serve the various interests called cultural. For it is evident that when the contents of culture have been garnered over many centuries, no individual—indeed, no generation of individuals—can possess the whole heritage, much less transmit it without loss or distortion. Special guardians and repositories are needed; hence libraries, museums, opera houses, and other groupings for the accumulation of cultural works, the continuity of cultural enjoyment, the facilitation of cultural production.

As the years pass, there is more and more cultural stuff to house, classify, docket, consult, and teach—let alone discover, remember, and enjoy. Today in the Western world we stand on top of half a millennium of unbroken cultural creation and preservation, and we keep adding large amounts of kindred material from other civilizations, plus the steady accretion of rare discoveries from the remote past: we now have a hymn from the Babylonians, ancient Egyptian love lyrics, paintings from Cro-Magnon caves. No doubt exploration under the sea will shortly tell us the words of the song that the sirens sang to Ulysses.

Anybody would say outwardly we handle this growing treasure with great efficiency and profound respect. The nineteenth century established both the cult of art and the passion for history. So we collect everything and, in the professional jargon, >>make it available.<<

Nor is our concern with culture all retrospect and antiquarianism. We believe in encouraging the modern and the young. Amateur music, painting, theatricals, poetry readings, and writing workshops thrive all over the land, thanks not only to natural desire but also to private and public money. It would seem that this century of wars and massacres and failing powers of governance is redeemed by a high degree of true culture.

Yet I venture to think that in the qualitative, honorific sense, culture—cultivation—is declining. It is doing so virtually in proportion as the various cultural endeavours—all this collecting and exhibiting and performing and encouraging—grows and spreads with well-meant public and private support. The reason is not merely that the very abundance tends to distract attention, to leave no time for digesting and meditating upon the experience, though that is an important drawback of the glut. There is a deeper reason, which can be put in one word: self-consciousness. … the expert takes a little subject for his province—and remains a provincial all his life.

Swiss president Micheline Calmy-Rey (picture) is believed to have made the offer to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Jalili during a meeting in Berne in December 2006 when Calmy-Rey was then the foreign minister of Switzerland.

BERN (EJP)---A European Jewish leader has written to Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey demanding she withdraws a reported offer to host a Conference on ’Selective Perceptions of the Holocaust’.

Calmy-Rey is believed to have made the offer to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Jalili during a meeting in Berne in December 2006 when Calmy-Rey was then the foreign minister of Switzerland.

The meeting was revealed by Zurich-based daily Weltwoche in a report last week.

Weltwoche claimed to possess a confidential document detailing a Calmy-Rey’s proposal to Iran. According to Weltwoche the meeting took place around the same time as a Holocaust Denial conference was being held in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

Withdraw or deny

In a letter to Calmy-Rey, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, noted that "the coordinator of the Tehran conference – Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki – admitted at the World Economic Forum in Jordan last month that he acknowledged the reality of the Holocaust but that he had aimed to politically embarrass the West to serve his objectives in the Middle East."

Samuels continued, "Madam President, if you, indeed, made this conference proposal, Switzerland has in one move compromised its status of neutrality. "You have, thereby, served the Iranian political agenda, encouraging the most extreme rejectionists of any hope of Middle East peace, and offered a platform for every neo-Nazi and antisemitic Holocaust denier."

The Centre urged the President "to publicly deny or withdraw this outrageous proposal, and to apologize for its offence to all survivors of the Holocaust and the memory of its victims."›

Swiss president Micheline Calmy-Rey

Mittwoch, 30. Mai 2007
Schweizer Griff ins Fettnäpfchen
Holocaust-Seminar mit Iranern?

Die Schweizer Außenministerin Micheline Calmy-Rey hat Iran offenbar ein Treffen zum Thema Holocaust vorgeschlagen. Wie die Züricher "Weltwoche" berichtet, ist die Idee am 21. Dezember 2006 bei einem Besuch des iranischen Vize-Außenministers Said Dschalili in Bern "geboren" und in einem Dokument mit dem Vermerk "Vertraulich" festgehalten worden. Das Papier liegt der Zeitung nach eigenen Angaben vor. Danach soll das "Seminar zur unterschiedlichen Perzeption (Wahrnehmung) des Holocausts an einem der Genfer Zentren" stattfinden.

Der Seminar-Vorschlag zur "unterschiedlichen Wahrnehmung" des Holocausts erwecke den Eindruck, als gäbe es in Bezug auf den Massenmord an den Juden tatsächlich Interpretationsspielraum, bemerkt die "Weltwoche" dazu. Sowohl der iranische Präsident Mahmud Ahmadinedschad als auch andere Vertreter der iranischen Regierung haben den Genozid an den Juden wiederholt in Abrede gestellt.

Unter dem Nazi-Regime wurden sechs Millionen der damals 15 Millionen Juden ermordet. Die Schweiz ist eines von weltweit sechs Ländern, in denen das Leugnen des Holocausts verboten und unter Strafe gestellt ist. Selbst das Relativieren des Völkermordes ist in der Schweiz strafbar.

In einer Stellungnahme gegenüber der "Weltwoche" betont Calmy-Rey, das Außenministerium habe in dem vorgeschlagenen Seminar den Iranern "unmissverständlich" klar machen wollen, "warum der Westen die Wahrnehmung des Holocaust in Teheran nicht akzeptiert".

