Golly gosh, what would this hardcore, hardline Jewish organisation think of next? Fatwas & head lopping?

Who knows? Colin Rubenstein, on the Geoffrey Robertson show recently, has already displayed a lack of aversion to torture. It's a slippery slope from thereon.

Transcript:

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well the reason they want to do that is we’re not getting anything out of him here and they want to do to him what they’ve done to about two hundred other high value prisoners, take them to a friendly country like Egypt where they will be water boarded rather like the cadet initiation ceremony, they’ve got a new technique called going to the dentist, the Egyptian dentist finds the nerve in the tooth and just keeps drilling until they confess. It’s very effective.

ALAN DUPONT: Well it may be effective but it would be illegal and inappropriate for us to do that.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: The Prime Minister’s Office who will make this decision.

ALAN DUPONT: It’s still John Howard is it?

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Oh yes of course. . Mr John Howard is still there, King Charles the III described him in a diary as an appalling old waxwork. Peter Costello is chairman of BHP. Tony Abbott has become a monk. Sir Alexander Downer is Chairman of the ABC. Malcolm Turnbull even has given up on his ambitions. He now asks to be made Governor General. Ah it is still John Howard. You will send to his office a recommendation, a memorandum saying that the CIA want to make him the subject of extraordinary rendition to Egypt we rather think this shouldn’t be the course of action.

ALAN DUPONT: Absolutely.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Julia Ross, does it seem to be a bad thing altogether?

JULIA ROSS: Um yes it would be a bad thing.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: But he’s a terrorist suspect. He’s likely to be very close to Bin Laden. It’s desperately important to find Bin Laden’s hiding place.

JULIA ROSS: Well I’d probably have a lot more confidence in the Australian authorities of getting the information…

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well no they haven’t go anything out of him.

JULIA ROSS: He looks perfectly capable to me of getting most things out of most people.

[Laughter]

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: I mean if the end doesn’t justify the means Felicity Hampel what does?

JUDGE FELICITY HAMPEL: One of the hallmarks of a civilised society is the rule of law. This man is here on a Visa, if the visa is going to be cancelled, it has to be cancelled for identifiable grounds…

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: …the grounds are identified, the guy is a terrorist.

JUDGE FELICITY HAMPEL: There’s got to be due process and at the moment there’s not been due process and a finding that he’s a terrorist in the decision to cancel his visa and certainly not in the decision to spirit him out on a CIA flight. He, he has as much right as anybody else to access to the courts in this country.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Colin Rubenstein, doesn’t here the end justify the means? They’re not going to kill him.

DR COLIN RUBENSTEIN: Well at the end of the day you have to balance on the one hand the saving lives ….if under other circumstances somebody’s visa is revoked and they’re sent back to their home country under appropriate circumstances with due process, there may not be something wrong with it.

ALAN DUPONT: If you are sanctioning acts like that including CIA rendition flights I think ultimately that’s counterproductive to the sorts of things you are trying to win in this war against terror which are all the things we’ve been discussing, that is what differentiates us from the terrorists. The fact is we don’t torture, we shouldn’t torture,

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: And if as a result of his trip to the dentist in Egypt he confesses and we find Bin Laden, has that not justified the rendition?

ARCHBISHOP PETER JENSEN: No torture is morally odious and it’s, If the human race has discovered anything, it’s discovered that torture is self defeating and for us to even wink the eye and say well it may happen or it may not happen would be ah to make us complicit.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Many countries, Poland, Romania, Britain have allowed extraordinary rendition flights.

BILL SHORTEN: If Imam Yusuf if by him being tortured in Egypt could deliver Bin Laden and stop some of the events of that group it is getting close to a pretty hard call .

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well ladies and gentlemen under pressure, great pressure from America Australia sends Imam Yusuf back to Egypt where he’s taken to the dentist. He confesses that he knows the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and of the missing Beaumont Children. He confesses that he’s in love with Wendy Harmer…

“I think many people are cautious about saying anything critical of Israel,” says a federal Labor MP who declined to be named.

