Exchange with faculty member using his University of Michican e-address:

Dear Prof. Victor Lieberman, (You didn't give your name but I looked up who you were)

> Dear Ms. Blackwell,

It's Dr. Blackwell now actually - I finally managed to complete my doctoral thesis despite all the distractions.

> Yes, I can imagine you are very busy with your vitally important work. 

Some of us do have examination scripts to mark, you know. I'm not sure what stage of the academic year it is on your side of the Pond but over here we are immersed in exam boards.

> I have checked the website you mentioned and found it a Stalinist travesty on 
> intellectual inquiry.

Stalinist? Now you've really upset me. As a self-respecting Trotskyist I'm grateful to you for bringing this to my attention. I shall boycott them at once.

> You explain, but do nothing to exonerate, the UCU's record of double-standards. The 
> UCU failure to boycott Russia, China, or Sudan, while focusing on Israel, which is 
> far more vulnerable than any of thee other regimes but whose transgressions are far 
> less lamentable, is inexplicable in terms other than visceral prejudice against 
> Israel as a Jewish state.

I wasn't aware that China or Sudan were applying for membership of the OECD? As for Russia, the last EU-Russia summit was plagued by arguments about human rights instead of discussing a new partnership and cooperation agreement, whereas Israel is on course to get an upgrade to the status of Switzerland vis a vis the EU.

And "visceral prejudice against Israel as a Jewish state"? you just don't get it do you? You seem to have no idea of the scale of support for boycotts, sanctions and divestment among British Jews. Take a look at some of these:

• "Normalising Injustice" - Arthur Neslen
• Whose boycott is it, anyway? - Haim Bresheeth
• "A valid response to injustice" - Steven Rose

> Carry on.

I intend to. Excuse me, I must go now, I have a letter to post to the Turkish government protesting against Article 301 and the murder of Hrant Dink.

Best wishes, Sue Blackwell

Some readers of this page may wonder why I do not provide the e-mail addresses of the senders, where these are not forged. The answer is that I do not wish to encourage the abuse of the Internet to send more messages of this kind. I have no control over who visits this page or what kind of messages they might send, and it is possible that some of the messages sent might be anti-semitic in content. I do not want to encourage the sending of racist messages, even to people who send me hate mail.

  Joachim Martillo writes:

I am completely amazed that apparently intelligent educated people watched an obviously racist and demonizing discussion of suicide attacks on the forensic linguistics list, and noone but me was willing to challenge the obvious racism of the discussion.

... Obviously, Blackwell has decided to pander to racist ethnic Ashkenazim and has closed her mind on the issue, but I refer you to Shulamit Aloni's article: Murder Under the Cover of Righteousness

How refreshing to be accused of "pandering to racist ethnic Ashkenazim" for a change, instead of anti-semitism! I don't know whether to laugh or cry: probably better to laugh.

Your message is much too long to quote in full here, but readers will get the general gist. You are upset with me because I threw you off the Forensic-Linguistics list and banned you. I did this because of your long off-topic rants, for which I had repeatedly warned you. The last one included the following:

"Palestinian partisans that blow themselves up in an attack on Zionist colonizers are heroes, and all decent human beings should support them. Zionist colonizers, their racist ethnic Ashkenazi supporters throughout the world, and non-Ashkenazi supporters of Zionism are not only enemies of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims but of all decent human beings."

I agree with the second sentence on the whole, though you seem a bit obsessed about "racist ethnic Ashkenazim". (But you told the list you are of Ashkenazi origin yourself. So that's all right then.) I profoundly disagree with the first sentence. Suicide bombings are a tragedy for all concerned. And it is not at all clear who you mean by "Zionist colonizers": I and other list members suspected you were including Israeli civilians as legitimate targets. Far from banning you for opposing Zionism, I banned you for off-topic and offensive postings which appeared to condone what amounts to terrorism by any definition of that term.

But Aloni's article is excellent and I'm happy to include a link to it.

By the way I have come across a website which contains the following discussion:

Joachim Martillo Ajami
(multiple middle names elided)

Contrib. post:

who, until approximately [1992], polluted most soc.culture.* groups 
with diatribes as to (pick the culture)'s primitiveness and need for 
recolonization by the enlighted West. 

>Does anyone remember Juan Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami? (I may have got
>the name slightly wrong) Is he still around?
 Oh, I _do_ remember Martillo. He occasionally posts to talk.politics.mideast,
but he seems to've (thankfully) ceased infesting the soc.culture newsgroups
he used to turn up at.
> About 3 years ago he
>used to post on various politics groups: usually deliberately
>inflammatory stuff like "Time to Suspend and Dismantle India".  Basic
>view-point seemed to be a very right wing "America can do nothing wrong".
 At one time, Mark Crispin (who seems to've disappeared from the net entirely)
referred to him as a LaRouchie, although I'm not sure how that connects to
Martillo's "the Third World is inhabited by savages and colonialism is good
for them" party line, which is something he seems to repeat just about every
time he posts.
>When I once took him to task for a particularly outrageous
>round of this I got a barely-coherent e-mail accusing me of favouring
>Stalinism and baby-killing.
 You actually got _Email_ from him? Hmmm. He never bothered mailing me after I
flamed him on a few occasions...
>The "Ajami" part of the name appeared _ex_nihilo_ one day after he
>claimed to have had a Moslem great-uncle in Palestine who was murdered
>for collaborating with the Jews (or something like that).  He also showed
>up on soc.religion.islam, but I don't know what his religious views are.
 Presumably orthodox Loonyism. He seems the type. >:)

