http://www.tellingfilms.netne.net/reynouard2010.htm
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
@ 917-974-6367
What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?
With Paul-Eric Blanrue, against the Gayssot Act
and for Vincent Reynouard
It's wrong when we are denied the right to challenge common beliefs or culture, especially when everyone knows that the books are written by the victors. It doesn't stem from hate to say "I don't believe" whatever. This anti free speech stuff always irks me. This is nothing like a call to violent action even. (Steve Wozniak)
That is the comment with which Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers (see his biography at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak/ , has recently accompanied his signature of the petition launched in France by historian Paul-Eric Blanrue against the Gayssot Act and in favour of Vincent Reynouard. The Gayssot Act of July 13, 1990 prohibits the diffusion of historical revisionism on pain of imprisonment and fine. On the grounds of this law, Vincent Reynouard, aged 41 and a father of eight, was in 2007 sentenced to one year in prison without probation and ordered to pay about €70,000 for having written a 16-page pamphlet entitled Holocauste ?Cequel'onvous cache... ("Holocaust? What's being kept hidden from you...").At the request of the French authorities, who had issued a "European arrest warrant" for him, he was arrested by the Belgian police last July in Brussels, where he lived with his family, then jailed in Belgium for over fifty days before being extradited to France. He is now incarcerated in Valenciennes in northern France. And throughout the Western world the mainstream media ignore the fact that in France an honest man, father of eight children, is serving a year in prison and must pay €70,000 because he authored a piece of writing of sixteen pages.
For his part Noam Chomsky has stated his position in a letter against the Gayssot Act and in defence of Vincent Reynouard. You may find that letter at
Currently there are a thousand signers of the petition.
I invite you to add your signature to theirs once you have read the English version of the press release, posted at http://www.tellingfilms.netne.net/reynouard2010.htm , presenting Mr Reynouard's case and showing the e-mail address to which to send your name; please indicate your place of residence and, if you wish, your profession.
Thank you.
Best wishes,
Robert Faurisson
November 5, 2010
The full statement from Noam Chomsky to the release of Vincent and the repeal of the law Gayssot
Publié le Vendredi 24 septembre 2010 by CSVR| Laisser un commentaire
I understand that Vincent Reynouard has been condemned and jailed under the Gayssot law, and that a petition is being circulated in protest against these actions. I know nothing about Mr. Reynouard, but regard the Gayssot law as entirely illegitimate, inconsistent with the basic principles of a free society as these have been understood since the Enlightenment. The law in effect grants the state the right to determine historical truth and to punish departure from its edicts, a principle reminiscent of the dark days of Stalinism and Nazism. If the justification of the Gayssot law is to ban "horrendous views", or to protect the right to "live free from fear of an atmosphere" of prejudice and racism, then it should be obvious that, if such laws were applied impartially, they would criminalize a vast range of public discourse, which, however despicable one may find it, should certainly be permitted in a free society, and indeed is, with no question being raised.
Accordingly, I would like to register my support for the petition protesting the application of this law in this (or any) case.
Noam Chomsky, September, 5th 2010.
----------------
In France, a writer, father of eight, is in prison for his historical research
And nothing is said about it in the so-called free press!
French author Vincent Reynouard
To sign a petition in defence of Vincent Reynouard's right to free research and expression, please visit the petition site (in French) at http://abrogeonslaloigayssot.blogspot.com/ or send a message to the author of this communiqué, Mr Paul-Eric BLANRUE:
With a wife and eight children, the Frenchman Vincent Reynouard, aged 41, is a chemical engineer by training, a graduate of the ISMRA ("Institute of sciences of atomic matter and radiation") in Caen (Normandy). He readily presents himself as a traditionalist Catholic and does not hide his ultra-conservative political opinions. But, most important, he publicly disputes, in his DVDs and writings, the conventional version of Second World War history. He is one of those researchers who declare themselves to be "revisionists" and who are called "deniers" by others because they do not believe in the existence of homicidal gas chambers in the wartime German concentration camps.
In 2005, Reynouard wrote and sent to numerous tourism offices, museums and town halls a 16-page brochure entitled "Holocaust? Here's what's kept hidden from you…", in which he took a view altogether opposite to that of academic history. French justice immediately pounced upon him.