Der Vorfall dürfte in Israel einigen Wirbel verursachen. Der Seminar-Vorschlag Calmy-Reys wird von jüdischen Kreisen als naiv und gefährlich bewertet. "Wer mit Holocaustleugnern diskutiert, nimmt sie nicht nur ernst, sondern gibt ihnen auch eine Plattform, auf der sie ihre Geschichtsfälschung ausbreiten können", sagt ein Diplomat in Jerusalem. Abraham Foxman von der amerikanischen Anti-Defamation League (ADL) meint: "Wenn Calmy-Ray einen derartigen Vorschlag gemacht hat, schuldet die Schweizer Regierung allen Holocaust-Überlebenden eine Entschuldigung."

Von Ulrich W. Sahm, Jerusalem
Adresse: http://www.n-tv.de/808585.html

Correspondence: Match Point
by Alan Dershowitz & Noam Chomsky, TNR Online 1 July 2007

Noam Chomsky:

It is always intriguing to see just how far Alan Dershowitz will go in his efforts to conceal the fact that Norman Finkelstein exposed him as a vulgar and fraudulent apologist for Israeli human rights violations--carefully, judiciously, with extensive documentation ("Taking the Bait,", May 21).

Knowing that he cannot respond, Dershowitz is reduced to a torrent of slanders and deceit about Finkelstein's alleged misdeeds--which would, transparently, be irrelevant if there were a particle of truth to his easily-refuted charges.

The latest chapter in Dershowitz's efforts at self-protection is a campaign to undermine Finkelstein's tenure appointment, actions that are utterly without precedent, even reaching to an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. In an attempt to obscure what he is up to, along with other little fibs that I'll ignore, Dershowitz has now invented a new fairy tale: that he is following my course when I "led [my] own jihad" to deny Kissinger a faculty position at Columbia.

As reported in such exotic sources as the national press (e.g., The Washington Post, May 27, 1977), when Henry Kissinger left the government, the Columbia administration created a special endowed chair for him, apparently without faculty consultation or normal review procedures.

That elicited widespread opposition on campus, including a front-page denunciation in the student newspaper, protests signed by hundreds of faculty and students, and much more. My role in this was precisely zero, as Dershowitz knows, with one exception: I was invited by Columbia faculty members to speak at one of the events they organized. So much for the precedent Dershowitz invents to try to defend his disgraceful efforts to block Finkelstein's tenure.

Why does he drag me into this? For the same reasons as his Finkelstein rampage. I have been the target of a deluge of Dershowitz deceit and inventions since 1973, when I responded to his slanders about the Israeli League of Human Rights, even gross falsification of Israeli court records as he sought to defend serious violations of elementary civil rights that the court barred--exactly contrary to his claims, The Boston Globe, April 29, May 17, May 25, June 5, 1973, available online.

As always when his performances are exposed, Dershowitz knows he cannot respond, and makes no effort to do so, instead resorting to the device that comes naturally to him: a torrent of vilification and deceit, of which his >>Cambridge Diarist<< submission is the most recent. As of today.

Noam Chomsky, Cambridge, Massachusetts

***

Alan Dershowitz responds:

It is not surprising that Noam Chomsky would leap to the defense of his ideological soul mate Norman Finkelstein. He always supports the academic freedom of those with whom he agrees, never those with whom he disagrees. But even Chomsky cannot actually cite any scholarly contributions that Finkelstein--who admits that he has never had an article published in a peer-reviewed journal--has made. What passes for Finkelstein-scholarship is charging me, and virtually every other pro-Israel writer, with plagiarism for citing material to their original rather than secondary sources. Anti-Israel as well as pro-Israel scholars use the same citation method because it is the one preferred by the Chicago Manual of Style and other authoritative sources. For example, Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer repeatedly cite primary sources for material they found in secondary sources. I proved this and challenged Finkelstein to level the same charge against these anti-Israel writers as he did against pro-Israel writers. He refused, because his is not scholarship; it is propaganda.

Finkelstein's other claim to scholarship is to cite the conclusions of anti-Israel human rights organizations as proof that I and other pro-Israel writers must be wrong when we come to independently researched conclusions that are different. He never provides independent research and when asked why not, he replied: "Why should I interview people?"

Finkelstein's only contribution to public discourse is to coarsen the level of debate about the Middle East. In a recent speech, Finkelstein called for all "monsters and freaks in the White House and their collaborators in Tel Aviv to >>drop dead.<< When Irshad Manji, the Canadian Muslim dissident, was subject to death threats, Finkelstein supported those threats and wrote to a website that was collecting petitions against the death threat the following: >>Is there a petition supporting the death threats?<< He has also supported, he claims in jest, my assassination. Some of his followers did not understand his humor and have made threatening phone calls to me. He has called me a moral pervert, a Nazi and commissioned a cartoon showing me masturbating in ecstatic joy to dead Lebanese civilians.

That is what passes for scholarship on Planet Chomsky. I challenge Chomsky to cite specific pages of Finkelstein's writings that warrant the grant of tenure. Since Finkelstein writes only for popular audiences and never for scholarly ones, his work can easily be evaluated by lay readers. The pages please!

