The First Feeble Voices Demanding Freedom of Speech in Europe

From Paul Fromm
October 25th, 2006

Dear Free Speech Supporter:

Perhaps, it’s the shame of seeing a French professor severely fined for giving an interview on Iranian radio. Perhaps it’s the disgrace of seeing a best selling World War II historian, David Irving, approaching his second year as a political prisoner in Austria for questioning the new state religion of holocaust.

Finally, some European thinkers and leaders are saying that enough is enough. Writers and thinkers shouldn’t be jailed for questioning a particular version of history. Two recent events are most encouraging:

“Switzerland’s justice minister has called on the Swiss government to reverse a law which makes historical revisionism illegal.

Minister Christoph Blocher is on a campaign to change the law, according to the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (NZZ) newspaper – even if it will impinge upon the sensitivities of minority groups, including the country’s Jewish communities.

Blocher claims that freedom of expression is more important than protecting the sensibilities of minority groups, NZZ wrote.

Blocher just returned from a trip to Turkey where a public discussion of the Armenian genocide is de facto punishable by a court of law. Upon his return home, Blocher said that he believes that Swiss laws needs to be a beacon for other nations.

As far as the minister is concerned, a ban on free speech in Turkey has made an effective public discussion of the Armenian genocide and Kurdish issues there impossible. In effect, he claims that widening the possibilities for freedom of speech in Switzerland might entice other countries to do the same.

The minister, however, is also disgruntled because he claims that such a law is an impediment on Switzerland’s relationship to other countries. Article 261 of the Swiss criminal code punishes genocide-denial. Currently, anybody is punishable in Switzerland if they “deny, belittle, or relativise genocide or crimes against humanity,” NZZ wrote. (European Jewish Press)

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James Petras’ New Book: The Power of Israel in the United States

By Stephen Lendman
October 26th, 2006

James Petras is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He’s a noted academic figure on the US Left and a well-respected Latin American expert and longtime chronicler of the region’s popular struggles. He’s also an advisor to the landless workers in Brazil and the unemployed workers movement in Argentina.

Along the way, he managed to find time to write many hundreds of articles and 62 books published in 29 languages including his latest one in which he discusses another vital world region he has extensive knowledge of and has written frequently about — the Middle East and specifically the state of Israel and its relations with its neighbors, the Palestinians and, most importantly and the subject of this book, the US.

Petras’ powerful new book is titled ‘The Power of Israel in the United States.’

It’s a work of epic writing and essential reading documenting the enormous influence of the Jewish Lobby on US policy in the Middle East. It focuses like a laser to assure that policy conforms with Israel’s long-term goal for regional hegemony. The Lobby’s influence is broad and deep enough to include officials at the highest levels of government, the business community, academia, the clergy (especially the dominant Christian fundamentalists/Christian Zionists) and the mass media. Petras shows how together they’re able to assure the full and unconditional US support for all elements of Israel’s agenda going back decades even when that agenda harms our interests such as the unwinnable war in Iraq, any future one against Iran if it’s undertaken, and the appalling and brutal subjugation and colonization of the Palestinian people that serves no US interest whatever. In spite of it, the Lobby is able to get the US to go along with Israel unconditionally with no serious opposition to it tolerated.

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