LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE - BUT NOT FOR EVERYONE IN FRANCE!

The following item came from a Verso blog following on from a Shlomo Sand article in CounterPunch on 16 January 2015 after the recent events in France with Charlie Hebdo. At the end of the article was a link to this item from 3 December 2014, and the one article explains the other.

Shlomo Sand banned from speaking

By Rosie Warren / 03 December 2014

Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Land of Israel, The Invention of the Jewish People, and most recently How I Stopped Being a Jew,was this month prevented from speaking at the University of Nice.

The following is a statement from the UJFP, the French Jewish Union for Peace:

Already banned (effectively) from the Maison des Associations on Nice’s Place Garibaldi two years ago, Shlomo Sand is now silenced in the place where we would least have expected it: the university!

The UNIA (Université de Nice Inter-Âge) had planned a public lecture for Wednesday 19 November entitled ‘Actuality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’, organised and presented by Yvan Gastaut (professor of contemporary history) with Shlomo Sand, professor at the University of Tel Aviv, invited to come and speak. We learned on the 6^ththat this meeting had been cancelled – without any explanation.

What had happened, then? A technical problem at the venue? A participant falling ill, or being otherwise occupied?

No!

With a simple email dated 2 November (and all our citations come from this document), Mr. Roger Guedj, emeritus professor at the Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, warned the ‘leadership’ of the UNIA against the invite offered ‘to a questionable and widely-questioned historian on a particularly sensitive subject linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ and who ‘questions the creation of the State of Israel’.
Is the university not the proper place for controversy and debate? Alas! Mr. Guedj decided already: ‘lectures on current topics must be the object of consensus…’ In conclusion, he ‘hope[d] that it [would be] postponed, awaiting our leadership’s discussion of whether it is appropriate’. There was soon consensus at the UNIA… and this was put into action, with the meeting cancelled.

Two professors from the University of Nice, alerted to this, immediately expressed their indignation:
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond (extracts): ‘S. Sand’s theses are, certainly, the object of doubt, but that does not at all make him a “dubious” historian, and his academic position is testament enough to this…

No, Sand does not at all challenge the existence of the State of Israel, indeed he is an Israeli citizen… the UNIA has the vocation of developing (rather than doling out....) culture, and in a convivial atmosphere, I shoud hope; but I do not much believe in harmony, since culture is only alive through and in confrontations’.

André Tosel (extracts): ‘I know and have read this historian of great intellectual talent and moral courage. This decision silences and sullies the university world for which UNIA claims to stand. Intellectual life does not consist of giving your blessing or dodging the issue. The contradictions of history have to be taken head on, arguing loyally and with respect in the discussion of analyses, rather than being neutralised by the reigning moral order’s prejudices regarding what can be expressed.

 These latter, alas, are a speciality of Nice’s. The university body and the Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis must restore their intellectual prestige marred by this decision, repudiating and overturning it without delay!

The Zionists will not dictate their rewriting of history, in Nice or anywhere else!

Shlomo Sand is an Israeli academic who teaches at the University of Tel-Aviv –and he isn’t censored there – and is the author of many works of history including The Invention of the Jewish People and The Invention of the Land of Israel. The Zionists cannot forgive him for having questioned the founding myths of their ideology, namely the exile of the Jews and their return.

We can have disagreements with Shlomo Sand, as with any researcher. The Zionists have chosen to try to gag him. The meeting that was meant to take place at the Université de Nice Inter-Âge on 19 November was banned without explanation after the intervention of a professor from the Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, arguing that a lecture on the subject ‘Actuality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ would have to be the object of consensus, this not being the case for ‘such a dubious historian’.

Too much – it’s too much! The Israeli government has just committed acts against the Palestinian population that the Russell Tribunal on Palestine called war crimes, crimes against humanity and incitement to genocide. Israel society in its majority approves of these crimes, partly because it is worn down by an incessant propaganda that denies Palestinians their dignity and their rights.

We will not let those who support a criminal policy silence our voices. We salute the two Nice academics, Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond and André Tosel, who have protested against this attack on freedom of expression. Nice, whose mayor treats Roma people as ‘delinquents’ and banned Rachid Bouchareb’s ‘outlaw’ film, is a city where this freedom is under threat. Already two years ago, Shlomo Sand was forbidden from speaking in Nice. And in that same city in 2003, a meeting with Leila Shahid, Michel Warschawski and Dominique Vidal was also banned.

