The Piper

	.American Free Press
	..Vol VII. .#1/2 Jan 1 & 8, 2007. americanfreepress.net

 

B-6, AMERICAN FREE PRESS * January 1 & 8, 2007 Behind the Scenes at the Iran Conference with Michael Collins Piper

Good News & Bad News
from the Conference

David Irving finally released; many conference attendees in hot water back home

By Michael Collins Piper

. Athough in the wake of the Holocaust conference there came the good news that an appeals judge ordered best-selling British historian David Irving freed from imprisonment in Austria, after serving a 13 month term for the “crime” of Holocaust denial—despite the Austrian government’s demand that Irving serve a full ten year sentence— there was also some bad news for Holocaust revisionists.
. . .Proving precisely the point that those who dare to engage in genuine debate about the events and circumstances surrounding the Holocaust are subject to harassment, boycott and intimidation, news reports indicate that at least four individuals who attended the conference in Iran have now come under serious fire, at least one of them facing possible criminal prosecution.
. . .ITEM: In Manchester, England a screaming mob attacked the home of Rabbi Ahron Cohen, one of the spokesmen for the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish group, Neturei Karta, which was prominently publicized in the mass media for its participation in the conference. The rabbi is being loudly and formally shunned by the Jewish community in which he lives and Jewish leaders have vowed to deny him a Jewish burial. Eggs were pelted on his home.
. . .The irony of the abuse to which Rabbi Cohen has been subjected is that Cohen himself strenuously insisted—in absolute opposition to the views of many of the Revisionists at the conference—that many millions of Jews died during the Holocaust, noting that many of his own family disappeared during World War II.
. . .ITEM: In France, President Jacques Chirac has ordered an official “investigation” into the remarks made by Professor Robert Faurisson during his appearance at the conference in Iran. French Justice Minister Pascal Clement will now determine whether Faurisson’s statements (made on Iranian soil) can be prosecuted under a 1990 French law that makes questioning details of the Holocaust a crime. According to an enthusiastic Associated Press report hailing the attack on Faurisson, the French will contend that if Faurisson’s statements were published on the Internet or in a newspaper distributed in France that Faurisson will thus be liable for what he said in Iran and that some other news source distributed. That’s the essence of “freedom of speech” and “liberty” in one of the “great democracies of the West.”
. . .ITEM: In Canada, at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, political science professor Shiraz Dossa is under fire for speaking at the Holocaust conference even though Dossa himself is a Holocaust believer and even said that the conference “was unfortunately stained by the presence of a small number of Holocaust deniers.” Dossa spoke on the issue of how the Holocaust—which he accepts as being precisely what it is described in standard Western history texts—has been manipulated in the war on terror. Dossa has been called on the carpet by university authorities, been subjected to media defamation, been the target of angry letters from other academics and the question of his continuing tenure at the university has been raised.
. . .ITEM: In Stockholm, Sweden, Jan Bernhoff, who spoke at the Holocaust conference in Tehran, was suspended from his job as a computer science teacher at an adult education college because of the fact that he lectured in Tehran. Although his job as a computer teacher has nothing whatsoever to do with history or the Holocaust, the action against him was taken. Currently, according to press reports, a “probe” of Bernhoff by the school is now under way. The primary complaint against Bernhoff’s lecture seems to be the fact that he said that, based upon his research and that of others, the allegation that 6,000,000 Jews died during World War II cannot be backed up by factual data and that the figure is considerably less than that. Even arguing with the figure of “Six Million” is thus considered “Holocaust denial” and even young Bernhoff’s attendance at the conference was“unacceptable,”
as the Swedish cabinet’s Minister for Schools, Jan Bjorkland, self-righteously declared.
. . .What further fall-out from the Iran conference there will occur remains to be seen but the bottom line is that the ongoing war against freedom of expression in regard to this issue is far from over. But Holocaust revisionism, by virtue of its stand in favor of intellectual freedom, continues to stand on the side of the angels, its brutal and vicious enemies notwithstanding.

 

. .A journalist specializing in media critique, Michael Collins Piper is the author of Final Judgment, the controversial "underground bestseller." He is also the author of The High Priests of War, The New Jerusalem and The Judas Goats — all available from American Free Press and America First Books.

(Issue #1/2, January 1 & 8, 2007, AMERICAN FREE PRESS)