Last updated on
27th June 2008
(More about Stein and that quotation HERE)
See below about Amnesty's latest campaign
Links to interesting websites
The time in the UK is now
Israelis Assault Award Winning IPS Journalist
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From Caroline Moorehead's widely praised and (I gather) authoritative
book on MarthA Gellhorn
From the British Medical Journal
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BMJ 2008;336:1458-1459 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a490 NewsMedical evidence exposes US use of torture
Peter Moszynski
1 London Suspected terrorists held at US detention facilities were "systematically subjected to torture and ill treatment," says a detailed medical and psychological evaluation of former detainees conducted by Physicians for Human Rights. The findings were announced last week at a press conference at the BMA, where investigators from the organisation described how they uncovered "medical evidence of torture and ill treatment inflicted on 11 men detained at US facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay who were never charged with any crime." A report of their investigations details the "severe physical and psychological pain and long-term disability that has resulted from abusive and unlawful US interrogation practices."
BMJ
video [I've made a compressed low but
adequate copy of this video available for viewing and / or download
here:
http://www.4shared.com/file/52947926/1559aeb1/BMJ_video_USA_torture_xvid.html which is: A fraction over 3 mins - But please let me know if there's any problem with the download, thanks BR gbr2004uk-mw [AT] yahoo [DOT] co [DOT] uk ] In the report Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the US Army’s investigation into the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib detention centre, points out that "the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the wilful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect." Complaining that the UN Convention against Torture was "indiscriminately ignored," General Taguba says: "There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights, told the meeting: "Rigorous clinical evaluations confirm the enormous and enduring toll of agony and anguish inflicted for months by US personnel on 11 men who were detained without any charge or explanation." He explained that the physical and psychological evaluation of the detainees and the documentation of the crimes were based on "internationally accepted standards for clinical assessment of torture claims." A team of two doctors spent two days examining each one of the 11 men and went through the detailed medical records kept by their interrogators. Dr Rubenstein said, "Their first hand accounts, now confirmed by medical and psychological examinations, take us behind the photographs to write a missing chapter of America’s descent into the shameful practice and official policy of systematic torture." Christian Pross, of the Berlin Centre for the Treatment of Torture Victims, one of the trauma therapists who interviewed the men, told the BMJ he was shocked that such flagrant abuses would be tolerated by a democratic government. The report details the practices "used to bring about excruciating pain, terror, humiliation, and shame for months on end." These included:
Some of these techniques were officially authorised, while "additional practices recounted by the interviewees including beatings and other forms of severe physical and sexual assault that, while not officially authorized . . . came to be part of a regime of brutality at the facilities where the detainees were held." As only 11 detainees were examined, "the findings of this assessment cannot be generalized to the treatment of all detainees in US custody," the report says. However, the documented incidents are consistent with findings of other investigations, "making it reasonable to conclude that these detainees were not the only ones abused, but are representative of a much larger number of detainees subjected to torture and ill-treatment while in US custody." A Department of Defense spokesman told the BMJ that the report represented "sweeping conclusions based on dubious allegations." Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and its Impact is available at http://physiciansforhumanrights.org. MusicWeaver note: See below for testimonies of torture victims in Israel compiled by PCATI, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
Also see box just below this - latest letter from Dr Derek Summerfield to Dr Baum |
| Letter from Dr Derek Summerfield to
Michael Baum, professor emeritus of
surgery, University College London, London |