We can also recall the case of Stéphen Hessel, barred from speaking at the École Normale Supérieur in 2011, or the ‘Israel, Apartheid State’ conference banned at Paris VIII in 2012. The UJFP (French Jewish Union for Peace) denounces these attacks on freedom of expression, which serve only to cover up for the destruction of Palestine that is currently underway. It demands that Shlomo Sand be able to speak freely at the university.

UJFP-PACA

Translated from the French by David Broder. 

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CounterPunch Weekend Edition January 16-18  Suis Charlie Chaplin

A Fetid Wind of Racism Hovers Over Europe

by SHLOMO SAND

Nothing justifies an assassination, all the more a mass murder committed in cold blood. What has happened in Paris, the beginning of January, constitutes an absolutely inexcusable crime.

To say that involves nothing original: millions of people think and feel likewise on this account. However, in the light of this appalling tragedy, one of the first questions that occurrs to me is the following: in spite of the profound disgust experienced by the murders, is it obligatory to identify oneself with the victims’ actions? Must I be Charlie because the victims were the supreme incarnation of the ‘liberty of expression’, as the President of the Republic has declared? Am I Charlie, not only because I am a secular atheist, but also because of my fundamental antipathy towards the oppressive roots of the three principal Western monotheistic religions?

Certain caricatures published in Charlie Hebdo, that I’ve seen ages ago, appeared to me to be in bad taste; only a minority amongst them made me laugh. But isn’t the problem to be found there! In the majority of the caricatures on Islam published by the weekly, in the course of the last decade, I have discerned a manipulative aggro intended to further seduce the readership, obviously non-Muslim.

The reproduction by Charlie of the caricatures published in the Danish magazine seemed to me appalling. Already, in 2006, I had perceived as pure provocation the drawing of Mohammed decked in a turban in the form of a bomb. This is not so much a caricature against Islamists as a stupid conflation of Islam with Terror; it’s on a par with identifying Judaism with money!

It has been affirmed that Charlie, impartially, lays into all religions, but this is a lie. Certainly, it mocks Christians, and, sometimes, Jews. However, neither the Danish magazine, nor Charlie would permit themselves (fortunately) to publish a caricature presenting the prophet Moses, with kippah and ritual fringes, in the guise of a wily money-lender, hovering on a street corner. It is good that in the society these days called ‘Judeo-Christian’ (sic), it should no longer be possible to publically disseminate anti-Jewish hatred, as was the case in the not-too-distant past. I am for the liberty of expression while being at the same time opposed to racist incitement.

I admit to, gladly, tolerating the restrictions imposed on Dieudonné from expressing too far and wide his ‘criticism’ and his ‘jokes’ against Jews. On the other hand, I am positively opposed to attempts to restrain him physically. And if, by chance, some idiot attacks him, I will not be very shocked … albeit I will not go so far as to brandish a placard with the inscription: ‘je suis Dieudonné’.

In 1886, there was published in Paris La France juive of Edouard Drumont. And in 2014, the day of the assassinations committed by the three idiot criminals, there appears, under the title: Soumission [Submission], effectively Muslim France, of Michel Houellebecq. The pamphlet La France juive was a genuine bestseller by the end of the 19^th Century. Even before its appearance in the bookstores, Soumission was already a bestseller!

These two books, each in its own time, have benefited from sizeable and heated media coverage. There are, certainly, differences between them. Amongst other things, Houellebecq knows that, at the beginning of the 21^st Century, it is no longer acceptable to generate fear-mongering of a Jewish threat, but that it remains readily acceptable to sell books implying a Muslim threat. Alain Soral, less adept, has not understood the ‘rules’ and, for this fact, he is marginalized in the media – and so much the better! Houellebecq, on the other hand, has been invited, with much fanfare, to appear on the coveted 8 o’clock program (journal de 20 heures) of French public television, while his book is simultaneously responsible for the dissemination of the fear of Islam.

A bad wind, a fetid wind of dangerous racism, hovers over Europe: there exists a fundamental difference between challenging a religion or a dominant belief in a society, and that of attacking or inciting against the religion of a dominated minority. If, in the breast of ‘Judeo-Muslim’ [no less ridiculous than the Judeo-Christian label] society – in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf Emirates – there is a groundswell of protests and warnings against the dominant religion that oppresses workers in their thousands, and millions of women, we have the responsibility to support the persecuted protestors. Now, as one well knows, Western leaders, far from encouraging the would-be disciples of Voltaire and Rousseau in the Middle East, maintain their total support to the religious regimes the most repressive.

