Anyone seen this?

[BlackShanglan]

The scale argument is the only one you cannot refute in the case of Aushwitz. The BDA photos are pretty irrefuteable. They are date stamped, and the assessments are coboborated because they are appended to the flight reports. Thus, you have a firm and irrefuteable date on them, coboborateive evidence, in the form of the flight reports of the recon pilots, as well as the debriefing of the crews who made the bomb runs they are accessing. Followed by orders for follow up raids and their BDAs.

Like I said, with the other camps, there isn't a photographic record. But the raids on the I.G. Farbin plant next to Biurkenau with their attendant military paper trail, are just undeinable. Even the "the allies created this" consipracy theory won't work, because the camp, creamtoria and gas chambers were clerely there, well before any alies could arrive to contrive them. Wile the allies were still bombing in fact.

Oh, I think Irving's a madman. I don't agee with any of his points. His position is irrational, but that is, in an odd way, what keeps it from dying. It's not based in logic, so no amount of showing it to be illogical affects him in any way. Of course it convinces all sane people, but he never believed his position for rational reasons in the first place. It's a bit like racism; it's difficult to reason someone out of it because no one is ever reasoned into it. It's not merely factually incorrect; it is antithetical to and a conscious rejection of reason and fact themselves. As such, it's quite resilient when attacked with them.

But then, I have my own preferred form of evidence. My great-uncle helped to liberate a concentration camp.

No one in our family has the slightest doubt.

Shanglan

 

[BlackShanglan]

Many people here articulate it won't happen again, yet none actually see that it is happening, daily ... now.

Yes, that's what chilled me in some recent (in the past year) comments from young English people when interviewed about the Holocaust. "Doesn't really apply to me"; "Yeah, but nobody would let something like that happen again." Serbia? Rwanda? Sudan? God, it made one want to weep.

 

[CharleyH]

it's difficult to reason someone out of it because no one is ever reasoned into it.

Shanglan

Explain this in a current example?

 

[CharleyH]

Yes, that's what chilled me in some recent (in the past year) comments from young English people when interviewed about the Holocaust. "Doesn't really apply to me"

When you say English people, what do you mean?

 

[BlackShanglan]

When you say English people, what do you mean?

Those were interviews with 16-25 year-olds living in England.

 

[CharleyH]

Those were interviews with 16-25 year-olds living in England.

Thank you - curtsy for that, I had another question.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Explain this in a current example?

Why do I feel that I am sticking a target to my tail?

I'll stick with racism as my example. What I meant when I said that no one was reasoned out of it because no one was ever reasoned into it was that people do not become racists because the belief is logical. Because they didn't rely on reasoning to start with, telling them that they lack it - that is, telling them or demonstrating to them that they are illogical - doesn't really dent their faith in their beliefs. They only came to them in the first place by ignoring facts and reasoning; why pay attention to them now?

 

[BlackShanglan]

Thank you - curtsy for that, I had another question.

I was working on it.

 

[CharleyH]

I was working on it.

LOL I know!

 

[Liar]

They only came to them in the first place by ignoring facts and reasoning; why pay attention to them now?

Decause denial is not a state, it's an activity. It takes energy to uphold a web of justification and white lies in the face of overwhelming evidence. Thing is though,nobody who livesin denial will turn around in a second. You don't tear down someone's beliefs, you wear it down.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Oh, I think Irving's a madman. I don't agee with any of his points. His position is irrational, but that is, in an odd way, what keeps it from dying. It's not based in logic, so no amount of showing it to be illogical affects him in any way. Of course it convinces all sane people, but he never believed his position for rational reasons in the first place. It's a bit like racism; it's difficult to reason someone out of it because no one is ever reasoned into it. It's not merely factually incorrect; it is antithetical to and a conscious rejection of reason and fact themselves. As such, it's quite resilient when attacked with them.

But then, I have my own preferred form of evidence. My great-uncle helped to liberate a concentration camp.

No one in our family has the slightest doubt.

Shanglan

I think too, part of itis the nature of history. We study the facts, but facts alone would be extremly dry and esoteric. With history, we add interpretation to many facts, causality is infered, and often we look to use the facts to support a particular interpretation of events.

What many people don't realize is that the interpretation follows a methodology. You can't just form a position and use random, unconnected facts to say they prove it. What the holocuast revisionists try to do is mix their own facts, with strident calls that the other side can't refute them.

then too, I think human nature works for them. It's just very difficult to envision dath on that scale. Much less comprehend that a few men made it happen, knowkingly, with malice afore thought.