-- 

> Does anyone remember Juan Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami? (I may have got
> the name slightly wrong)
He used lots of variants, starting as Joachim Martillo and later spelling
his first name Yakim or Yehoyaqim as the fancy took him and adding the Ajami.
> Is he still around? [...]  Basic viewpoint seemed to be a very right wing
> "America can do nothing wrong". [...]
Haven't heard from him in a while.  He apparently got an article published
in a prestigious neo-conservative magazine (Commentary?), which says a lot
about their editorial standards...
> I don't know what his religious views are.
He is or was an atheist Sephardic Jew.  He mildly despised religious Jews
and Christians and regarded Muslims as subhuman vermin.

Surely they can't mean you? "atheist Sephardic Jew" - so you're not Ashkenazi then? (Not that I personally give a tuppenny fart what your ethnic origin is, but it seems to matter to you.) "very right wing"? Supporter of Lyndon LaRouche? Please tell us who you really are, and what you think of the majority of Muslims who do not become suicide bombers.

Best wishes, Sue Blackwell

  Christopher Coulter writes:

Set a personal example. Throw away your computer! Most of Windows operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel. The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed at Intel in Israel. Both the Pentium 4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed, and produced in Israel. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel. The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 in Israel by four young Israeli whiz kids. Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R.& D. facilities outside the US in Israel. So, due to your complete boycott of anything Israeli, you now have poorer health and no computer. But your bad news does not end there.

Get rid of your cellular phone too! Cell phone technology was also developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its biggest development center in Israel. Most of the latest technology in your mobile phone was developed by Israeli scientists.

I have good news for you. I'm writing this on a Sun workstation running Unix. It doesn't use Windows or indeed any Microsoft software whatsoever. That means I never have to worry about getting a virus when I open my e-mail attachments. By the way I have Mozilla Firefox as my web browser. Now if you tell me that was developed in Israel I'll be really upset. Unlike Internet Explorer it blocks those annoying popup windows every time.

AOL Messenger? You must be kidding. I don't have time for that sort of thing. And that bloody "Connie" woman on the AOL e-mail system gets right up my nose. Come to think of it, Connie is quite an appropriate name. I did their "free" trial, tried to cancel the subscription, found their phone line permanently engaged and had to bring in Birmingham Trading Standards and threaten AOL with legal action before they refunded the £17.99 monthly fee they had debited from my credit card.

Motorola mobile? Naa, mine's a Nokia. Finnish I believe.

Talking of Israeli technology, have you heard of this one?

Reuters, November 17, 2005
On Yahoo news website

" A new walk-through airport lie detector made in Israel may prove to be the toughest challenge yet for potential hijackers or drugs smugglers. Tested in Russia, the two-stage GK-1 voice analyser requires that passengers don headphones at a console and answer "yes" or "no" into a microphone to questions about whether they are planning something illicit. The software will almost always pick up uncontrollable tremors in the voice that give away liars or those with something to hide, say its designers at Israeli firm Nemesysco. "In our trial, 500 passengers went through the test, and then each was subjected to full traditional searches," said chief executive officer Amir Liberman. "The one person found to be planning something illegal was the one who failed our test."

At $10,000 - $30,000 a throw they don't come cheap. Pity they don't work then. A contributor to the Forensic Linguistics e-list, which I run, posted recently: "This piece of 'news' is just a re-run of the old Nemesysco scam. This so called lie detector is a complete fraud. What makes it stand apart from other similar scams is that it doesn't even measure or 'detect' anything at all in the voice. It counts digitization artifacts that arise as a consequence of the discretization of an analog signal." He continues:

"About a year ago when a representative for Nemesysco tried to market the products here some of us in Sweden published several letters in daily papers where we explained what it was all about and we also published a statement signed by nearly all active professors of phonetics or speech science and many other active researchers in relevant fields exposing the scam."

Best wishes, Sue Blackwell

   "Mahmud Nashaba" writes from somewhere "North of Jerusalem":

Thanks for branding our effort (machsomwatch.com) 'anonymous right-wingers'. [He is referring to the comment on my "Links" page after the entry for Machsom Watch under "Jewish and Israeli Peace Organisations" - Sue.]  More than half of our members are Palestinians (myself included) but I guess that much like Hitler's insistence to brand "Jews" all those 10 generations removed, you too - in your shallow and racist mind - decided to brand all those who are anti Arafat, as anti Palestinian "right wingers". It is our view that Arafat is the true evil in the middle east. He brought upon us despair and poverty instead of continue the peaceful quest for resolution (Camp David) and indeed stole BILLIONS of dollars destined to our suffering. Are you blind to the thousands marching in the streets of Gaza? Thank you for adding your drop of shallow and superficial hate to the ocean of racism and hopelessness. Pluralism is not a disease. Aspire for it. We are all (including Israeli members) supporters of peace, removal of barriers and the fulfilment of national aspirations. As for our anonymity, unlike your happy little life in Europe, our very lives are at an immediate risk if we give them public. I wish there was a wall to protect us from that! You are but a little soldier in the army of hate and superficiality, to brand OUR daily suffer as "right wing" or anti Palestinian. May Allah curse the contributors to division and despair, rather than to bridging of the camps.