On the other hand, in France or in Denmark, in Germany or in Spain populated by millions of Muslim workers, more often forced into the worst jobs, at the bottom of the social scale, it is necessary to show the greatest prudence before criticizing Islam, and above all to not crudely ridicule it.

At the moment, and particularly after this terrible massacre, my sympathy goes to the Muslims who reside in ghettos adjacent to the metropolises, who are at considerable risk of becoming the second victims of the murders perpetrated at Charlie Hebdo and at the Hyper Casher supermarket. I continue to take as a reference point the ‘original Charlie’: the great Charlie Chaplin who never mocked the poor and the little-educated.

Moreover, and knowing that one’s writings always occur in context, how to not raise the fact that, for more than a year, so many French troops are present in Africa to ‘combat the jihadists’, when no serious debate has taken place in France on the usefulness or the damage of these military interventions? The colonial gendarme of yesteryear, who carries an incontestable responsibility in the chaotic heritage of [arbitrary] borders and regimes, is today ‘recalled’ to reinstall ‘law and order’ by means of its latterday neo-colonial gendarmerie.

France joins the military coalition in Iraq, beside the US military, firefighting pyromaniac, responsible for the chaos created in the region, and notably in the rise to power of the frightful ‘Daesh’. Allied with the ‘enlightened’ Saudi leadership, and other ardent partisans of the ‘liberty of expression’ in the Middle East, [France] shores up the illogical border carve-up that it had imposed a century ago according to its imperialist interests. It is summoned to bombard those who threaten the precious oil reserves whose product it consumes, without understanding that, in doing so, it invites the risk of terror attacks in the heart of the metropolis.

But, in fact, it is possible that this process is well understood. The enlightened West can’t possibly be the naive and innocent victim as it loves to present itself. Of course, for an assassin to kill in cold blood innocent and unarmed people it is necessary to be cruel and perverse. But it is necessary to be hypocritical or stupid to close one’s eyes on the particulars that have provided the foundations of this tragedy.

This is also proof of a blindness that we had better understand: this conflict will further escalate if we don’t all work together, atheists and believers, to open true ways of living together without hating each other.

Shlomo Sand is the author of How I Stopped Being a Jew, Verso, 2014.
In November 2014 Sand was denied the opportunity to talk at a University in France (seat of the liberty of expression). The UJFP summarises the affair here.
An earlier version of this article was published on the site of the Union Juive Française pour la Paix, and reproduced on Mediapart. Translated from the Hebrew by Michel Bilis; translated from Bilis’ French by Evan Jones.

 

 

 

WAITING FOR FAHD: GUANTANAMO PRISONER CLEARED FOR RELEASE 12 YEARS AGO.........

From Antony Loewenstein's web site on 16 January 2015:

The devastating cry of Guantanamo Bay inmate Fahd Ghazy

A powerful short film from the Centre for Constitutional Rights on Yemeni man Fahd Ghazy who has been imprisoned for 12 years. No crime. No guilt.
This is what causes terrorism and resistance:

ASYLUM SEEKERS AND AUSTRALIA - HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES WRIT LARGE!

There seems to be no bottom to the pit started being dug in 1992 by Paul Keating, prime minister of Australia at that time to incarcerate asylum seekers in Australia's concentration camp hell-holes around the country.

Since 1992 the position by successive politicians has been made worse and worse as they endeavour to outdo each other in their cruel treatment of human beings who are fleeing from their own hell-holes and who have now unfortunately landed in new hell-holes in another country.

Existing hell-holes and equivalent concentration camps have long been features of the indigenous landscape of Australia, so human rights abuses can now be spread out into areas unthinkable some years ago.

There may be terror attacks taking place all over the world, but Australia is guilty of terror attacks relating to torture and worse of human beings being incarcerated in camps even apartheid South Africa hadn't quite achieved in its years of horror.

Mind you, the Israelis are overtaking most of the world's oppressors with their treatment of Palestine and the Palestinians, but one horror does not excuse another horror, and, as used to be the old saying, two wrongs don't make a right!!