 

[CharleyH]

Why do I feel that I am sticking a target to my tail?

lol Because you are? I can't answer tonight anymore, but ... lol gorgeous answer and so apropos donk - horsey. D

 

[Wildcard Ky]

If'n ya can't do the time....

He knew the law before he broke it.

The law may be a bit much, but that's what happens when a people try to atone for their past. The pendulum swings too far the other way.

You might want to read the text again:

Irving has been in custody since his November arrest on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews.

The court convicted Irving after his guilty plea under the 1992 law, which applies to "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media."

He made the remarks in 89, but the law wasn't passed until 1992. Seems as if we're dealing with retro-active penalties on this one.

I'm literally stunned by this. I realize that other countries have much tighter restrictions on speech than America, but this is beyond ridiculous. I think Hitler would be quite proud of his fellow country men for this one. Punish them for something they did three years before the law was enacted........Yep, Hitler would have been quite proud indeed.

 

[BlackShanglan]

LOL I know!

I'm so sorry, Charley. My earlier post was meant to have a smile with it, but my sleep-deprived brain dropped it and it looks horribly terse and rude. Thank you so much for your kiss and for thinking the best of me.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I think too, part of itis the nature of history. We study the facts, but facts alone would be extremly dry and esoteric. With history, we add interpretation to many facts, causality is infered, and often we look to use the facts to support a particular interpretation of events.

What many people don't realize is that the interpretation follows a methodology. You can't just form a position and use random, unconnected facts to say they prove it. What the holocuast revisionists try to do is mix their own facts, with strident calls that the other side can't refute them.

I really think you'd like Shermer's book. He talks about just that sort of thing and makes some very interesting and cogent observations. He's good at sorting through the rhetoric and impassioned wailing and identifying lucidly and plainly what precisely the error is and how facts are more properly connected to each other.

Now I'm going to have dig the thing out, aren't I?

then too, I think human nature works for them. It's just very difficult to envision dath on that scale. Much less comprehend that a few men made it happen, knowkingly, with malice afore thought.

Great point, Colly. Yes, it's so extremely hard to get one's head around. I think that the thing that struck me the most in reading Schindler's List was that the World Jewish Organization's own members were telling it, as Germany was sliding into insanity, that Hitler was planning to murder and destroy Jews - and the WJO wouldn't believe them. It sounded so insane and so far-fetched that even the people who more than anyone in the world would have wanted to prevent it could not believe it would really happen. Perhaps it's not so surprising that people doubt when looking back.

That reminds me, by the way, of something I heard on the radio that reminded me of you. Walter Cronkite was talking about covering the Nuremburg trials and explaining why the trials at the end of WWI - city, think it starts with L, name eludes me - were so vital to the issue. His take was that because there was no international law covering war crimes at the time, the chief German leader - Von Hindenberg? - was tried in a German court and, not surprisingly, showered with roses and wild cheering on the one day the court bothered to sit at all. Cronkite said that he went on to be elected leader of the country and one of his last acts was to help usher in Hitler.

All of that had me thinking about a thread a while back where it was alleged that the US had an offer of surrender on the table from Japanese diplomats, provided that the surrender was not unconditional and the emporer was not deposed. I wonder if that series of events Cronkite discussed - a war in which Germany was defeated militarily, but their leader was permitted to return to power with no real censure so as to stir up the next round of warfare - played in a US decision not to pursue such an offer (if made).

And I thought, who better to ask ...?

 

[BlackShanglan]

I'm literally stunned by this. I realize that other countries have much tighter restrictions on speech than America, but this is beyond ridiculous. I think Hitler would be quite proud of his fellow country men for this one. Punish them for something they did three years before the law was enacted........Yep, Hitler would have been quite proud indeed.

Interesting you mention this, because Cronkite argued that this was at the heart of the Nuremburg trials as well. There were no laws anywhere governing genocide; it was not a crime that had been contemplated as possible on that scale. This was a speech on the radio, so naturally it's difficult to have perfect recall, but if I remember rightly, his point was that the charges for which people were convicted and executed at Nuremburg related to retroactively created laws, and that a major challenge in the Nuremburg trials was establishing a moral and ethical respect for that decision by building a strong international consensus.

Interesting listening, that was.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Well, nowadays with many beliefs we find baffling, it's not so much the use of pure irrationality, but the use of "their own facts". Many of these "facts" have little to do with actual occurance or current scientific theory, but rely on special assumptions that the author believes his target audience will take for granted so that he can build on the blackness already there in their hearts.