“When people do say things, they’ve got to be careful what they say. On one level there’s the hardline AIJAC element. If you say anything critical of Israel they’ll use the anti-Semitism tag. "

Golly gosh, what would this hardcore, hardline Jewish organisation think of next? Fatwas & head lopping?

Incidentally,any criticism of the Muslims and the Islamic world are virtually met with shrill cries of "racism," "nazism," and "facism." I can guarentee that people on that side of the fence use moral black mail more than those who support Israel. Antony in particular is notorious for using moral black mail to censor criticism and stifle debate. So its Pot calling the kettle black.

Even asking if some Jewish leaders are trying to stifle debate can get you rapped on the knuckles.

The constant references to "Powerful and influential Jewish leaders/organisations are trying to stifle debate" in the article was followed by this ironic (if not helarious) paragraph – When Victoria University cancelled a lecture in 2001 by visiting Israeli academic Yossi Olmert, a former adviser to right-wing Likud governments, on the dubious grounds of pressure from the local branch of the National Tertiary Education Union because pro-Palestinian academics had been affronted by the prospect, AIJAC thundered about a “gross violation of freedom of speech and academic freedom”.

So who is exactly successfully managing to stifle debate here? Who is able to exert greater influence, through lobbying, etc?

The Olmert cancellation was in addition to Netnyahu having to cancel his lecture at a US university, all because the police could not guarantee his saftey. I would like someone to name at least one pro-Palestinian speaker who was successfully denied a platform by Jewish groups – with threats to that person's life no less.

If that person could not be named, then the answer over who exerts greater influence and power through lobbying, bullying and intimidation is answered.

I guess its another classic case, of pot calling the kettle black.

"Critics who are Jews find themselves sidelined or bullied. “One person who’d been identified in the media as a member of a [Jewish] peace group made some comment and was telephoned and abused,” says Margot Salom, who is writing a university thesis about the silencing of dissent within the Jewish community."

Good golly, has that person gone into police protection like hundreds of Muslims and non-Muslims – politicians, writers, cartoonists – who found themselves side lined from the Muslim communities of Britain, Holland and Denmark, etc?

Pot calling the kettle black again?

Viva's obscure rante is akin to saying that the Jews in Germany made their choice and created their own demise by partaking in German society prior to WWII. Or that Isralie Jews gettign what they deserve because they accepted the state of Israel from the Balfour Declaration.

say an awful lot about your mean-spiiritedness

VivaLasVegas, here's an example of distilled mean-spiritedness:

viva peace Jun 10th, 2006 at 9:08 pm

The aborigines made their choice the day they accepted the White-Man’s flour, sugar, blankets, stockman’s job, Centrelink benefits, etc.

You really are quite pathetic. Why don't you grow up, go and see the world, get an education. These pitiful "racist" shrieks that you produce as argument and analysis say an awful lot about your mean-spiiritedness and general low level of education.

What is “racist bile.”

The fact that you don't know makes you even more delusional than the KKK. At least they know that when they say the same things you do, they are being racist – they just happen to think it is good to be racist.

The aborigines made their choice the day they accepted the White-Man’s flour, sugar, blankets, stockman’s job, Centrelink benefits, etc.

Just as the, comparative, primitive Israelites made their choice when they took on Rome, the "most advanced society" of its day, and having lost the war got booted out?

Thanks for confirming my analogy was correct.

For someone who is so quick to label others as Holocaust deniers, (in spite of all evidence to the contrary), you are equally hasty to accuse them of triviliasing the Holocuast. By the way Viva, there is a quick 20 thousand waiting for you, if you are able to produce a statement by a posterd denying the holocaust on this blog.

And now I am a “Zionist?”

You sound like one.
Talk like one.
Write like one.
Think like one.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Sorry still no cigar. What is "racist bile." Do you disagree with my pithy assessment? If so, say so and point out its errors. Debating by Argumentum ad weasel is very juvenile.