The latest appalling situation is taking place in the Manus Island concentration camp where news has managed to leak out of people sewing their lips together and swallowing razor blades -ffs!! What next - operating on themselves and removing their guts from their bodies while they are potentially still alive? Burning themselves to death? The potential horrors are endless and beyond contemplation.

Who is going to put a stop to it all - and when???

I certainly won't be living long enough to see it all come to an end with a just and humane resolution.

THE PERSECUTION OF DR PHILIP NITSCHKE

Generally speaking. most Australians live - or exist - somewhere between the 18th and 20th centuries. Not too many have progressed to be living in the 21st century, and even some of those who are edging in that direction sometimes just don't quite make it that far.

Human rights are very fragile and most so-called democratic governments pay lip service to the notion that they are practising democracies.

In Australia in 2015 we have the situation where the word euthanasia is unacceptable as a concept and the views and practices of one particular doctor are seen as a threat to the population at large - as if all of a sudden 23 million people are about to commit suicide!

Euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke opens appeal against Medical Board over registration

November 10, 2014 - smh

·                      

Julie-Anne Davies

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Appeal: Philip Nitschke's conduct is under scrutiny. Photo: Glenn Campbell

It seemed fitting that euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke should be fighting for his medical licence and his professional reputation in the town where he first shot to world attention.

 On Monday in Darwin, Mr Nitschke began his appeal  in the Northern Territory Civil and Administrative Tribunal against the decision by the  Medical Board of Australia to  suspend his registration after he admitted supporting a 45-year-old Perth man's decision to commit suicide.

The case was not about  voluntary euthanasia nor rational suicide but "a very precisely focused interim hearing into Mr Nitschke's conduct into the death of a man", Ms Lisa Chapman SC for the Medical Board of Australia told the hearing.

In emails between Mr Nitschke and Mr Brayley, Mr Nitschke chose to be registered as a doctor, Ms Chapman said.

"If he hadn't, the board would have no jurisdiction [to suspend his licence]."

Ms Chapman said the emails contained very specific information about various ways to commit suicide.

"The gas flow, where to buy the cylinders from. How to take the peaceful pill.

"He obtained scant information about Mr Brayley before he died."

Before  Monday's hearing, Mr Nitschke's barrister Peter Nugent told Fairfax the appeal as "the trial of a dangerous idea".

"It is a controversial subject," he said. "Mr Nitschke is a controversial figure.

"The views which he holds are not abhorrent, they're not out there, they are not even out of step with mainstream Australia's view."

On Monday afternoon the board conceded Mr Nitschke was not in a doctor/patient relationship with Mr Brayley.  

Fairfax understands that the board will argue it was forced to use its emergency powers to protect vulnerable suicidal people from Mr Nitschke and his "dangerous ideas". More seriously, the board is expected to tell the five-member panel, it had to act because Mr Nitschke possessed the means to transform  these ideas into action.

The hearing is set down for five days.  It is understood the board's lawyers will say that Mr Nitschke's euthanasia book, The Peaceful Pill Handbook, is a practical guide to different methods of suicide, and while banned in Australia it is freely available through the internet.

Further, it is believed the board will argue that Mr Nitschke updates e-book subscribers of overseas suppliers of the illegal drug Nembutal, and through his workshops advises people on end-of-life drugs.

Mr Nitschke told Fairfax the opportunity for people to choose to end their life needed to be "enshrined as an option".

"Individuals in a society must have the ability to make decisions over their own lives. Life is a precious gift and so we need to be able to fight for that option."

The hearing continues.

 
Euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke loses legal battle to practice medicine