His trial in 2007 at the criminal court in Saverne (Alsace) resulted in a sentence of one year's imprisonment, a fine of 10,000 euros and an order to pay damages of 3,000 euros to the antiracist league "LICRA". In June 2008 the court of appeal in Colmar upheld the prison sentence and ordered him to pay a total of 60,000 euros (a 20,000 euro fine, damages, mandatory publication of the ruling and court fees). Severity as never seen before.
Since he resides in Belgium, France launched a European arrest warrant for Reynouard in order to make him serve the prison sentence ordered by the Colmar court. On July 9th he was imprisoned by the Belgian police, pending his extradition to France. All of which leads him to say: "When people can think of no other way but imprisonment to get rid of a verbal opponent, it's because they have no arguments."
Conclusion: A 41-year-old father of eight is currently in prison for his historical research, because of the Gayssot Act.
This Act of the French parliament ("article 24bis" of the law governing the press), having come into effect upon publication in the Journal Officiel on July 14th 1990, prohibits the "disputing (...) of the existence of one or more crimes against humanity as defined by Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal [known as the Nuremberg Tribunal] in annex to the London Agreement of August 8th, 1945."
In my book Sarkozy, Israël et les Juifs (Oser Dire publishers, [Belgium], 2009), I recall that this freedom-killing law has been strongly criticised in the past by such personalities as the French academician Simone Veil; the Permanent Secretary of the French Academy, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse; the government ministers Jean Foyer, Jacques Toubon, Alain Peyrefitte; the historians Henri Amouroux, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Annie Kriegel, Francois Furet, Alain Besançon, Jacques Willequet and François Bédarida; the founder of the Hannah Arendt Research Institute, Chantal Delsol; the 1988 Nobel laureate for economics, Maurice Allais; the writers Michel Tournier, Louis Pauwels, Michel Houellebecq, Philip Murray, Jean Daniel, Vladimir Volkoff, Michel Rachline and Alain Robbe-Grillet; the judges Philippe Bilger, Alain Marsaud and Raoul Béteille; the legal scholars Olivier Duhamel, Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet, Emmanuelle Duverger, André Decoq and Guy Carcassonne; the lawyers Jacques Vergès and John Bastardi Daumont; the philosopher Paul Ricœur; the comedian Bruno Gaccio; defenders of the freedom of expression like the founder of Reporters Sans Frontières Robert Ménard (who denounces it as a "thought police") and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit; the journalists Dominique Jamet, Delfeil de Ton, Alain Rollat, Albert du Roy, Philippe Tesson, Jacques Julliard and Ivan Rioufol; also by the former president of the Ligue des droits de l'homme, historian Madeleine Rebérioux. Abroad, the American linguist Noam Chomsky has declared himself an absolute opponent of it. For the Belgian physicist and intellectual Jean Bricmont, "the Gayssot Act is a legal regression of several centuries". As for Presidents Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad, they have strongly condemned the repression resulting from this law.
Henceforth it falls to us to defend free expression in deed and not just in theory. Why is no one heard publicly denouncing the present fate of Vincent Reynouard? What are Reporters Sans Frontières, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch doing? No organ of the media, either French or foreign, has informed public opinion of this case. Such silence is abnormal.
Personally, I have decided to act as a historian and as a citizen, and to make it known, through this press release, how appalled I am at the fact that, in our country, we have a man thrown into prison for his opinions, however unusual, shocking and controversial they may be. Such treatment is not worthy of France or her intellectual tradition. It is not for the law to say how historical truth is set down: in a free country, that is the task of historians. The Gayssot Act, which restricts the historian's freedom, is unworthy of a democratic State; it is a wicked law. I therefore ask for its immediate repeal.
I hope to be joined soon by dozens, hundreds, thousands of other people unable to remain indifferent in the face of a scandal that seriously harms the image of France and flouts the spirit of the Republic.
Those who wish to sign this communiqué along with me can send me their names and contact information at the address eugenie.blanrue@laposte.net. It is not a question of supporting Vincent Reynouard's religious, political or historical ideas but of defending his right to express them. To challenge them, an open, democratic, fair and honest debate will suffice.
