Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Richard Falk barred from entering Israel and Gaza

As stated earlier, Richard Falk is a highly respected scholar, a professor emeritus of international law. He is also a human rights activist and works for the United Nations. More recently, he was barred from entering Israel and Gaza.

It seems that anyone who speaks against the atrocities of Israel's government is quickly labelled as anti-semite and even neo-nazi, thus bellitling the meaning of these words. Dr. Falk is an American and a Jew himself and he is dedicated to human rights internationally. So given all this, how can he be anti-semite? However that does not stop some to accuse him of this. Flabberghasting.

Richard Falk's Statement on Gaza:

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11 comments:

  1. Richard Falk was appointed to his UN Post by the UN Human Rights Council which has such lumanaries as Cuba, Iran, Lybia and China directing its human rights agenda.

    Readers of this blog might be familar with the UNHRC, it is the body where Canada consistently votes against the resolutions abd the EU abstains. The United States is not a member of the UNHRC.

    Now of Mr.Falk, here is what he has to say about 9-11:

    "
    Elaborating on previous remarks on the topic, Falk referred to the collapse
    of one of the World Trade Center buildings, endorsing one of the more
    popular 9/11 conspiracy theories. "Any close student of 9/11 is aware of the
    many serious discrepancies between the official version of what took place
    and the actual happenings on that fateful day in 2001".


    "It is not paranoid under such circumstances to assume that the established
    elites of the American governmental structure have something to hide, and
    much to explain".


    Falk wrote that we need "answers to the most difficult questions", and
    expressed hopes of "an alternate version of the events that clears up to
    what degree, if at all, the attacks resulted from incompetence, deliberate
    inaction, and outright complicity".


    According to Falk, "the real explanation" for the alleged suppression of his
    views is "a widely shared fear of what sinister forces might lay beneath the
    unturned stones of a full and honest investigation of 9/11".


    "The persisting inability to resolve this fundamental controversy about 9/11
    subtly taints the legitimacy of the American government", said the UN
    official"


    So LeDaro might think that Mr. Falk is a respected human rights expert but the truth is that he is just a nut job appointed by a banana council.

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  2. You never provide source of your information. It will help. Otherwise it looks made up and is not trust worthy. You cannot get away by saying that it is available on Google. Just demonizing people will not help. It reflects badly on you and you’re not credible.

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  3. So believe I made it LeDaro.

    Those who care can easily verify it.

    Mr. Falk is not at all embarrassed about being a 9-11 "truth seeker".

    How about you LeDaro? Did the Towers come down because of some worldwide zionist plot??

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  4. Here's what the San Fransisco Chronicle thinks of Richard Falk:

    9/11 conspiracy theorist should leave U.N. job
    Joel Brinkley

    Sunday, December 14, 2008

    Millions of Americans believe the Sept. 11 attacks were not the work of Muslim fundamentalists. They like to call the strikes "false flag" operations - a conspiracy planned and executed by the Bush administration. Why? Under this unusual theory, the attacks provided President Bush and his aides the pretext to launch international wars and to enact policies that "led to widespread denials of rights under the pretext of homeland security."

    So writes Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University - and also a special representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council, who is charged with investigating Israeli abuses against the Palestinians.

    Anything believed by millions of Americans, according to (perhaps suspect) public opinion surveys, can hardly be called an underground movement. But I, for one, had never heard of this until a row broke out last month between Falk and U.N. monitors who try to defend Israel.

    What does this have to do with Israel and the Palestinians? Nothing, really - except that the U.N. monitors who already view Falk with grave distrust are now throwing up his advocacy of the 9/11 conspiracy theory as further evidence that he is not qualified to serve as an important U.N. envoy. (The Islamic nations chose Falk for the position early this year in large part because he once compared Israel to Nazi Germany.)

    Of course, Falk's supporters on the council - Egypt, Pakistan and other members of the Islamic conference - are not bothered by any of this. That should be no surprise. If the Bush administration actually perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks, then the world's distrust of Islam would be largely unfounded.

    It's hard to reconcile the 9/11 skeptics' story. But one common idea among them is that government operatives planted explosives throughout the two World Trade Center towers, and that those bombs caused the buildings to collapse.

    After a cursory look at the books, articles and Web sites, (including 911truth.org) I was able to discern the advocates' broad notion: The government knew that the 9/11 hijackers were on their way, and let them carry out the attack - even aided and abetted them.

    Well, even if we could accept this theory of unadulterated evil intent, it's patently clear that the government is not competent to pull off something this complex. In any case, last month an organization called UN Watch published an angry press release attacking Falk for publishing an article in a Scottish newspaper, entitled, "9/11, More Than Meets the Eye." In it, Falk does not say flatly that the theories are correct - just that they warrant further investigation. Still, Hillel Neuer, director of UN Watch, wrote: "The very credibility of the U.N. mission to preserve international peace is at stake."