January 7, 2015 - 5:07PM

Julia Medew

Dr Philip Nitschke. Photo: David Mariuz
Prominent euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke has lost a legal battle to protect his registration to practice medicine after a tribunal ruled he posed a serious risk to the public and could undermine confidence in the medical profession.
But Dr Nitschke has vowed to appeal the decision by the Northern Territory Health Professional Review Tribunal, saying doctors have to face the "harsh reality" that many people, including those who are not terminally ill, believe they have a right to end their own lives.
The tribunal ruled that the Medical Board of Australia's decision to use its emergency powers to suspend Dr Nitschke's registration last year was warranted. The suspension followed reports Dr Nitschke had supported Nigel Brayley, a murder suspect who was not terminally ill when he ended his own life last year. When Mr Brayley told him of his plans to end his own life, Dr Nitschke did not refer him to a medical practitioner.
In an appeal of the board's decision to the tribunal, Dr Nitschke argued he was not in a doctor patient relationship with Mr Brayley when they discussed end of life options and that people without a terminal illness could make a rational decision to commit suicide.
But in a strongly worded judgement, the tribunal said Dr Nitschke posed a risk to public health and safety because he interacted with large numbers of people considering suicide and his views might cause people to "follow the pathway to suicide believing it to be a pathway sanctioned by a medical practitioner and perhaps the medical profession generally".
It said his views may also mislead people about the values of doctors and undermine confidence in them.
In a written statement, Dr Nitschke said he was disappointed but not surprised by the decision which he was now appealing in the Darwin Supreme Court.
He said the tribunal's finding meant doctors were obliged to treat strangers they meet in a social setting, even if they are not in a state where they are permitted to practice medicine.
"A doctor who fails to do so is, in the view of the tribunal, a danger to public health and safety whose right to practice medicine must be suspended immediately," he said.
"The decision, if left unturned, creates a very dangerous precedent which applies to every Australian medical practitioner".
Dr Nitschke's barrister, Peter Nugent, said it was an error of law for the tribunal not to consider the "enormous body of medical literature addressing the issue of rational suicide". He expects the Supreme Court appeal to be listed for hearing in coming months.
Dr Nitschke said: "Voluntary euthanasia and rational suicide are very challenging issues for the medical profession.  It is cases such as this which will hopefully encourage the medical profession to face the harsh reality that the belief held by many elderly people, and some who are not, that no doctor has the right to tell them when they can or can't exit this life – can be rational and not a product of depression or mental illness."
"We might not like or agree with such decisions but they cannot be interpreted as meaning that person is depressed or mentally incompetent. Nothing could be further from the truth," he said.

AUSTRALIA IS THE DOORMAT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Successive Australian governments have, for at least the last 40 years, slavishly followed the United States of America into every adventure it has perpetrated in the name of democracy and world order.

Need one mention Iraq, Afghanistan, the middle east in general  and Palestine/Israel in particular?

As wars in these countries have "progressed from strength to strength" (irony intended!), human rights have continued to be disregarded more and more.

Think of Julian Assange, Bradley - now Chelsea Manning, Guantanamo Bay, torture, rendition, drones and everything illegal according to the International Criminal Court legislation, and think of the war horrors all these countries continue to be subjected to.

Think also of the foot soldiers who carry the burdens of the irresponsibilities of all our governments and think of the people we end up with as citizens - broke and destroyed and prone to suicide on an alarming basis day by day.

Then, while you are sitting and weeping and in despair, read the following items from "Courage to Resist" in the United States and ask yourselves why there aren't more organisations such as this around the world including Australia!

COURAGE TO RESIST

Free Chelsea Manning

GOOGLE AND MOZILLA - TWO ENORMOUS ORGANISATIONS AND NO HELP FROM EITHER!

Google owns this site and also controls most of the search engine done on my web pages.

In order to verify that I control my own web pages, I need to do some verification process controlled by Google.

Having followed their instructions to the letter, their response is that they are unable to verify my sites because they are unable to detect their own code site sent to me to use for verification!

This could be defined as going around in circles and disappearing up one's own fundamental orifice!

Mozilla has an email programme called thunderbird. Thunderbird gets updated from time to time. In some recent updates certain items were left out of an update but are supposedly available through a programme called add-on. The folder add-ons columns are available in linux, and I managed to download them, but as for installing them on my thunderbird installed programme, impossible!

Help from Google and Mozilla?

Impossible!

I have been trying for weeks but have not succeeded, and unfortunately not enough people look at this blog and post any comments, so I am wasting my time.

How do you verify your own web pages?

How do you install an add-on which won't install?

SEEMS TO BE BIG HOAX BY MAD ZIONISTS: AUSTRALIANS TO BOYCOTT ARAB AND IRANIAN GOODS?

 The following item arrived today by email. Since then I have been trying to get my mind around who these people are and what they are aiming at.

I have been around for a long time and during a great deal of that time I have been involved in political activities and reading a great deal about the politics of Israel and the middle east and all the Arab countries in the region.

