Miles Davis (black jazz musician) "If somebody told me I had only one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow." [Miles Davis Can’t Shake Boyhood Racial Abuse, Jet March 25, 1985.]

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Ardeshir Mehta

Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 9:42 AM

Subject: Answer to Naseer re. Racism

Naseer, 

To keep this short, I shall reply just to one point in your post quoted below, namely racism.

You write,

I believe the word 'Racism', like 'Anti-Semitism' has lost a lot of currency because of misuse.

I could criticise apartheid South Africa for it's ACTIONS, for example, or I could write an article about the development of racism in the Afrikaner nation or Dutch Reform Church. The former, not the latter, resulted in the end of apartheid.

Do criticise Israeli policies, but criticising religion only alienates everybody. The racist nature of Torah and Talmud is countered by criticism of all the other religions, a circular debate if you wish. I recognise that many people still make that argument, but doubt its effectiveness.

My argument against racism, or racial discrimination (of which, by the way, there is an official and precise definition given at <http://tinyurl.com/d2clc> ... so it is not comparable to a nebulous and ill-defined phrase like "anti-Semitism"), is that it is pernicious EVEN if it does not lead to bad actions.

Indeed, the actions are a mere RESULT of racism. Racism is the CAUSE, the actions are the OUTCOME.

For instance, the KKK murdering a black person is due to the RACISM of the KKK. 

On the other hand, a black person murdering a white person in the course of a street robbery is NOT due to racism!

Both ACTIONS are murder, and both are reprehensible, but both are not a result of RACISM. Thus the murder committed by the KKK is MORE reprehensible of the two!

Racism is bad even when it is unaccompanied by bad actions, because racism has the POTENTIAL to produce bad actions.

I often give the example of my own people, the Parsi Zoroastrians of India.

They are even more racist than the Jews, because they prohibit ANY conversion by non-Parsis. Either you are BORN a Parsi Zoroastrian, or you are not. You just CANNOT convert!

Parsis are actually admired all over India because of their generosity, works of charity (even towards those who are not parsis), and industrious work ethic. They have never been accused by non-Parsis of being evil, as the Jews have often been accused of being in Christian countries in past centuries.

Yet I say, the racism of Parsis is JUST as evil as, if not even MORE evil than, that of the Jews! 

I say this because I have observed it in action. My aunt, my mother's sister, threw her own daughter out of her house because her daughter married a Jew! (My mother took the newly-weds into her home when that happened, and I used to baby-sit their children when they were young and I was a teenager.)

UNTIL something like this happens, Parsis are racist only in THEORY. But when this happens, the theory is all of a sudden put into practice!

So Parsis exhibit good deeds only until the point that their racism is threatened. When it is, the evil in racism erupts into action!

Indeed it has been the opinion of many scholars that the vast majority of erstwhile Zoroastrians in Iran converted readily to Islam when came in touch with it, because they were sick and tired of the racism of the Sassanian Zoroastrian priesthood! (The Parsi racism of today is but a continuation of the Sassanian racism of that period).

That is why I don't call myself a Parsi, but only a DESCENDANT of Parsis. I don't identify with their racist religious beliefs - indeed I strongly REPUDIATE these beliefs!

This despite the fact that Parsis, rather than being vilified by non-Parsis (as the Jews often have been by non-Jews), are actually ADMIRED for their many good deeds.

So you see, what I criticise in Judaism I see already in Parsi Zoroastrianism. The racism of both is equally pernicious and evil ... and would be so even if the Jews, for example, were just as well-liked in the West as the Parsis are in India! 

Racism is very much like a bomb ticking away, ready to go off at the least excuse. Even if it has NEVER gone off, it is still a BOMB!

Cheers.

+++++

On 13-Jul-05, at 11:56 AM, Naseer Ahmad wrote:

Well Ardeshir, I would agree with what you say, but disagree on the tactics. Sure we can criticise and offend our friends as well as our enemies (if necessary) but, alienating our ALLIES may sometimes require a bit of introspection first. I believe the word 'Racism', like 'Anti-Semitism' has lost a lot of currency because of misuse.

I could criticise apartheid South Africa for it's ACTIONS, for example, or I could write an article about the development of racism in the Afrikaner nation or Dutch Reform Church. The former, not the latter, resulted in the end of apartheid.