Oh, and since evidently you didn't understand our site: The site is INTENTIONALY one sided. This is called SATIRE (check it out). It is MEANT to criticise all the good-will organizations (such as machsomwatch.org) that in their shallow and racist one sidedness contribute to nothing but the incitement of more hate and division, rather than the building of bridges of understanding to the complex reality, the subject of this bloody and grim conflict. Being satiric does not mean the facts portrayed are not real. Satire can be painfully accurate. It being one-sided is the satire. It is meant to provoke you to think - not to insist even more on superficiality and blind hate. You are serving evil by doing so - NOT the Palestinian cause.

Sorry this post isn't the usual thumbs-up you evidently seek.

The phrase "anonymous right-wingers" came from the real Machsom Watch as far as I can recall, but from the contents of your e-mail it seems pretty accurate to me.

To describe your site as "satire" is an insult to satirists the world over. I suppose you think a picture of a child dressed as a suicide bomber is amusing? I think it's yourselves who have the monopoly on "hate and superficiality" not me.

The real Machsom Watch draws the world's attention to the misery and tragedy caused by the checkpoints: mothers forced to give birth without medical attention, elderly and infirm people forced to make their own way across dug-up roads before they can reach an ambulance, families kept apart ... the list goes on. And all you can do is blame Arafat.

Well I'm flattered that you have found my new website and consider it important enough to merit an e-mail. All good publicity as far as I'm concerned.

Keep up the good work and give my best regards to all your right-wing mates on your e-lists.

P.S. Neither my Palestinian friends nor my Jewish friends to whom I have shown your e-mail believe you are Palestinian. And isn't Mahmud Nashabat the name of the head of the Jenin Martyrs' Brigades? I think they should be told.

Best wishes, Sue Blackwell

   "Ruthie" writes:

Dear Ms. Blackwell "Peace be upon your Name"

Why don't you give your views on the many desecrations of Jewish Cemeteries that occur in Blimey Land? I think you and Glasgow George should pay homage at the East Ham Cemetery that was recently vandalized.

You could pay your homage by wearing a scarf over either your head or face and George could put his rear end up in the air five times a day and pray that Sadam somewhere will hear his prayers and give him some more of the money that was supposed to go for the Oil for Food Program. Both of you are a disgrace to the English People and should visit a Synagogue where the real truth is to be found and beg for forgiveness after all your Christian God was a Jew, not a Muslim pedophile.

You won't hear from me again since you are beyond pity and redemption.

  Sue replies:

Dear "Ruthie", you seem to be suffering from serious spiritual confusion and unable to decide what my religion is. Let me help you: I am an atheist. I believe that on the whole religion is bad for people's health. But of course I condemn attacks on cemeteries of any religion, particularly if they are racist attacks.

I'm sure George Galloway won't mind being described as a "disgrace to the English people" since it's a Scottish constituency (Glasgow Kelvin) that he represents in Parliament.

By the way, since you sent me this message the Christian Science Monitor has admitted that the documents on which it based its accusations about George Galloway were forgeries.

Best wishes, Sue Blackwell

(posted June 2003:)

   Kewl Michael writes:

You are nothing more than a cheap anti-Semitic whore.
May you live with Arabs the rest of your life.

Dear Mr. Michael, I won't bother to reply to the first part of your message. As for the wish that I should live with Arabs, is this supposed to bother me? You don't seem to have grasped that I live in BIRMINGHAM, which in a year's time is predicted to be the first European city in which caucasians like me will be in a minority. My neighbour on one side of my house is Jewish; on the other side are Pakistani Moslems; over the road live my Hindu friends who are East African Asians, speaking English, Gujurati and Swahili. At the back there is a Chinese family, an Indian (Sikh) family and a Jamaican family. All part of life's rich tapestry.

Oh, and by the way my partner is Dutch, my daughter is half-Indian and my landlord for the past ten years is - you've guessed it - an Arab. Do get a life.

Best wishes, Sue Blackwell

   Mr. Eli Weinerman of Chicago writes:

"Here in America conservative press complained aboutleftist dominating academia. But it looks that we far behind UK with scum like you."

Dear Mr. Weinerman, it is interesting to note that your language exactly echoes that of the nazis like the British National Party, who are always calling people like me "leftist scum". I am sure you would not wish to be associated with such people so perhaps you would care to reflect on your use of language.

Talking of language: next time you send an abusive e-mail to an English lecturer, please at least do it grammatically. Your first sentence lacks an article before "conservative press", and "leftist" should be plural since there are several of us. And your second sentence lacks the verb "to be" after "we". Where did you go to school?

Best wishes, Sue Blackwell

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It was last updated on 13th June 2007.