Chomsky characterizes my input into the Finkelstein debate as >>disgraceful.<< Yet he admits that he, as an MIT professor, spoke at a rally against Columbia University granting an academic position to Henry Kissinger. He claims that he was invited to speak by Columbia faculty members. I too was invited to write about Finkelstein by a DePaul faculty member. Moreover, my comments about Finkelstein have mostly been responsive to attacks by him against me. Would Chomsky deny me my freedom of speech when attacked? Has Chomsky ever remained silent in the face of criticism?

In addition to distorting the record with regard to Finkelstein's scholarship Chomsky distorts the history of my criticism of him. It began when he endorsed a notorious neo-Nazi Holocaust denier named Robert Faurisson by writing an introduction to his book. He also legitimated his falsification of history by characterizing Faurisson's fabrications--he claimed that Hitler's gas chambers never existed and that the Holocaust >>never took place<<--as having been based on >>extensive historical research<<.

Chomsky also legitimated Holocaust denial by writing that he saw >>no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust.<< Chomsky once told a group of people that he himself was >>agnostic<< on whether the Holocaust occurred.

When professor Robert Nozick, who was part of the group, confronted Chomsky with this outrageous statement following a debate at Harvard Medical School, Chomsky shoved Nozick, saying, >>How dare you quote an off-the-record remark I made to a small group at Princeton.<< He did not deny making the statement.

Chomsky then championed another anti-Semite, this time a Jewish one named Israel Shahak who has written that Jews worship the devil and that Israel is comparable to Nazi Germany. Shahak, like Chomsky, was a phony civil libertarian who believed in defending only the rights of the left, tried to hijack an Israeli human rights group.

Now Chomsky is once again championing an anti-Semite who has made a career out of rewriting the history of the Holocaust and denying the reality of Holocaust survivors. Chomsky and Finkelstein deserve each other. The DePaul community deserves better.

Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard and author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways.

Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at MIT and author, most recently of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

It was a real treat to be able to savour the diatribes between Chomsky and Deshowitz over the Finkelstein tenure. It became abundantly apparent that the vaunted >>peer review<< is little else but a magic wand put up in front of former - and present - misdemeanours and abominations of judaized sciences.

A consensus should emerge from within the realm of real science as to a boycott of >peer reviewed< science faction literature - which is ever more becoming an integral part of the >dumbing machine<. The Finkelstein Saga is living proof for Dershowitz & Co. not being willing - able? - to act within the scientific method as defined by Sir Francis Bacon.

They only ever plagiarize themselves and their paradigms. Come to think of it, what has that kind of >science< come up with? Novel things (as in real novelty / qualitative as opposed to quantitative / different as opposed to >more<) never sees the light of day.

Reports on innovative research fade away in the drawers of the >Elders of the Disciplines< where they have been put for safe-keeping - so that they cannot rattle the cages within which paradigmatic scientists are >kept<.

Whoever rummages inside the >peer reviewed< journals will discover all sorts of incredible - literally! - and mind-boggling nonsense, which is printed with alacrity so as to shore up the paradigms, set within the shifting sands of Platonic >idealism< - or is it ideology?

What did the paradigmatic sciences come up with during the 20th century that was of any real benefit to mankind and Gaia - the latter is probably more to the point! ?

Atomic bombs, Neutron bombs, computerized mass unemployment, zombified species, hybridized plants and animals that have provided sustenance to mankind - not to mention the >achievements< of the >humanities< - an oxymoron if there ever was one.

For example, Poppers >falsification< - not to mention his >propensity theory< which was surely the crowning achievement of >modern< thinking in terms of the goings-ons in the subatomic realm - leg-irons for real thinking, just as the >participant knowledge< of Habermas makes idiots out of anybody not capable - or willing? - to use the arcane language of those who think that science is an activity that discovers truth only to bury it deeper in fancy terminology.

Really significant results of historical research would necessitate >history< to be re-written for most periods. But that will never be because it would reveal history - as written in the books one has to have read - is little else but an endless string of lies and things not mentioned. Should it really become known that the horrid tales that are written regarding the >history< of the 20th century are little more than stories concocted in sick minds, then the Zionist cabal could not go on to turn their possibilities into everybody else's necessities.

Right - it is much easier to send out the dog-patrols so as to seek out all scientific work that endangers the home-spun halo around the >GREATS< of science and toss it deeply into the septic tank of >unparadigmatic science<. But there it all ferments, and when will a revolt ensue from all this?

If there is no such revolt, then the academies should be de-funded and closed by the sovereign. As asked above, what >good< are >active denial< weapons - all weapons for that matter - they only enable those who have to keep their ill-gotten gains, what good are gene-manipulated - we should call them genetically perverted! - species and concepts like >collateral damage<? This sick verbiage is ample proof for the uselessness of what emanates from academia these days.

I wait for the hysterical comments of mental castrates and mental pygmies who consider this a demented rave. My salute to Norman Finkelstein and all those in academia who have the raw guts and brawn, not to mention brain, to oppose the rabbinical / talmudic nonsense that controls us all!