Maybe I have never understood anything of what is going on in Palestine and Israel and the countries involved in the control of the areas in the region.

I am at a loss to understand what this boycott is about and why it has been thought by the people and groups involved that they will have any success with such a boycott. For starters it is Arab oil which keeps the world of commerce and industry going everywhere. Continuing thought lines from the flow of oil to the countries who use most of it or a great deal of it, surely no boycott of Arab countries and Iran will make any difference without including Israel and the United States in a proposed boycott and these two countries are hardly mentioned in the article.

I simply fail to understand what this is all about and I hope in the next few days that I will be enlightened by media releases and/or other article talking about the issues and countries involved in the proposal.

.......and a short while ago I found this and I am now wondering if this is all a hoax!!:

Anti-Israel Australian Jews now call for a Boycott of Iran and much of the Arab world

November 16, 2012 – 10:09 am49 Comments

This was published in Galus Australis and is two years old!

No more Iranian dates for the protagonists?

A press release received this week that readers might find amusing:

A new boycott campaign against the Arab world and Iran that will require the cooperation of every supporter of Middle East freedom has been launched by a group of outspoken Australian Jews, it was announced today by its prominent founder Antony Loewenstein, the well-known writer and peace activist.

“It is high time we exposed the crimes against humanity committed by the modern pharoahs of the Muslim Middle East.  Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Col. Moammar Gaddafi of Libya, who both enslaved their long-suffering peoples with 30-year dictatorships that are unprecedented in modern history, have now been ousted but reactionary regimes have taken power in their stead.  Meanwhile Algeria,  Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan are being ruled by  fascist thugs and usurpers who are massacring their own people ,” Loewenstein stated.

Speaking to hundreds of Muslim Australians in front of the Syrian Embassy, Loewenstein excoriated the Arab and Iranian regimes for plundering their countries of their wealth and depriving their people of their basic human rights. He particularly upbraided Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Iran for their entrenched system of apartheid against their Copt, Shia,Sunni, Christian and Kurd populations.

He also denounced the thousands of civilians recently bludgeoned and shot to death by the Arab and Iranian security forces in the streets of Homs, Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Teheran, Idlip, Manama, Damascus, Amman, Jeddah, Gaza City, Taiz and Sanaa.

“It is simply incomprehensible that these bloodthirsty governments are committing genocide against their own people,” he emphasized.

As a consequence, his new organization — Jews for Boycotting Arab and Iranian Goods (JBAIG) — will be demanding that all UN Human Rights Council members immediately cease buying petroleum, petrochemicals, plastics, cotton yarn and garments, rugs, fertilisers, majhool dates, figs, and sheet metal from these countries. In addition, all Australian firms with investments and joint ventures in these tyrannies will be pressured to divest their assets from them. Of greater import is our campaign for the Commonwealth government to halt its arms and high technology shipments to the Nazi-like governments of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

“We are confident that the international community – and particularly the Australian public – are prepared to support our initiative until the vicious dictatorships of the Arab Middle East and Iran are overthrown and their civilian populations are finally endowed with classical democracy,” Loewenstein affirmed.

“The welfare of the beleaguered Arab and Iranian people must be our number one priority,” he stated.

JBAIG co-founder Vivienne Porzsolt, a retired social worker from Sydney and long a crusader for the seething Arab masses, pointed out that the illegitimate Muslim government leaders of the Middle East are being targeted by her followers with arrest warrants should they step foot on Australian soil or seek medical or refugee asylum here. Under the international law of universal jurisdiction, war criminals and their genocidal ilk are liable to arrest upon the deposition of a citizen’s complaint before the Attorney General.

She emphasized that her group’s actions were in complete fulfilment of the treasured Jewish tradition of seeking justice for suffering humanity.  Moreover, it has the complete approval of her mentor, former NSW Greens MLC Sylvia Hale, one of the world’s leading opponents of Islamist tyrants.

“It is imperative that we act quickly to bring Assad and Ahmadinejad to the gallows,” Porzsolt urged, “just as Gaddafi and Osama Bin Laden were so speedily dispatched. Assad the butcher is also massacring the 440,000 Palestinians living in Damascus and Aleppo. These greasy rats should be torn limb from limb,” she declared to tumultuous applause.