Do criticise Israeli policies, but criticising religion only alienates everybody. The racist nature of Torah and Talmud is countered by criticism of all the other religions, a circular debate if you wish. I recognise that many people still make that argument, but doubt its effectiveness.

You may have had your problems with togethernet (I left it myself) but that's where Shamir parks his 'liberal' friends, (snort) so what? Purists tend to isolate themselves, and any movement requires a certain degree of compromise, in tactics if not the eventual goal.

I don't know Dave Kersting all that well, but guess Shamir and he disagree on tactics.

Should Dershowitz be invited to this or any Internet Group? Certainly not. He has lots of forums and pulpits to spew his noxious venom, why give him another? I'd rather debate him in HIS forum, not mine, thank you. Will I (or Shamir) be invited to Fox News to do so? I think not.

If I buy a T-Shirt from Indonesia, I MAY be complicit in the crimes of capitalism, but feel that the good I do outweighs the bad. If Shamir refuses to attack Barghouti, or the Pope, or Hinduism, then I don't believe he is complicit in the crimes of racism, just a good man, trying to do good.

When Arafat died, I criticised him and his corruption for holding back Palestinian statehood. Shamir responded by remembering his courage. We were both right, I think.

Therefore I say, let Shamir be Shamir, and Ardeshir be Ardeshir.

Sincerely,

Naseer Ahmad, M.D.(MA), D.Sc. :)

 

Australian Holocaust-denier Frederick T�ben Gets 5 Year Prison Sentence

Why does our "mainstream media" ignore that there MUST be a "hate law" against the Talmud, which is the evil screed which caused all manner of discord across the world, probably including the killing of 48 million Christians during WWII, the murder of 25 million Christians in Russia in addition to their war losses, and millions of Christians in all parts of the world.  There MUST also be a "hate law" against the jewish controlled US mainstream media which constantly bashes Christians, Christianity, and Jesus Christ, so far with impunity.

If criticizing jews, the holocaust hoax, the Einstein hoax, and other jewish hoaxes, ia a crime worthy of a five year prison sentence in Germany, then certainly ANY article which is critical of any one of the 250 million Christians in this Christian nation, founded on Christian principles, is worthy of a TWENTY YEAR prison sentence.

Jews don't like that?  Good, go to Madagascar and get out of this Christian nation and leave us Christians ALONE.  Jews think they deserve special treatment because 1-6 million jews MAY have died in a "holocaust", but Frederick Toben does NOT deserve special treatment even though 48 MILLION of his fellow Christians DID die during WWII?

PACK YOUR BAGS, JEWS, BECAUSE YOU ARE no longer qualified TO GET SUCH SPECIAL TREATMENT.

http://www.wirednews.com/news/politics/0,1283,40669,00.html

German Hate Law: No Denying It by Steve Kettmann

11:00 a.m. Dec. 15, 2000 PST

BERLIN -- If this week's border-transcending ruling by Germany's highest court proves anything, it's that an enormous distance remains between advocates of a free Internet and watchdogs against racism and hate-mongering.

The court, called the Bundesgerichtshof, issued a ruling on Tuesday that overturned a lower court ruling, and found that German law applies even to foreigners who post content on the Web in other countries -- so long as that content can be accessed by people inside of Germany.

Specifically, the court found Australian Holocaust-denier Frederick T�ben guilty of spreading "Auschwitz lies."

T�ben, who was born in Germany, uses the website of his Australian-based Adelaide Institute to encourage people in the belief that the Holocaust has no historical basis.

International reaction to the ruling differed wildly.

Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a leader of Berlin's famed Chaos Computer Club hacker collective and a new Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board member, was blunt in questioning the legitimacy of the ruling.

"This German court wants to judge over the whole world in effect," he said. "No one knows what it means. We could easily agree that it seems likely to be a decision made by a judge who does not understand very much."

Mueller-Maguhn, something of a celebrity in Germany as a technology visionary, plans to take immediate action. He said he will contact Germany's highest court on Monday morning and invite someone from the court for a debate before Germany's legislature on the ruling - and how it should be applied in the future.

"The court decision of the Bundesgerichtshof seems to be the worst Internet-dependent court decision so far," he said. "If other countries would take this as an orientation and start to apply their laws on the citizens of other countries acting in their countries, the worldwide free flow of information could lead very fast to an unfree situation in the real world.