***

German

Aus dem genüßlichen Briefwechseln von Chomsky und Dershowitz wird endlich einmal deutlich, daß >Peer Review< eigentlich nur sicherstellt, daß vergangene - und gegenwärtige - Schwindlereien - und Schweinereien- der judaisierten >Wissenschaften< nicht aufgedeckt werden. Es sollte sich ein Konsensus der wirklichen Wissenschaftler der Welt bilden, die >peer reviewed< Schundromanproduzenten dieser Welt - sie sind ein integraler Teil der globalen Verdummungsmaschine - einfach zu boykottieren.

Die Finkelstein Saga ist der schlagende Beweis dafür, daß Dershowitz & Co. von wissenschaftlicher Methode rein gar nichts halten und nur von sich selber immer abschreiben..... wozu eigentlich >wissenschaftliche< Forschung? Wirklich neue Dinge sehen sowieso nie das Licht des Tages und Berichte über sie vergilben in den Schubladen der Weisen der Disziplinen. Wer in >peer reviewed< Journalen sich umtut, wird viel haarsträubenden Unsinn finden .... der aber mit Freuden gedruckt wird, wenn er die morschen Paradigmen aufrecht erhalten kann.

Was haben >die Wissenschaften< im 20. Jahrhundert denn wirklich >gebracht<? Atombomben, Neutronenbomben, computerisierte Massenarbeitslosigkeit, zombifizierte natürliche Sorten, hybridierte Nutzpflanzen und - Tiere ..... von den >Leistungen< der Humanwissenschaften sei gar nicht erst gesprochen: Poppers "Falsifizierung" wie auch seine >Propensitaetstheorie< sind ebensolche geistige Fußangeln wie Habermas's Forderung nach >participant knowledge<. Wirklich signifikante Ergebnisse historischer Forschung nötigten dazu die "Geschichte" der Welt über weite Strecken neu zu schreiben; damit es dazu ja nicht kommt >wo kämen wir denn da hin, wenn einmal bekannt würde, daß die >Geschichte< - so wie sie in den Lehrbüchern - Leerbüchern? - steht - nur eine endlose Aneinanderreihung von Lügen und >Auslassungen< darstellt? Wenn sich einmal zeigen täte, daß die Schauermärchen die über das 20. Jahrhundert propagiert werden nur eine Fortsetzung schon seit anbeginn der Geschichtsschreibung - Schreibung von Geschichten...- üblicher Unsinn sind, dann könnte sich der zionistische Kabal nicht mehr seine Möglichkeiten aus unser aller Notwendigkeiten konstruieren.

Eben - da ist es einfacher die Hundestreife auf den Weg zu schicken, jegliche neuen Forschungsergebnisse die den Glanz der selbstgestrickten Heiligenscheine der "Größen" der Wissenschaften verminderten einfach in der Versenkung von als "unparadigmatisch" verdammter Forschung verschwinden zu lassen. Wenn nicht bald sich eine Revolte in den Akademien ereignet, dann sollten diese vom Souverän zugesperrt werden. Denn - wie gesagt - zu was sind denn >active denial weapons<, genmanipulierte - besser wohl: genpervertierte - Sorten und Konzepte wie >Kollaterale Schäden< - eine der Glanzleistungen der Schreiberlinge der >Zeitgeschichte<.... - den wirklich >gut<?

In Erwartung entrüsteter Proteste von geistigen Kastraten / Lilliputanern verbleibe ich mit herzlichen Grüssen aus Batam,

Fried Tischler

***

Dr. Siegfried E. Tischler –

setex01@yahoo.com

Visiting Professor - Ethics & Science

Iran’s December 2007 Holocaust Conference succeeds in generating on-going world-wide discussion

-----Original Message----

From: andrew Douglas andrewjdouglas@gmail.com

Sent:Tuesday,5 June 2007 3:01 AM

To: info@adelaideinstitute.org

Subject: Hello from Canada

Hello Dr. Töben:

A thousand apologies for waking you last night ... I assumed I was dialing a business number and no one would answer after hours. Again, sorry.

As you're certainly aware, the Holocaust Conference has generated an unbelievable amount of controversy, and it continues here in Canada as a result of a newly-published treatise written by Shiraz Dossa, who defended his attendance at the conference. I have a few questions that I'm hoping you can answer.

Did the Iranian Institute of Political and International Studies foot the bill for the conference's speakers and attendees? Were the speakers all invited, or did some or all come of their own accord? If you were invited, could you send me along a copy of the invite? I'd like to see what it looked like and what the invitation said.

How much information did you have prior to your attendance to the conference? Did you know who would be speaking and about what?

On a more personal note, did you have any relations with Shiraz Dossa while at the conference? If so, what where they? What did you talk about? Did you find him congenial?

Also..I already asked you but I just wanted to clarify..Did the Adelaide Institute have any official affiliation with the conference?

Thank you so much for your time, and I hope you managed to get back to sleep last night.

Regards,

Andrew

---------------------

5 June 2007

Dear Mr Douglas

Thank you for your interest in the matter - and never mind about that wake-up call of this early morning. At regular intervals I receive calls on my mobile and landline around this time - but the content of such calls is abuse and death threats. It comes with the territory, hence my initial hesitation when I answered the phone and found you actually wanted to engage in a conversation, something that I do not shy away from.

To your interest in the Teheran Holocaust Conference - permit me to state the following:

1. The conference was attended by a wide spectrum of individuals and the >Revisionists< made up a larger vocal part of that spectrum. If you view http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/2006December/contents_prog_pics.htm you will notice that Shiraz Dossa was not included in this gallery.