We shall go over the results of this request for signatures towards the end of September.
Meanwhile, thank you for circulating this text to the utmost extent.
Paul-Eric Blanrue,
Historian,
Founder of the research group Cercle Zététique,
Author of Sarkozy, Israël et les Juifs (Oser Dire publishers, [Belgium], 2009)
PS:
Vincent Reynouard can be contacted at the following address.
Please note this is a new address, since M. Reynouard has now been extradited from Belgium to France –
Monsieur Vincent Reynouard
N° 33034
Maison d'arrêt de Valenciennes
BP 80 455
F-59322 VALENCIENNES Cedex
FRANCE
M. Reynouard is fluent is English and can receive mail, though currently he is not allowed to receive stamps or books.
With Paul-Eric Blanrue, against the Gayssot Act
and for Vincent Reynouard
It's wrong when we are denied the right to challenge common beliefs or culture, especially when everyone knows that the books are written by the victors. It doesn't stem from hate to say "I don't believe" whatever. This anti free speech stuff always irks me. This is nothing like a call to violent action even. (Steve Wozniak)
That is the comment with whichSteve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers (see his biography at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak/ , has recently accompanied his signature of the petition launched in France by historian Paul-Eric Blanrue against the Gayssot Act and in favour of Vincent Reynouard. The Gayssot Act of July 13, 1990 prohibits the diffusion of historical revisionism on pain of imprisonment and fine. On the grounds of this law, Vincent Reynouard, aged 41 and a father of eight, was in 2007 sentenced to one year in prison without probation and ordered to pay about €70,000 for having written a 16-page pamphlet entitled Holocauste ?Cequel'onvous cache... ("Holocaust? What's being kept hidden from you...").At the request of the French authorities, who had issued a "European arrest warrant" for him, he was arrested by the Belgian police last July in Brussels, where he lived with his family, then jailed in Belgium for over fifty days before being extradited to France. He is now incarcerated in Valenciennes in northern France. And throughout the Western world the mainstream media ignore the fact that in France an honest man, father of eight children, is serving a year in prison and must pay €70,000 because he authored a piece of writing of sixteen pages.
For his part Noam Chomsky has stated his position in a letter against the Gayssot Act and in defence of Vincent Reynouard. You may find that letter at
https://csvr.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/the-full-statement-from-noam-chomsky-to-the-release-of-vincent-and-the-repeal-of-the-law-gayssot/.
Currently there are a thousand signers of the petition.
I invite you to add your signature to theirs once you have read the English version of the press release, posted at http://www.tellingfilms.netne.net/reynouard2010.htm , presenting Mr Reynouard's case and showing the e-mail address to which to send your name; please indicate your place of residence and, if you wish, your profession.
Thank you.
Best wishes,
Robert Faurisson
November 5, 2010
http://abrogeonslaloigayssot.blogspot.com/
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
@ 917-974-6367
What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?
http://www.amazon.com/Debating-Holocaust-Look-Both-Sides/dp/1591480051/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234962925&sr=8-1
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
@ 917-974-6367
What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?
With Paul-Eric Blanrue, against the Gayssot Act
and for Vincent Reynouard
It's wrong when we are denied the right to challenge common beliefs or culture, especially when everyone knows that the books are written by the victors. It doesn't stem from hate to say "I don't believe" whatever. This anti free speech stuff always irks me. This is nothing like a call to violent action even. (Steve Wozniak)
That is the comment with which Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers (see his biography at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak/ , has recently accompanied his signature of the petition launched in France by historian Paul-Eric Blanrue against the Gayssot Act and in favour of Vincent Reynouard. The Gayssot Act of July 13, 1990 prohibits the diffusion of historical revisionism on pain of imprisonment and fine. On the grounds of this law, Vincent Reynouard, aged 41 and a father of eight, was in 2007 sentenced to one year in prison without probation and ordered to pay about €70,000 for having written a 16-page pamphlet entitled Holocauste ?Cequel'onvous cache... ("Holocaust? What's being kept hidden from you...").At the request of the French authorities, who had issued a "European arrest warrant" for him, he was arrested by the Belgian police last July in Brussels, where he lived with his family, then jailed in Belgium for over fifty days before being extradited to France. He is now incarcerated in Valenciennes in northern France. And throughout the Western world the mainstream media ignore the fact that in France an honest man, father of eight children, is serving a year in prison and must pay €70,000 because he authored a piece of writing of sixteen pages.