"Hopefully (the Bundesgerichtshof) will take a minute to think about this."

T�ben himself made a similar argument.

"Germany is trying to rule the world again by saying that the people who access the Internet have no choice," he told the Associated Press.

But Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, applauded the court action.

"We commend the German authorities for sticking to their commitment -- it's their democracy, these are their laws," he said by phone from California.

"In the first months of this year they had a thousand hate crimes in Germany. We need to be sensitive to, and grateful to, to the democratic government of Germany when its says 'We have anti-Nazi laws in place and we still need those laws.'"

"Maybe for those of us who live on the other side of the Atlantic, this seems remote or abstract. If people are not outraged by the Adelaide website, how about mlking.org? That site is hosted by white supremacists. You can't outlaw that site. But it is an early warning to us. There's no librarian online. A kid goes to the Internet and plays Russian Roulette."

Cooper urges Internet freedom advocates in the United States and elsewhere to keep an open mind on issues that have sprung up only recently with the widespread popularity of the Internet.

"We have to commend the Germans and the French for basically saying 'in our societies, this is how we deal with the problems of hate, racism and Holocaust denial. You in America have your own laws, but at least respect our values.'"

"It was their blood that was shed. What's theoretical for us is very real over there ... the Internet community is going to have to address these issues in a less contentious way."

The German authorities arrested T�ben in 1999 for distributing Holocaust-denying leaflets on a visit to Germany. The lower court found T�ben, 56, guilty of offending the memory of the dead, but ruled that German law against inciting racial hatred could not be applied to content on a foreign website. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison, and served seven months of that term before returning to Australia.

Germany's Federal Court of Justice took a major interpretive step beyond the lower-court ruling this week, however. It found that sweeping German legislation passed in the wake of World War II that banned the Nazi party and any glorification of it -- including denial of the Holocaust -- can be applied to Internet content that originates outside of the country's borders.

T�ben left Germany for Australia when he was 10 years old and went on to earn a Ph.D. in English and Philosophy from Melbourne University. He told the Australian press this week that he believes he could spend up to five years in jail if he returns to Germany. He said he's willing to serve more time in German jails for his beliefs, but does not relish the thought of what might happen to him in such circumstances.

"I would not be safe in a German jail," he told Australia's ABC television. "They would eliminate me and this gives me reason to think it would be foolish if I did go back."

Although T�ben could theoretically face extradition, so far Australia reports no extradition request from Germany.

He could face a more immediate legal challenge from within his own country. Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission issued an order in October instructing T�ben to apologize to the Jewish community and remove at least some of the content from his website.

T�ben refused.

The importance of the German court ruling may be in emboldening Australian authorities to make a more aggressive approach to what it considers offensive content. Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center and others emphasize that a gradual and ongoing process of international consultation needs to occur to shape a new consensus on how to deal with such touchy issues of freedom and regulation.

"The basic approach to it, in our view, is not necessarily a whole ton of UNESCO- and UN-sponsored rules that would be more satisfactory to dictators than students," Cooper said. "It is to look for more creative leadership on the issue on the part of the collective Internet community.

"I think if we talk about the exchange of ideas, including the uncomfortable ones, we all know that at the end of the day, everyone can get up on the Internet. You can't keep them off. They have to have a coherent policy, and that doesn't exist yet."

Germany, too, is arguing for more international coordination and in fact, the Wiesenthal Center hosted a conference on the topic of the Internet and hate speech last summer in Berlin, all part of an ongoing effort to encourage creative thinking.

"The best chance to fight against right-wing material on the Internet is on an international level," Hans-Gertz Lange, a spokesman for Germany's criminal investigative agency, told the IDG News Service.

"But when I think of the U.S. or Canada, it's extremely unlikely that they'll change their laws in accordance with ours. Their concept of freedom of speech is tied up with their history; our laws against incitement to racial hatred are tied up with ours."

Michel Friedman, a leader of Germany's Jewish community, also believes in inflexibility in responding to the power of the Internet to spread hate.

"(The Net) is one of the communications basics number one in the far right scene, not only in Germany but in the whole of Europe and even America," he said. "It's communication place number one for the exchange of neo-Nazi thinking in the world.

"This is very difficult to handle. But I believe we have to be very creative next time on that issue. Worldwide, we try to work on this issue. We are just in the beginning."

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