2. If you go to

http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/2006December/contents_program1.htm you will note that I do not have a photo of Dr Dossa who on the first day was in the second group of concurrent presentations. I may have to ask about and get a photo of this session's speakers.

3. I have caught up with the Dossa controversy and am featuring it in our newsletters –

http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/newsletters/n334.htm

4. IPIS was responsible for organising the conference.

5. All speakers were invited to attend, and a number of US-based Revisionists did not attend because they feared government retribution on account of Iran being an enemy state with which there is no diplomatic connection, though Iran does have a Permanent Interest representative in Washington.

6. The conference was open to speakers and to participants, and as some scheduled speakers could not attend, some participants filled these gaps.

7. As I sensed something was afoot with my attending the conference from the side of Jewish Australians who have been on my back since 1996, I left almost a month before it began and thus never received the official Conference invitation. My intuition proved to be correct because on 5 December 2006 a Notice of Motion was heard in Sydney's Federal Court of Australia, which demanded I be arrested and placed in prison for contempt of court - see:

http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/LEGAL2006/Zionist.htm

8. That a conference was to be held in Teheran had been rumoured for a long time. I think if we recall how the proposed Beirut, Lebanon, >Holocaust-Shoah< conference in May 2001 was cancelled, on account of US pressure, by then Lebanese head, Hariri, Revisionists have been looking for an International venue of such magnitude elsewhere. That the Iranians offered more than what Revisionists desired was evident in the way the Iranians planned the conference and set the parameters. It was not a >Revisionist< conference alone, and the Torah True Jews would never have attended a >Revisionist< conference. What the >Holocaust-Shoah< believers in the Western >liberal-democratic< world misinterpreted on account of their fury and hatred against scientific research was the aim of the conference as reflected in the title: REVIEW OF THE HOLOCAUST: A GLOBAL VISION - http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/2006December/contents.htm The conference was a >Review< and thus was able to offer more than just the detailed research that Revisionists have been doing for over 40+ years.

9. I only knew what the various Revisionists would be talking about, and it surprised me to find that Malaysia has a fully-fledged Revisionist in Zaryani Abdurrahman whom I did not know - see:

http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/2006December/contents_prog_pics1.htm

10. I met all the individuals attending the conference but cannot specifically recall talking in any length with Dr Dossa.

11. Adelaide Institute did not have any official affiliation with the planners of the conference nor with the conference itself. It was an Iranian affair that transcended the purely >Revisionist< perspective. The conference was, indeed, a global affair.

12. As to your comment on the frenzy this conference generated in Canada, there is nothing unusual about Canada's frenzy on the >Holocaust-Shoah< issue. After all, its top government officials are directly responsible for sending one of its citizens, Ernst Zündel, to prison for seven years - all because he refuses to believe in the >Holocaust-Shoah< without anyone offering adequate scientific proof thereof! This is the scandal that the Dossa issue is fuelling and keeping aflame. Hence Dossa must be silenced, and no matter what anyone says, the Zündel affair is at the back waiting for justice to prevail.

13. I do not know your view on the >Holocaust-Shoah< matter, but if you are new to it, then just be careful because careers will be ruined. Australian Richard Krege, who had been working for the government's >Air Services Australia< in Canberra for almost ten years lost his job after returning from the Teheran conference. It's as brutal as that - and you can ask yourself why this is so. It has nothing to do with the usual labels Revisionists are given: >Hater<, >Holocaust denier<, >antisemite<, >neo-Nazi<, >racist<, >xenophobe<, and the latest >terrorist<. Also, what is happening to silence any form of criticism is that the concept FREE EXPRESSION is split into two: FREE SPEECH and HATE SPEECH, something that is obviously a nonsense. If you, Mr Douglas, are an old hand at this >Holocaust-Shoah< controversy, then you fall into the >either ignorant of the facts or a liar< category. There is no half-way position in this matter. I have taken position on this matter and investigated it - and I refuse to believe in the >Holocaust-Shoah< because it is an outright lie. As Professor Robert Faurisson stated: >>Show me or draw me the Auschwitz homicidal gas chambers<<. To date no-one has done this, and perhaps you would like to take up this challenge.

Sincerely

Fredrick Töben

The Explanation We Never Heard

Literary Review of Canada, LRC JUNE 2007

When Shiraz Dossa, a professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, got in touch with us back in April, we felt some shock, followed by acute curiosity. This gentleman had been the brief centre of feverish media attention last December, when he surfaced in Tehran as the only Canadian attending what was being called a "Holocaust-denial conference", supposedly organized at the behest of Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself and including among its attendees a number of notorious Holocaust deniers or sceptics, such as David Duke.

Four months later, Professor Dossa wanted to tell his version of the story, including the real purpose of the conference (not Holocaust denial), who organized it (not Dr. Ahmadinejad), who attended, and what he thought and felt about the all-out attack on him back home in Canada, particularly from The Globe and Mail and from his own university, St. FX. At the LRC we read his manuscript, which seemed to us a serious exploration of the right of academic freedom in Canada and who gets to exercise that right. After rigorous fact-checking that went on for a number of weeks, we agreed that the essay was ready for publication.