    I talked with Neuer, and with Falk. In any conversation about Falk, Neuer's fundamental concern is on a different plane. The Human Rights Council, he notes, has fired its special representatives for Cuba, Liberia, Uzbekistan - even Congo. But one state has a permanent monitor not subject to debate or renewal. That is Israel, and Falk holds that position. "He has a very serious mandate," Neuer said. "People who question whether 9/11 happened are not serious people. No one in the United States or the West could be in positions of authority if they engaged 9/11 conspiracy talk."

    Falk, of course, disagrees. He notes that his position is part-time - and unpaid. "I've been trying to balance different agendas and roles. I am an academic and a citizen. And I don't think those roles reflect on my position as special rapporteur."

    Fair enough, but these 9/11 conspiracy theorists remind me of the people who used to think that Neil Armstrong didn't really land on the moon 40 years ago; the entire exercise was actually carried out in a water tank. It's a free country; you're entitled to think whatever you like. But this is fringe stuff. Would we ever have appointed an advocate of the water-tank theory to a senior position in government? The Human Rights Council is already an embarrassment to the United Nations. Certainly reasonable people can criticize Israel, just as they can find fault with the Palestinians. But the council's pathological obsession with Israel is its defining characteristic, and Falk is its embodiment.

    I wouldn't have cared that an academic wrote the foreword several years ago for a book that is the conspiracy advocates' bible. But I do care that the man whose job now is to help the Islamic states pursue their vendetta against Israel also believes that the U.S. government is capable of such unspeakable evil. What does that tell you about his frame of mind for his United Nations job?

    Joel Brinkley is a professor of journalism at Stanford University and a former foreign policy correspondent for the New York Times. To comment, e-mail insight@sfchronicle.com. To comment to him, e-mail brinkley@foreign-matters.com.

    http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/14/INDO14KPHQ.DTL

    This article appeared on page G - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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  5. I for one would like to see some links C-Nuck, especially one where Falk claims that 9-11 was a vast zionist conspiracy.

    Brinkley's article doesn't cut it. He takes Falk's quotes out of context (since they are incomplete statements) and he actually quotes right-wing funded initiatives like UN Watch as a credible source. An inadequate attempt at a smear job at best.

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  6. Since when is UN Watch funded by the "right wing".

    Where is your source for thsat outrageous claim?/

    My source is the S-F Chronicle as indicated. a leading newspaper.

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  7. Anonymous12:18 am

    To add to what BY wrote upthread, here is Elizabeth Woodworth's response to the Brinkley article.

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  8. From: A Conversation with Richard Falk June 2008

    Part of Falk's response to a question about 9/11

    "I think that there is a great deal of suspicion directed at anyone who is skeptical about the official explanation for 9/11. I have not, in fact, been very much involved with the so-called 9/11 truth movement. By coincidence, I happen to be a longtime friend of a man named David Ray Griffin, a much-respected philosopher of religion, who has become convinced that the official explanation is false. I have a lot of respect for him, and I wrote the foreword to his original book, The New Pearl Harbor. But that's really the extent of my involvement. I don't have an independent view on how best to understand the 9/11 attacks. I haven't looked at the evidence sufficiently to say more than that the 9/11 Commission didn't do a good job of dispelling the several plausible grounds for suspicions that exist. There are unanswered questions that deserve to be answered, and the public should have the benefit of that kind of clarification.

    The left particularly is nervous about being seen as supportive of conspiracy theory. And to the extent that there is an incentive to discredit my role--partly because of the Israel/Palestine context-- there's also a tendency to exaggerate my involvement with this set of issues. But if you look carefully at what I've been writing and what I've been doing, you'll see that I've really had very minimal contact, and I've not been involved in the 9/11 movement at all. Some people have tried to get me involved, and I've resisted, not because I don't think it's important to raise these issues but because they're not my own priorities."


    The whole article/interview is quite interesting.

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  9. C-Nuck, unlike you I am not in front of computer all the time. I do have other things to do in life. You have been at it again. To say that Dr. Falk believes that 9/11 was staged by rightwing, you're implying, is nothing more than smear campaign and demonizing a world-respected human rights activist.

    Under previous post you said, in your comments, that Dr. Falk was told ahead of time that he will not be allowed into Israel. This video shows that is clearly false. Now you have changed the subject to 9/11. Anything to smear. If anyone is nuts it is you who keeps on deflecting when there are no facts and moreover demonize.

    Beijing York, Gene and Sassy thank you for your contribution to this discussion. Now you have some idea what demonizing is all about. That is exactly the game Bush/Cheney played to invade Iraq - and tons of falsehoods. Nazi tactics were similar.

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  10. Yes we are just like the Nazis because we don't asccept 9-11 conspiracy theorists.

    I asked you a question LeDaro and you have deflected from answering.

    Did 9-11 happen because of a worldwide zionist plot?

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  11. C-Nuck, you're talking absolute nonsense now.

    I do not think Dr. Falk said anything about Zionist conspiracy either. He wanted better investigation because all the intelligence was there and Bush administration ignored such intelligence. If Bush administration had taken appropriate action this tragedy could have been avoided.

    As far as Zionest conspiracy that is all in your head I did not say a thing about it.

    Trust me C-Nile is a much better nickname for you.

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