| Dear Dr Baum I trust you were in receipt of my open letter to you of 21 May, copied for public information reasons to a range of interested parties, including medical journal editors and the International Committee of the British Medical Association (concerned with medical ethics). As before, I asked you to provide evidence for your unconditional support in the BMJ last year of the Israeli Medical Association in their dismissal (they call it a “lie” and this you endorsed) of the huge body of evidence of the IMA’s systematic collusion with ongoing violations by Israeli doctors of the World Medical Association’s anti-torture Declaration of Tokyo, and of the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the rights of Gaza residents to access medical and other services vital to life. As before I attached supportive citations from a range of international (Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, United Nations OCHA, International Red Cross etc) and regional (PHR Israel, B’Tselem, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel etc) organisations. Its not my word at stake Dr Baum, but the word of these organisations in report after report over the years. 5 weeks have passed and you have not replied. Clearly, as last year, you are refusing to engage with the evidence because there is nothing there to your or Israel’s advantage- because it all points unambiguously the same way and because no independent counter-evidence supportive of the probity of the IMA exists. As your own remarks (about academic boycott etc) posted up elsewhere make crystal clear, the point- at source the only point- is to be a loyal Zionist supporter of Israel, isn’t it Dr Baum? I and others urge you to comment on the evidential mountain informing so crucial an issue for the public reputation of the medical profession, one upon which you have committed yourself in the BMJ, and you complain that you are being subjected to a “vendetta”. Those of us- in particular hundreds of doctors and other health professionals in UK and worldwide who are reading this letter- have to contend with pro-Israel apologists in UK ,US etc who deploy all the professional weight and authority at their disposal to blacken the name of those who point to the evidence, and to threaten the editors of the medical journals who dare to publish it. In your various ways you are all Israel’s soldiers, and your aggressive self-righteousness and sense of impunity mirrors Israel’s own public stance. This is ethical corruption straight and simple, a slur upon the profession. How do you imagine medical historians will assess your role in due course? Yours Derek Summerfield BSc(Hons) MBBS MRCPsych |
Jon Stewart takes on AIPAC in 5-minute clip
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From the British Medical Journal BMJ 2008;336:1461 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a539 NewsZimbabwean doctors see big rise in cases of trauma in wake of political violence
Owen Dyer
1 London Zimbabwe’s doctors have been overwhelmed by the burden of serious physical trauma in recent weeks, as thousands of opposition supporters have been systematically beaten by militiamen loyal to Robert Mugabe. The Zimbabwean Association of Doctors for Human Rights reported last week that its members had seen 1007 such patients during May, of whom 119 had fractures, in many cases multiple or compound fractures. "There has been a gross surge in both the quantity and severity of injury. Fracture cases alone increased threefold in number from April to May," the association reported in an email sent to supporters abroad. "It is certain that a far greater number of patients will have been attended to by other members of the health professions, especially nurses, but will never have been near a doctor." Opposition activists and civic groups complain that Zimbabwe’s public hospitals have done little or nothing to aid victims of political violence. Instead they have functioned as bases for the government’s campaign of intimidation, they say, in which the health minister, himself a doctor, has been personally implicated. The minister, David Parirenyatwa, and two other Zanu-PF members of parliament from the town of Murewa reportedly accompanied young militiamen on a sweep through the town soon after one of its three constituencies fell to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the general election in March. They threatened MDC supporters with death, fired shots into the air, and rounded up locals and forced them to attend a rally in the grounds of the local hospital, said an affidavit signed by an opposition supporter who witnessed the events. The MDC has reported 86 deaths from violence among its supporters, but a bigger threat to health is posed by the ongoing collapse of the public health system and a government ban—imposed earlier this month—on all work by non-governmental organisations. More than 3000 Zimbabweans die each week from complications related to AIDS, and the country has the world’s lowest average life expectancy: 37 for men and 34 for women. Government hospitals stopped registering new patients with HIV in 2006, and the number of people paying privately for antiretroviral drugs fell from about 10 000 last summer to 6000 early this year, in the face of hyperinflation. Many doctors and nurses are among the three million Zimbabweans—a quarter of the population—who have fled to South Africa in recent years. The government imposed an indefinite blanket ban on all field operations by non-governmental organisations on 4 June, accusing them "engaging in political activities." It apparently relented last week, permitting more than 400 organisations in the HIV and AIDS area to resume fieldwork. However, Fambai Ngirande, spokesman for NANGO, an umbrella group for non-governmental organisations, said, "War veterans and militia are still blocking the operations of our member organisations. Rural areas are no go areas at the moment." Kenneth Walker of the charity Care International, speaking from Johannesburg, said that the group’s plans to distribute food to 100 000 people in June had been cancelled. "There is no NGO activity in Zimbabwe right now," he said. Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Child Welfare did not return calls for comment.