Academic freedom, like all freedom of speech issues, calls on thoughtful citizens to broaden their horizons. It's never individuals who are voicing mainstream or non-controversial thoughts - ideas we can all agree with - who find themselves on the wrong side of academic freedom debates. It is always individuals who are raising uncomfortable ideas that the majority would rather not hear who end up excoriated or denigrated in the media and who are left twisting in the wind by the institutions within which they work. Reading Shiraz Dossa’s essay gives us all the opportunity to confront some important and controversial ideas that go to the heart of our identity as a multicultural nation.

We hope you agree. Bronwyn Drainie, Editor, http://lrc.reviewcanada.ca/

A Canadian political scientist excoriated for attending what was widely labelled a Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran has retaliated with a blistering published attack on his university president and his colleagues for being illiterate Islamophobes.

Writing in the influential Literary Review of Canada, Shiraz Dossa, a tenured professor at Nova Scotia's St. Francis Xavier University, said that his academic integrity and academic freedom were grossly impugned by the university administration, an assault on his reputation that he said has yet to be remedied. He accused the president and chancellor of authorizing a "small Spanish Inquisition" to denounce him - a campaign he said was initiated by two Jewish professors and the Christian chair of the political science department.

Prof. Dossa also wrote that the attack on his reputation was launched by The Globe and Mail's editorial board and by columnists John Ibbitson and Rex Murphy, whom he described as being "intellectually just a cut above the Trailer Park Boys" and ignorant of the Middle East.

James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, likened the treatment of Prof. Dossa to the 1950s McCarthy period in the United States when academics and others were subjected to intense pressure not to attend events that were unpopular.

This is the first time Prof. Dossa has spoken out since the storm erupted over his attendance at the Tehran conference in mid-December.

His two-page essay appears in the issue of the LRC that will be posted today on its website, http://www.reviewcanada.ca

Although the monthly publication's circulation is small, it is widely read in the academic, journalistic, political and public-service communities.

In an interview, Prof. Dossa said he wrote the essay because he wanted to set the record straight and because he still hasn't received an apology from either St. FX president Sean Riley or chancellor Raymond Lahey, the Roman Catholic bishop of Antigonish where the university is located. He also said he has refused to speak to his department chair, Prof. Yvon Grenier, since December.

He wrote that the university administration uncritically accepted the Holocaust-denial label "concocted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center [a Jewish human-rights organization] and the [U.S.] Jewish Defence League and peddled by media outlets such as The Globe and Mail."

Prof. Dossa, a Muslim, teaches political theory and comparative politics at St. FX. His focus as a scholar has been on the Holocaust and its aftermath. He abruptly dismisses any suggestion that he is a Holocaust denier. Rather, he said, his interest has been in what use of the Holocaust has been made to promote Zionism - the right of Jews to a national homeland - and to support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

In both his essay and in a telephone conversation, he makes a compelling case for why he attended the two-day Tehran conference, titled "The Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision."

It was a conference for scholars in the global South, said Prof. Dossa, who wanted to examine the Holocaust and its significance unrestrained by the lenses through which it is viewed by the West, and "to devise an intellectual [and] political response to Western-Israeli intervention in Muslim affairs."

The global South generally refers to the nations of Africa, Central and Latin America and most of Asia.

He wrote in the LRC: "I was appalled by president Sean Riley's attack on my reputation and his spurious comments on the conference. In his Dec, 13, 2006, statement, he insinuated that the conference was bogus and that it revealed a 'deplorable anti-Semitism' that the 'St. FX community' found 'deeply abhorrent' and contrary to its 'traditions.' Riley left little doubt that I was guilty of sullying my school's reputation.

"Riley and Lahey have no scholastic expertise on Islam, Iran or the Holocaust. ... I believe they wanted to assure the white, mainstream Canadian community, including Canadian Jews, that 'Catholic' St. FX was on their side and that this desire far outweighed their obligation to defend academic freedom.

"Are Riley and Lahey at the helm of a university committed to the academic freedom of its entire faculty, which includes Muslims? Or is St. FX's hyped 'inclusiveness' only for Christians and Jews?"

The conference became controversial the moment it was announced by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Prof. Dossa readily concedes that the President's rhetoric about the Holocaust - particularly his questioning of its scale - "has been excessive and provocative."

The conference was organized by the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute of Political and International Studies, which is respected internationally and has run United Nations conferences in the past. More than 1,200 people attended.

There were 44 speakers and 33 papers presented - five of which were given by notorious Western Holocaust deniers.

The other presenters were scholars examining the Holocaust from a global South perspective.

Prof. Dossa said the presenters, himself included, were invited, but he said he had no idea in advance that Holocaust deniers were on the list. He said that, until his arrival in Tehran, he did not see an agenda, something he said is not uncommon for global South conferences.

He described the presentations by the Holocaust deniers as absurd. At the session Prof. Dossa attended where one of the Holocaust deniers spoke, the presentation was torn to shreds afterward by the largely Iranian audience.

He said he would not have attended a conference entirely of Holocaust deniers because it would have held no scholarly or intellectual interest for him. But a conference with five Holocaust deniers was of academic interest for him to see what kind of reception they'd be given.