Casting aside her life-time enmity towards Israel, Porzsolt pleaded with the Jewish state to invade Syria and Iran and wipe out their respective feudal ruling classes. ”Only such a humanitarian gesture can have the desired effect of strengthening the region-wide intifadas in these countries leading to the toppling of their authoritarian regimes and the implementation of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all the Geneva Conventions,” she posited.

“As for our myriad of friends among the general public, we sincerely hope they will be moved to embrace the boycott of Arab and Iranian goods to help liberate the oppressed Arab masses, ” Loewenstein and Porzsolt concluded.

This press release, sent in by Cy Geshticte, that we assume is intended as a satire, has been published in keeping with the spirit of Friday Funnies.

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 Australians to Boycott Arab and Iranian Goods

                                                 

 News Release         NR: 118,006    

For Immediate Distribution                    

 CANBERRA, 10 December (APR News Service)

 --  A new boycott movement relying on every supporter of Middle East freedom has been successfully launched by a group of prominent Australians, it was revealed today by its founders.               "It is high time we exposed the crimes against humanity committed by the modern pharoahs of the Muslim Middle East. Hosni Mubarak and Col. Moammar Gaddafi, who enslaved the long-suffering Egyptian and Libyan peoples with more than a 30-year dictatorship that is unprecedented in modern history have now been ousted, as has the Muslim Brotherhood leader M. Morsi, but democratic government is still not over the horizon.                

 Meanwhile Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan are being ruled by hereditary and reactionary usurpers who are massacring their own people ," stated former Foreign Minister the Hon. Bob Carr, author of the newly-released memoir Diary of a Foreign Minister.              

 Speaking to hundreds of Muslim Australians in front of the Syrian embassy, the long-serving politician, who is also noted for his remarkable three terms as Premier of New South Wales, excoriated the Arab and Iranian regimes for plundering their countries of their wealth and depriving their people of their basic human rights. He particularly upbraided Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq and Iran for their entrenched system of apartheid against their Christian Copt, Shia, Palestinian, Sunni, Yazidi, Chaldean, Assyrian and Kurd populations.              

A prolific analyst of Middle East atrocities, the life-time Labour Party stalwart also bewailed the hundreds of thousands of civilians massacred by the Arab and Iranian security forces in the streets of Algiers, Aleppo, Taiz, Alexandria, Cairo,  Deraa, Latakia, Banias, Homs, Damascus, Teheran,  Manama, Kobani, Amman, Jeddah, Gaza City, Aden and Sanaa.               

 "It is simply incomprehensible that these bloodthirsty regimes are committing genocide against their own people," he declared.                

As a consequence, his new organization -- Australians for Boycotting Arab and Iranian Goods (AUBAIG) --  has demanded that all Aussie importers immediately terminate their contracts for the purchases of petroleum, petrochemicals, plastics, cotton yarn, towels and garments, rugs, fertilisers, majhool dates, figs, strawberries, taboule, couscous and sheet metal from these countries. In addition, all  firms with investments and joint ventures in these tyrannies are being pressured to divest their assets from them.                

Of greater importance is our campaign for the Australian government  to implement new sanctions by halting its arms shipments to the Nazi-like governments of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.                                

 "We are now happy to report that the Australian public is supporting our initiative until the vicious dictatorships of the Arab Middle East and Iran are overthrown and their civilian populations are finally endowed with classical democracy," Mr. Carr affirmed. He particularly lauded the former Gillard government for tightening its sanctions against Bashar al-Assad's monstrous killing machine in Syria.               

 "The welfare of the beleaguered Arab and Iranian people must be our number one priority. It is vitally urgent that international civil society overturn the mindless Obama-Putin agreements and quickly bring the genocidal dictators , Assad and the Iranian mullahs to the gallows, just as Osama Bin Laden was so speedily dispatched, " he declared.                 

 The impassioned veteran parliamentarian took the opportunity to warn against allowing the criminal Fatah and Hamas factions continuing to rule in Palestine. They operate deathly prisons and torture chambers. He repeated his insistence that their undemocratic leaders be ousted and be sued before the International Criminal Court in the Hague for their despicable war crimes in violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian and human rights law, as detailed in the Goldstone Report.                

"We must not allow our baseless fears of jeopardising Australia's UN Security Council seat to lead to our defaulting on our obligations under international humanitarian law to put an immediate stop to Arab and Iranian policies of genocide and apartheid," Carr firmly asserted.                  