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BAFTA award to Dahr Jamail and Mohammed Omer
Martha Gellhorn Prize
http://www.humanrightstv.com/episode/469
Short videos of the presentation and speeches
BMJ Editorial Measuring Deaths from Conflict
19 June 2008
Click on picture for BBC video
http://www.thestruggle.org/returns_invite_08.htm
94 Year Old
Israeli Peace Activist Returns Barak's Invitation
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"I am returning your invitation" Dov Yirmiya - Open letter to Defence Minister Below is an English translation of an open letter by the 94 year old peace activist, Dov Yirmiya, an ex-colonel in the Israeli army, which was published on June 11 in Zo Haderekh, the Communist weekly. Yirmiya's book "My War Diary" (1983) played an important role in mobilizing Israeli public opinion against the First Lebanese War. In 1983 he was awarded the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award for his "activities promoting the welfare of civilians in Lebanon". I am returning your invitation An open letter to the Minister of Defence
I have received your elegant invitation to veterans of the 1948 war, on
the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, under the slogan: "The
State of Israel expresses its thanks to you."
As a veteran of the 1948 war, who was already wounded in face to face
combat two weeks before the Declaration of the State, I feel obliged
herewith to return the invitation to you, as Minister of Defence. I do
so regretfully but see this as my duty.
I consider you, Ehud Barak, as one of the top military commanders and
prominent political leaders who were responsible for converting the army
from "the Israeli Defence Force" to an army of occupation and oppression
of the Palestinian people and defender of the criminal settlements in
their country.
40 years of occupation have utterly corrupted the Israeli army and all
strata of Israeli society.They are both characterized by the nationalist
'east wind' [the east wind brings the chamsin and locusts - C.A.] which
blows and kindles conflagrations of endless wars, which threaten our
people and land with the third and final destruction. Your share in the
responsibility for all this is enormous, and therefore I return your
invitation to you, without thanks...
Dov Yirmiya, Naharia
P.S. I sent this letter to Haaretz, but it was not printed...[D.Y.]
====================
http://www.thestruggle.org/index.htm This site is sponsored by The Middle East Crisis Committee We’re a group of activists that organized in 1982 in New Haven, CT during Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Over the years we've picketed the likes of Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Sharon, Yitzhak Shamir, Lebanese President Gemayel, Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, Rabbi Meyer Kahane, Members of Congress Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, and Rosa DeLauro. Since 1984 we have published the journal, "The Struggle". In 2003 we started “The Struggle” as a weekly TV news program In 2006 we merged with Al-Awda-Ct, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition(CT)
Stanley Heller wrote on the Jewswhospeakout list:
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Click on top picture for Independent story
by Donald Macintyre in Gaza City
WORDS
Apartheid - Nishul - Hafrada
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The Afrikaans word apartheid has often been used to describe the situation obtaining in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and often within Israel itself. From the point of view of campaigning, there have been problems with the use of this word in the Israeli-Palestinian context: its descriptive accuracy has been called into question¹ and to use it can end up letting apologists for Israeli brutality employ diversionary tactics, expressing outrage at the use of a word whilst ignoring or denying, certainly obscuring the very real Palestinian sufferings to which the word refers. Apartheid may well, despite Machover's warnings and objections, be the appropriate word to use, but sometimes it's not enough to be right: in campaigning, as in diplomacy, you often have to be right in the right way. We want to persuade people with the words we use, not make them stop up their ears in some sort of defensive conditioned reflex. I am therefore grateful to Deborah Maccoby² for reminding me that at his recent talk in London, Jeff Halper of ICAHD 'mentioned that he has met South Africans who object to the phrase "Israeli apartheid", not because what's going on doesn't resemble South African apartheid, but because they think the word "apartheid" was specific to their own situation and they think a specifically Israeli word should be used to describe the Israeli/Palestinian situation'. (Email communication.) I am also grateful to Richard Kuper, who clarified for me that the word Jeff used was nishul - dispossession (variant spelling, nishool). A related Hebrew word is hafrada, which, like the Afrikaans word "apartheid", means literally separation. These are the words used by the Israeli government to describe its own policies. (By email.) These words could become just as highly charged, and with the same results, as did the Afrikaners' own word to describe their policies. If we started to use them at every opportunity in our own campaigning, they could hardly be challenged for accuracy, since they're the Israeli government's own terms, and they would deny our opponents the chance of time-wasting obfuscatory tactics.