James Turk of CAUT said: "In this case, there was an aggressive attempt based on very little information to denigrate Prof. Dossa and to vilify him."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070528.DOSSA28/TPStory/National

Georges Theil – a 67-year-old retired senior executive of a large state corporation and from 1998 to 2004 an elected community politician of the Rhöne-Alpes Regional Council – was sentenced in 2005 in Limoges and in 2006 in Lyon for openly engaging in revisionist activities.

The Limoges court case was about a few dozen copies of Theil's 2002 published autobiography Un cas d’insoumission – Comment on devient révisionniste, written under the pseudopnym Gilbert Dubreuil with a preface by renowned French Revisionist Robert Faurisson.

Theil has since published the book in English under his real name as Heresy in 21st Century France: a case of insubmission to the “Holocaust” dogma.

In the book Theil describes his intellectual journey through life beginning with his grandfather's death during World War One in Indochina. His grandfather had been sent there to train Tonkinese riflemen and to make good >Boche (German) killers< out of them. Next Theil was confronted with the death of his father, an engineer slain in unclear circumstances in 1944.

Theil relates how what started as an intellectual curiosity – or perhaps filial devotion – quickly changed into a well-grounded conviction that a gigantic global lie had been perpetrated about matters concerning historical facts of World War Two whose consequences are still with us to this day. These slanderous and criminal allegations of inexact >facts< has enslaved the Western World to such an extent that any pursuit and public expression of historical truth has been made illegal. In In France since July 14 1990 such questioning of historical facts is pursued as a criminal matter, while in some neighbouring countries, such as Austria, Belgium and Germany, it is still worse. The 2005 Limoges court of appeal sentenced Georges Theil for publishing his book to six months prison without prospects of gaining parole, and a €30,000 fine. As well, the court ordered that he pay €12,000 in damages to an individual plaintiff, who was a communist during World War Two, and to two >remembrance< associations.

In December 2006 the Cour de cassation - Superior Appeals Tribunal, France's highest court, quashed that conviction. As the statute of limitations for publications had not been applied the court ordered that the matter be retried. This is in spite of the fact that as early as 2003 the book was known to have been in circulation, as attested to by the text of an article in Rivarol, dated January 16, 2003. Nor did it matter that the 3 months statute of limitation had been extended to one year by the new >Perben II< law.

The 2006 Lyon case is closely linked to the 2005 Limoges case. In October 2004 two journalists from the local television station, TV8-Mont Blanc, were in the foyer of the Charbonnières regional council chambers. There they asked Georges Theil what he thought of local Front National head, Bruno Gollnisch's recent statement that the estimated number of French war-time victims of deportation was a matter for specialists, historians and researchers.

This off-the-record interview with Georges Theil and the two reporters also raised the matter of the >murder weapon - gas chambers< allegedly used for the genocide that official historians maintain occurred during World War Two. He explained how such slaughter was physically, chemically, logistically and architecturally impossible. Theil concluded that anyone who believed this official version would also believe that Germans had the diabolical capacity to achieve the impossible, i.e. they, the >Nazis< were >technical wizards<. It is like believing in Martians who have unimaginable technical capacities...

Theil's comments were broadcast on TV8 Mont Blanc and a few days later he was before the Lyon court where he was once more harshly dealt with. He was sentenced to another six months prison without any allowance made for parole, a fine of €10,000, an order to pay €4,500 in damages to each of nine >remembrance< associations that had joined their suits to the prosecution, and the obligation to pay for the publication of the judgment in two newspapers at an estimated cost of over €8,000.

The presiding judge in this case, like is colleague at Limoges, refused to enter into any discussion about the substantial matter before him. Nor was the manager of the television station prosecuted for having broadcast Theil's comments, i.e. he repeated the offensive allegations.

Finally, although it was being held under seal in the clerk’s office, it proved impossible to find and view the recording of the incriminating remarks!

This Lyon judgment has now been dismissed by the Cour de cassation, and so the six months prison sentence and fines stand awaiting execution.

Prison does not frighten Georges Theil because he is aware of what Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf are enduring.

However, the financial burden of having to pay over €100,000, not including legal fees, will ruin him and his family. It must indeed be acknowledged that, amongst our inquisitors, a deep contempt for historical exactitude holds sway, along with a desire to put those to death who refuse to submit.

Georges Theil has done nothing more than dare to write and speak out about the sufferings of our nations in the West and of the Palestinian people, which he deems intolerable in a civilised world. He has dared to do it, for an internal force, his own courage, orders him not to give in, not to resign himself, and to bear witness. It is a matter, in effect, of life or death for us. His sacrifice is that of us all, whether we like it or not.

Readers may express their sympathy and, henceforth, come to his aid by writing to the following address:

M. Georges Theil,

BP 50 38,

F- 38037 Grenoble Cedex 2,

France

gmtheva@yahoo.fr

His book in French is available from the above address for €13 per copy, including postage to all European Union countries (+ Switzerland and Norway). Likewise the English version, the price of which, postage outside Europe included, is €20 or $US25.

The ABC’s Media Watch is fighting claims of hypocrisy after its website published anti-Semitic comments mocking the Holocaust and claiming a Jewish conspiracy. The comments were published a day after the taxpayer-funded media watch-dog accused news outlets including The Daily Telegraph of publishing racist reader comments on their websites.