For his part Noam Chomsky has stated his position in a letter against the Gayssot Act and in defence of Vincent Reynouard. You may find that letter at
Currently there are a thousand signers of the petition.
I invite you to add your signature to theirs once you have read the English version of the press release, posted at http://www.tellingfilms.netne.net/reynouard2010.htm , presenting Mr Reynouard's case and showing the e-mail address to which to send your name; please indicate your place of residence and, if you wish, your profession.
Thank you.
Best wishes,
Robert Faurisson
November 5, 2010
The full statement from Noam Chomsky to the release of Vincent and the repeal of the law Gayssot
Publié le Vendredi 24 septembre 2010 by CSVR| Laisser un commentaire
I understand that Vincent Reynouard has been condemned and jailed under the Gayssot law, and that a petition is being circulated in protest against these actions. I know nothing about Mr. Reynouard, but regard the Gayssot law as entirely illegitimate, inconsistent with the basic principles of a free society as these have been understood since the Enlightenment. The law in effect grants the state the right to determine historical truth and to punish departure from its edicts, a principle reminiscent of the dark days of Stalinism and Nazism. If the justification of the Gayssot law is to ban "horrendous views", or to protect the right to "live free from fear of an atmosphere" of prejudice and racism, then it should be obvious that, if such laws were applied impartially, they would criminalize a vast range of public discourse, which, however despicable one may find it, should certainly be permitted in a free society, and indeed is, with no question being raised.
Accordingly, I would like to register my support for the petition protesting the application of this law in this (or any) case.
Noam Chomsky, September, 5th 2010.
----------------
In France, a writer, father of eight, is in prison for his historical research
And nothing is said about it in the so-called free press!
French author Vincent Reynouard
To sign a petition in defence of Vincent Reynouard's right to free research and expression, please visit the petition site (in French) at http://abrogeonslaloigayssot.blogspot.com/ or send a message to the author of this communiqué, Mr Paul-Eric BLANRUE:
With a wife and eight children, the Frenchman Vincent Reynouard, aged 41, is a chemical engineer by training, a graduate of the ISMRA ("Institute of sciences of atomic matter and radiation") in Caen (Normandy). He readily presents himself as a traditionalist Catholic and does not hide his ultra-conservative political opinions. But, most important, he publicly disputes, in his DVDs and writings, the conventional version of Second World War history. He is one of those researchers who declare themselves to be "revisionists" and who are called "deniers" by others because they do not believe in the existence of homicidal gas chambers in the wartime German concentration camps.
In 2005, Reynouard wrote and sent to numerous tourism offices, museums and town halls a 16-page brochure entitled "Holocaust? Here's what's kept hidden from you…", in which he took a view altogether opposite to that of academic history. French justice immediately pounced upon him.
His trial in 2007 at the criminal court in Saverne (Alsace) resulted in a sentence of one year's imprisonment, a fine of 10,000 euros and an order to pay damages of 3,000 euros to the antiracist league "LICRA". In June 2008 the court of appeal in Colmar upheld the prison sentence and ordered him to pay a total of 60,000 euros (a 20,000 euro fine, damages, mandatory publication of the ruling and court fees). Severity as never seen before.
Since he resides in Belgium, France launched a European arrest warrant for Reynouard in order to make him serve the prison sentence ordered by the Colmar court. On July 9th he was imprisoned by the Belgian police, pending his extradition to France. All of which leads him to say: "When people can think of no other way but imprisonment to get rid of a verbal opponent, it's because they have no arguments."
Conclusion: A 41-year-old father of eight is currently in prison for his historical research, because of the Gayssot Act.