¹ See Moshe Machover, Is it Apartheid? in Jewish Voice for Peace, 10 Nov 2004 ² See report of London meeting here |
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From http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp
Fatalities Click on the numbers for a list of individual names and details about the circumstances of their death
Notes:
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http://www.stoptorture.org.il/en
See especially
click image
DiaryLouisa Waugh‘Don’t ask me how I am,’ a colleague said to me when I arrived at the office yesterday morning. ‘You know how bad things are here now, so please don’t ask.’ Things are certainly very bad in the Gaza Strip. The fuel crisis grinds on, and though Israel has just allowed a small consignment of fuel in, nearly 90 per cent of private cars remain off the road. Bus and taxi services are overwhelmed, and since the taxis have more than doubled their rates, most of us are still walking. Black market fuel prices are extortionate, and the streets reek with gassy and oily fumes because drivers have resorted to converting their cars to use cooking gas, or even cooking oil. These crude conversions are potentially dangerous, liable to induce nausea, eye infections and asthma. The lack of industrial fuel has sparked widespread power cuts (Gaza’s sole power plant is operating at partial capacity), as well as shortages of drinking water: the electric pumps shut down when the power goes off. Up to half of Gazans only have access to drinking water at home for between four and six hours a day. Domestic cooking fuel is increasingly scarce, and on some days there are long queues for bread, because bakers have started turning off their ovens to save gas. The fuel crisis didn’t start last week, or even last month. Israel has been steadily reducing fuel supplies since October. In February, ambulances in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza were temporarily grounded when the diesel ran out. In April, Israel permitted 152,000 litres of petrol to enter and 33,280 litres of diesel, a tiny fraction of demand. Last week I drove from Gaza City, where I work with a British aid organisation, down to Rafah, where I talked to several ambulance drivers. Samir Abdul Akil has been driving ambulances for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society for the last five years. ‘The situation is miserable,’ he said. ‘We have to restrict our movements and can only answer emergency calls, but demand for our services has soared, because people have no other way of getting to hospital.’ People are turning up on donkeys or mule carts. Another driver, Asad Daoud, who works at the Emirates Hospital in Rafah, told me his ambulance ran out of fuel completely ten days ago. Despite having a large obstetrics unit, where up to twenty babies are born every day, the hospital can afford only one ambulance. Daoud regularly has to transfer patients to the European Hospital, seven kilometres away, but doesn’t always have enough fuel for the return journey. The Gaza Strip is 26 miles long and six miles wide, with a total of eight commercial and pedestrian crossings: apart from the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, they all lead into Israel. The main pedestrian crossings, at Erez in northern Gaza and Rafah in the south, have been effectively sealed since June 2006, after the abduction by Hamas of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held hostage in Gaza. Hamas and the Egyptian government are now negotiating over whether to open the Rafah crossing on a regular basis, and Gazans are desperately hoping that they will. Everyone in the Strip, even children, requires a travel permit from the Israeli military in order to cross Erez, and the overwhelming majority of applications, including those from people who need emergency medical treatment, are denied on grounds of ‘security’. Over the last year, 33 Gazans, including several young children, have died after being refused a permit, or having their permits delayed. There are 1.4 million people living in the Gaza Strip, and Khalil Shaheen, a human rights activist here, estimates that less than 3 per cent of the population has freedom of movement into and out of the Strip. The Israeli siege began in the wake of Hamas’s takeover last June, and has been steadily tightening ever since. Imports and exports are severely restricted: Israel has gradually increased the categories of food items allowed to be imported via the commercial crossings from nine to 40, but this apparent liberalisation doesn’t make much difference because the crossings are open so rarely that very little can be brought in. Other goods, including medicines, hearing aids, computers, cardboard and electrical elements, are either in short supply or are not coming in at all. Importing construction materials has been prohibited for months and, apart from small quantities smuggled through the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the border with Egypt, there is nothing to build with. Houses and streets that have been damaged, or bombed, are left as they are. Strangely, Coke is available because it is brought in through these tunnels from Egypt, but