In a major embarrassment, the program is accused of the same conduct and faces attack from Jewish leaders and federal Labor MP Michael Danby after its viewers suggested >>Zionist groups<< had taken over the ABC. >>ABC is starting to show a disproportionate number of Jews in the places of power in the ABC,<< one viewer said on the Media Watch website. >>The only understanding I can make is that Media Watch carries the torch for Globalism and maybe even Zionist groups as they are known to push Hate Speech laws so they can’t be questioned themselves in crime.<< Media Watch also willingly published comments by another viewer slamming media outlets for the >>vilification of Muslims<< and claimed Islamic Australians were being treated in the same way as the Jews in Nazi Germany. >>The Muslims are used as scapegoats domestically, and internationally to defend the crime of the war in Iraq. They serve the same purpose as the Jews of Hitler’s Third Reich,<< the post said.

The comments were posted the day after the show took aim at The Daily Telegraph by gathering a tiny sample of racist reader comments, posted over an extended period, and holding them up as indicative of the site’s contents.

Melbourne MP Michael Danby has written to ABC managing director Mark Scott calling for Media Watch executive producer Tim Palmer to be stood down for the >>appalling<< incident. >>I feel compelled to write this letter to you because I believe Media Watch, the centrepiece of what should be the ABC’s weathervane of engagement with the media, including critics of the ABC, is now spearheaded by an individual who has a record of aggressive belligerence to criticism,<< he wrote. >>Mr Palmer, as executive producer of Media Watch, is ultimately responsible for the content of [its] website.<<

The comments also sparked outrage from NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff, who demanded an explanation from the national public broadcaster. >>Reasoned debate has a legitimate place in a democratic society. However, freedom of speech comes with responsibilities,<< he said. >>An openly racist statement has no place on a public broadcaster’s website – unless it is there to expose racism.<<

When asked about the racist comments, Mr Palmer told The Daily Telegraph: >>You’re easily shocked.<< While admitting the comments were inappropriate, he said Media Watch was >>caught by surprise by the sheer volume of emails to the site last week. Mr Palmer claimed the posts remained on the website for a >>few minutes<< before being taken down.

Editorial: Watchdog bitten – 25/6/07

Media Watch was bitten on its sanctimonious backside when it posted anti-Semitic remarks on its publicly-funded website after it disparaged the press – principally The Daily Telegraph – with a breathless expose of racist content on newspaper websites.

Typically, the program chose to highlight a miniscule sample of racist comments posted among the tens of thousands of level-headed contributions on our site every week. It deliberately focused on comments conveying anti-Arabic sentiment, ignoring those accusing Anglo-Australians of being rednecks, racists and fools.

Most damning of all, it failed to grasp that in the new world of internet publishing, where readers engage with each other, extreme voices at opposite ends of society’s divisive debates are drowned out by moderate and constructive voices in the centre. If you are going to deliver a parsimonious lecture, its best to get your own house in order first. Media Watch stands exposed. One could draw several conclusions from the program’s decision to publish anti-Semitic hate speech.

Perhaps it’s opposed to the vilification of Arabs, but has no problem with the harassment of Jews. Maybe the program doesn’t read the material it publishes online on its rest day after the rigours of airing a 15-minute program the night before.

By its own definition Media Watch plays — or should play— a special role in the Australian media landscape in that it abides by rules which the mainstream media is said to ignore. That is now the emptiest of boasts. It should not come as a surprise. The program has shown an obsessive bias against The Daily Telegraph — so much so it has launched an internal investigation into the problem after an informal complaint from this newspaper over one of its recent attacks. We expect nothing to come of this.

Anti-Semitism at 'worst level since 1936'

By Richard Holt, 13 June 2007

A Jewish peer has warned that anti-Semitism is at its worst level in Britain since he fled here from Germany in 1936. Lord Moser said he was particularly concerned about anti-Jewish feeling in Britain's universities. Addressing a House of Lords debate on anti-Semitism on university campuses, the crossbench peer said: "It is just over 70 years since I came to this country and I have to say that I've never been more concerned about the rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, including this country. "This is evident in many ways and among my greatest worries is what is happening on university campuses where there have been many examples of anti-Semitic outbursts and discrimination. "Leadership of the universities and the Government need to speak out in the strongest terms against such interference."

During the Lords debate there was cross-party condemnation of a proposal by the Universities and Colleges Union Congress to boycott Israeli universities. Baroness Morris of Bolton, for the Conservatives, attacked "a handful of lecturers who seem to have hijacked their union". She said the proposed boycott "makes us look, unfairly, biased and petty-minded and it plays into the hands of radical fanatics on campus. There is a time and a place for teenage gesture politics - this isn't it."

Lord Patten, the former Conservative education secretary, described the idea of a boycott as "entirely abhorrent - engagement is always better than exclusion".

Baroness Walmsley, a Liberal Democrats, also opposed a boycott, saying: "I abhor the idea of limitations on legitimate academic freedom within reasonable limits." Lord Adonis, the education Minister said: "The Government unequivocally deplores any proposed boycott. "A boycott is not only wrong in principle, undermining the integrity of relations between bona fide centres of learning but in practice its only likely effect would be to weaken the progressive forces within both Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/13/nmoser113.xml

Fredrick Töben comments: >>I oppose any form of boycott because this offends against the principle of free expression, and it adopts the method used by Holocaust believers to silence their critics.<<