This Act of the French parliament ("article 24bis" of the law governing the press), having come into effect upon publication in the Journal Officiel on July 14th 1990, prohibits the "disputing (...) of the existence of one or more crimes against humanity as defined by Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal [known as the Nuremberg Tribunal] in annex to the London Agreement of August 8th, 1945."
In my book Sarkozy, Israël et les Juifs (Oser Dire publishers, [Belgium], 2009), I recall that this freedom-killing law has been strongly criticised in the past by such personalities as the French academician Simone Veil; the Permanent Secretary of the French Academy, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse; the government ministers Jean Foyer, Jacques Toubon, Alain Peyrefitte; the historians Henri Amouroux, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Annie Kriegel, Francois Furet, Alain Besançon, Jacques Willequet and François Bédarida; the founder of the Hannah Arendt Research Institute, Chantal Delsol; the 1988 Nobel laureate for economics, Maurice Allais; the writers Michel Tournier, Louis Pauwels, Michel Houellebecq, Philip Murray, Jean Daniel, Vladimir Volkoff, Michel Rachline and Alain Robbe-Grillet; the judges Philippe Bilger, Alain Marsaud and Raoul Béteille; the legal scholars Olivier Duhamel, Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet, Emmanuelle Duverger, André Decoq and Guy Carcassonne; the lawyers Jacques Vergès and John Bastardi Daumont; the philosopher Paul Ricœur; the comedian Bruno Gaccio; defenders of the freedom of expression like the founder of Reporters Sans Frontières Robert Ménard (who denounces it as a "thought police") and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit; the journalists Dominique Jamet, Delfeil de Ton, Alain Rollat, Albert du Roy, Philippe Tesson, Jacques Julliard and Ivan Rioufol; also by the former president of the Ligue des droits de l'homme, historian Madeleine Rebérioux. Abroad, the American linguist Noam Chomsky has declared himself an absolute opponent of it. For the Belgian physicist and intellectual Jean Bricmont, "the Gayssot Act is a legal regression of several centuries". As for Presidents Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad, they have strongly condemned the repression resulting from this law.
Henceforth it falls to us to defend free expression in deed and not just in theory. Why is no one heard publicly denouncing the present fate of Vincent Reynouard? What are Reporters Sans Frontières, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch doing? No organ of the media, either French or foreign, has informed public opinion of this case. Such silence is abnormal.
Personally, I have decided to act as a historian and as a citizen, and to make it known, through this press release, how appalled I am at the fact that, in our country, we have a man thrown into prison for his opinions, however unusual, shocking and controversial they may be. Such treatment is not worthy of France or her intellectual tradition. It is not for the law to say how historical truth is set down: in a free country, that is the task of historians. The Gayssot Act, which restricts the historian's freedom, is unworthy of a democratic State; it is a wicked law. I therefore ask for its immediate repeal.
I hope to be joined soon by dozens, hundreds, thousands of other people unable to remain indifferent in the face of a scandal that seriously harms the image of France and flouts the spirit of the Republic.
Those who wish to sign this communiqué along with me can send me their names and contact information at the address eugenie.blanrue@laposte.net. It is not a question of supporting Vincent Reynouard's religious, political or historical ideas but of defending his right to express them. To challenge them, an open, democratic, fair and honest debate will suffice.
We shall go over the results of this request for signatures towards the end of September.
Meanwhile, thank you for circulating this text to the utmost extent.
Paul-Eric Blanrue,
Historian,
Founder of the research group Cercle Zététique,
Author of Sarkozy, Israël et les Juifs (Oser Dire publishers, [Belgium], 2009)
PS:
Vincent Reynouard can be contacted at the following address.
Please note this is a new address, since M. Reynouard has now been extradited from Belgium to France –
Monsieur Vincent Reynouard
N° 33034
Maison d'arrêt de Valenciennes
BP 80 455
F-59322 VALENCIENNES Cedex
FRANCE
M. Reynouard is fluent is English and can receive mail, though currently he is not allowed to receive stamps or books.
+++
Being happy–is it good for the Jews? "Before Professor Dershowitz accused me of being an anti-Semite (news to me), I was a happy person. Since then, I'm still a happy person". –Michael Santomauro