fruit juice and milk are impossible to find. The WHO produces a drug list of 480 essential items; Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, is 90 items short, and has less than three months’ supply left of another 130. Exports, too, have been drastically curtailed: family-owned strawberry and flower farms have been ruined; the annual catch of Gaza’s fishermen is less than a sixth of what it was five years ago. The people of the Strip are now one of the most aid-dependent populations on earth. It’s not surprising that morale is at rock bottom, and that my colleagues don’t want to make small talk about how they’re feeling. You can’t watch what’s going on without asking why Israel is so intent on destroying civilian life in Gaza. Israel does have legitimate concerns about the home-made rockets and mortars being fired towards its borders almost every day. Two Israelis have recently been killed and dozens injured; doctors are trying to save the legs of an Israeli toddler wounded in last week’s rocket attack on a clinic in the centre of Ashkelon. But Israel’s main assumptions – that the siege would force the militants to stop launching rockets, and that the Gazan people would rise up and overthrow Hamas – have proved to be false. Though the number of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza has dropped over the last three months, the targeting has become more precise, and the militants are starting to upgrade their rockets, enabling them to strike further into Israel. Hamas has consolidated its power base and is politically and financially secure. As the International Crisis Group noted in a recent report, ‘the belief by some that the siege somehow will lead to Hamas’s overthrow is an illusion.’ Hamdi Shaqqura, a senior researcher at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City, says that ‘when we talk about a political power struggle in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, we are talking about the struggle between the governments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But there is no real opposition to Hamas here in Gaza. Hamas started to accumulate strength right after the takeover last June, and they have also institutionalised their power base; for instance, they re-established the entire police force. Hamas is now stronger than ever.’ I know many Gazans who say they hate Hamas; the huge majority, including some of those who say they support Fatah, also feel that they have been completely abandoned by the Palestinian Authority. President Abbas, recently forced to deny rumours of his own resignation, has done little to counter accusations that the PA doesn’t really care what happens inside Gaza. Instead, he remains caught up in increasingly pointless talks with the intransigent Olmert, who is once again under investigation for corruption and could be forced out of office himself. The negotiations between Hamas and Israel being brokered by the Egyptians are crucial: until Israel ends its siege, the two sides will remain locked in this ugly stalemate that is making life hellish for almost one and a half million people. The siege is illegal under international law, amounting as it does to the collective punishment of a civilian population. But Palestinian politicians also have a lot to answer for. The political and economic chasm between the Palestinian West Bank and the Gaza Strip has neutered the PA and strengthened Hamas, which, while offering a ceasefire to Israel, has continued to fire rockets over the border. There is no effective political opposition in either the West Bank or Gaza, and while Palestinians on the West Bank continue to endure humiliation at more than five hundred Israeli military checkpoints, the vast majority of Gazans are struggling to survive. Palestinians are fed up with politics, with their inept and greedy leaders, and with everything the Israelis have imposed on them. Political divisions inside Palestine have played into Israel’s hands. Tamer Qarmout, a Gazan friend of mine who has just been accepted onto a PhD programme in the US to study conflict analysis and resolution, believes the situation has never been so bad for the Palestinians. ‘There is deep fragmentation in our society,’ he said, ‘with families divided because they belong to separate political factions. The moderate voices of Fatah and Hamas need to put their differences aside and reach a political agreement so they can work together. Basically, they need to put the national Palestinian interest above everything else.’ Any dialogue, he says, has to take place ‘outside the political influence of the US, Israel, Syria and Iran’. ‘We have a very just cause. It is very depressing to see how we’ve harmed it and given Israel a perfect excuse to manipulate their legal obligation to end the occupation.’ Whatever the sharply dressed Israeli government spokesmen say, this is not a ‘war against terrorism’. Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967; 41 years later it is still expanding its illegal settlements in the West Bank while controlling the movement of every Palestinian inside the Gaza Strip. Tamer has no idea whether he will be allowed to leave to study for his PhD. No one – Bush, Olmert, Abbas, the Egyptians – knows what to do with the Gaza Strip. Gaza has very few friends, and people here don’t understand why the outside world seems to hate them so much, to care so little about what is happening to them. ‘We have no life here,’ Khalil Shaheen said to me last week. The Israelis ‘deprive us of everything – and then what? Our life becomes so fucking difficult that we think freedom means having enough fuel to drive our cars around Gaza, electricity in our homes, and bread in the shops. We are caged.’ Sometimes, living in Gaza is like watching a bizarre experiment in how much people can endure before they crack. Yesterday a friend of mine went to buy a pizza from his local bakery, but the baker had no flour. So he went to another bakery – but the second baker had no flour either, and no fuel. Another friend, Ehab, has not been able to buy shoes for months, because none of the shops has any left in his size. A neighbour, Aitemad, called round to tell me about the trouble she had getting her hair cut. Her hairdresser had no electricity in her shop, so she drove Aitemad to another hairdresser – but her car ran out of fuel on the way. So they had to leave the car and wait an hour for a taxi. I went to see Aitemad last night: we had a candlelit dinner because there was a power cut. Her hair looked great. While the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas go on in Sharm El-Sheikh, I am sitting in my living-room in Gaza City with the doors and windows open for some cool air. I can hear bombing in the north; more people may be dying as I write this. The death toll is climbing on both sides, but the number of Israeli and Palestinian fatalities can’t be compared. Fourteen Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians this year, two by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip and two by snipers from inside Gaza. In the same period, 333 people in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military, including 127 adult civilians and 56 children. More Gazan children were killed in the first four months of this year than in the whole of last year. Israel’s siege has achieved nothing but misery and bloodshed. 20 May
Louisa Waugh is
the author of Hearing Birds Fly: A Nomadic Year in Mongolia
and Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking and Resistance.
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I have removed the uruknet.info report pending further investigation
Some doubt has been expressed concerning its accuracy
Penn and Teller take us through the Bible and find
Those of a religiously sensitive disposition may wish to consider
whether they really want to watch this
comedy video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RV46fsmx6E
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Reza Moradi's remake of Fitna, the Movie: Fitna Remade |
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"To stop terrorism we must be against poles of terrorism, the US terrorism and the Islamist terrorism; being against one should not lead us to support the other one. No one must be allowed to legitimize and promote killing people …” -- Shiva Mahbobi, 30/9/2006 (on Maryam Namazie's blog here: http://tinyurl.com/66v8w5 )
Some comments from the discussion (link below §)
“[Wilders] has got his own [very right wing] agenda [and] his basic concern is [about] immigration into Europe [as well as] the threat that he thinks Islam poses to Europe. [I]f it wasn’t for that he would have absolutely no concerns about Islam and so his agenda really doesn’t coincide with ours at all…”
“[T]he aim of this film was not to criticise Islam, it was to attack immigrants who are basically labelled Muslims. It was ridiculous propaganda I think against these people. …”
“[B]ut criticising Islam is important …and there should be big criticism [but] the bad thing that I think the film has supported is, that the next person who wants to criticise Islam, they are just going to point the finger at him saying: oh you are anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, anti-foreigners. I think this big distinction needs to be made. …”
Maryam Namazie: “[I] thought how dare he. The political Islamic movement has wreaked havoc for decades, long before September 11, long before the Madrid or London bombings. In Iran, we have lost an entire generation to this movement and we have struggled and fought against this movement. How dare he equate all of us as one and the same with the political Islamic movement? It made me quite angry.”
----------------oOo------------------
Fariborz Pooya, summing up the discussion §, says: "Fitna, as mentioned here, doesn’t fundamentally criticise Islam; it doesn’t criticise the political Islamic movement and Islamic states that is destroying the lives of millions every day. And effectively its anti-immigrant tone distorts the whole picture. The reality is that millions of people are fighting against the political Islamic movement and that’s the movement that needs to be supported. Freedom of expression and the right to criticise Islam and religion and is a fundamental right that needs to be upheld."
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