The new boycott campaign is supported by Prof. Stuart Rees at the University of Sydney, David Shoebridge, leader of the NSW Greens,  Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, Labour MP Maria Vamvakinou, the Socialist Alternative, former Anglican Bishop George Browning of Canberra,  the League for Iranian Democracy, Rev. Gregor Henderson, Past President of Uniting Church in Australia, Sonja Karkar, President of Australian Women Against Saudi Gender Apartheid, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and former Australian Ambassador to Syria Ross Burns.                  

 AUBAIG co-founder Ben Saul, an activist international law professor at the University of Sydney specialising in exposing Palestinian Authority corruption and a crusader for the seething Arab masses in the Middle East, pointed out that the illegitimate Muslim Arab government leaders are being targeted by his cadre of followers with arrest warrants should they step foot on Australian soil or seek asylum here. Under the international laws of universal jurisdiction, war criminals and their genocidal ilk are liable to arrest upon the deposition of a citizen's complaint before the Attorney General.                  

He emphasized that his group's actions were in complete fulfillment of the treasured Australian  tradition of seeking justice for suffering humanity.  Moreover, it has the endorsement of his spiritual adviser retired Catholic Bishop Patrick Power, a determined opponent of Arab and Iranian ethnic cleansing of the historic Christian communities in their lands.                

 In that regard, Prof. Saul echoed the call on the international community to bring to justice President Bashar al-Assad, the genocidal ruler of Syria who is bombing not only his own people with war planes but also decimating them with chemical weapons, especially the sarin nerve gas agent. Moreover, the 540,000 third generation Palestinians of Syria located in Damascus, Yarmouk and Latakia are facing extermination.               

 "This greasy rat should be torn limb from limb," he declared to tumultuous applause before the Canberra demonstrators.                   

 He also singled out the apartheid oppression inflicted by the Lebanese government against the Palestinian refugees in its midst, an act advised and consented to by the illegitimate para-state organisation Hizbullah.              

 Casting aside his past hostility towards Israel, Saul, a descendant of 19th century British Jewish convict immigrants, pleaded with the Jewish state to invade next-door Syria and Iran and wipe out their Shi'ite Palestinian-hating feudal ruling classes. He also demanded that the Australian government assist in this endeavour.               

 "Only such humanitarian interventions under the UN's Responsibility to Protect Doctrine can have the desired effect of strengthening the region-wide intifadas in these countries leading to the toppling of their authoritarian regimes,'' he posited.              

 In this regard, Saul dismissed US President Obama's recent diplomatic agreements concerning Syria and Iran as absurd as they give these countries' tyrants a longer shelf life.                 

AUBAIG is also proud to announce that Prof. Saul is proceeding to Turkey where he will cross the frontier into northern Syria. Some 3,900 Syrian Palestinians have been gassed and slaughtered there by their fellow Arabs and some 195,000 have been turned into refugees fleeing to Lebanon and Jordan.             

He will document this holocaust naqba as well as the unbelievable barbaric atrocities of the Syrian Arabs. They are eating the hearts and livers of Palestinians whose intestines have been ripped out by the Syrian militias as brought to our attention by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the recent G-8 Summit.              

 For this act of self-sacrifice in exposing the dirty politics of the Arab and Iranian genocidal enterprises, the entire Australian public ought to be grateful.               

 "As for our myriad of friends amidst the general public, we do sincerely thank them for embracing the boycott of Arab and Iranian goods which will immeasurably assist in the  liberation of  the persecuted Arab and Iranian masses, " Mr. Carr and Prof. Saul concluded.                                                                      

 - 30 -      Media contacts:    

Dr. Ibrahim Abu Mohammad  AUBAIG Adviser   Mufti of Australia  dribrahim@muftiofaustralia.com      Ben Saul, AUBAIG Co-Founder  Professor, International Law University of Sydney  Sydney, Australia ben.saul@sydney.edu.au    The Hon. Bob Carr, AUBAIG Founder Former Australian Foreign Minister and Premier of New South Wales Sydney, Australia bob.carr@uts.edu.au    Rawan Abdul-Nabi  Associate Legal Counsel, AUBAIG  Australian-Palestinian Lobbyist  Sydney, Australia  rawan.abdul-nabi@usyd.edu.au      

Hilton Armstrong Director of Communications  hiltonarms@gmail.com  Melbourne, Australia    

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