Those who rant racism will refer to inferiorities in the other races. The soft approach will take money and crime rates. The hard, genetic flaws they believe their readers will support.

This did the same working off some fucked up version of national pride and xenophobia which hasn't gone away in order to give fodder for the neo-nazis.

However, the law is inherently stupid. Shutting up those who speak doesn't remove the attitudes, it puts it in hiding. We did the same in America with political correctness until liberals convinced themselves they had solved racism and xenophobia and the like until recent voting patterns, surveys of criminal systems, and various other "slip-ups" has revealed none of it has gone away.

You need free speech and the heinous views to keep people honest, to keep them from pretending to be moral and decent people.

 

[rgraham666]

Decause denial is not a state, it's an activity. It takes energy to uphold a web of justification and white lies in the face of overwhelming evidence. Thing is though,nobody who livesin denial will turn around in a second. You don't tear down someone's beliefs, you wear it down.

It's a great deal more than denial, racists and other haters suffer from that problem I mentioned elsewhere, information disease.

Most have been raised in such a way that the only information they've ever received about the object of their hate is negative. There's so much bad information in there that any new information is distorted or rejected automatically. Very little energy is required to reject it, it's a reflex.

I suspect that if racists et al. were tested you would find that they were literally deaf to other arguments. The information in contrary evidence would never make it to the rational part of the brain.

The fact that hatred is an addiction doesn't help much.

 

[NoJo]

The Holocaust (a word disliked by its survivors -- why? think. THINK.) is connected with my immediate family on my mothers side. My grandmother, aunt, and mother were the only survivors of the squeeze between Stalin's troops and Hitler's SS. All the other members of her family disappeared in the East (Siberia) or the West (Auschwitz).

She was blonde and blue-eyed as a girl. But that didn't save her life, her dark-haired demon of a sister and ferocious bull of a mother saved it. Her experience and subsequent political outlook is very similar to that of Roman Polanski, who made The Pianist".

It's hard to distil the lessons I've learned through having such a strong connection with Holocaust victims. But here they are:


1. People subjugate rationality at the drop of the hat, which is Bad.

2. Jews are hated by a surprising number of Gentiles, and now, feared too, as we survived to breed more Jews -- the Final Solution failed becuase it was impossible to acheive completely, and instead created an even stronger and grimmer people. And of course it created Israel, defended by us Diaspora the way you'd defend your psychotic baby brother, because he's your brother.

3. Religious leaders of any sort are evil and need to be eradicated from humanity.

4. To understand history, always remember the profound influence of Insanity.

 

[Liar]

The Holocaust (a word disliked by its survivors -- why? think. THINK.)

A word (or rather, this use of it) disliked by me too since the first time I bothered to look up the entymology of it.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I really think you'd like Shermer's book. He talks about just that sort of thing and makes some very interesting and cogent observations. He's good at sorting through the rhetoric and impassioned wailing and identifying lucidly and plainly what precisely the error is and how facts are more properly connected to each other.

Now I'm going to have dig the thing out, aren't I?



Great point, Colly. Yes, it's so extremely hard to get one's head around. I think that the thing that struck me the most in reading Schindler's List was that the World Jewish Organization's own members were telling it, as Germany was sliding into insanity, that Hitler was planning to murder and destroy Jews - and the WJO wouldn't believe them. It sounded so insane and so far-fetched that even the people who more than anyone in the world would have wanted to prevent it could not believe it would really happen. Perhaps it's not so surprising that people doubt when looking back.

That reminds me, by the way, of something I heard on the radio that reminded me of you. Walter Cronkite was talking about covering the Nuremburg trials and explaining why the trials at the end of WWI - city, think it starts with L, name eludes me - were so vital to the issue. His take was that because there was no international law covering war crimes at the time, the chief German leader - Von Hindenberg? - was tried in a German court and, not surprisingly, showered with roses and wild cheering on the one day the court bothered to sit at all. Cronkite said that he went on to be elected leader of the country and one of his last acts was to help usher in Hitler.

All of that had me thinking about a thread a while back where it was alleged that the US had an offer of surrender on the table from Japanese diplomats, provided that the surrender was not unconditional and the emporer was not deposed. I wonder if that series of events Cronkite discussed - a war in which Germany was defeated militarily, but their leader was permitted to return to power with no real censure so as to stir up the next round of warfare - played in a US decision not to pursue such an offer (if made).

And I thought, who better to ask ...?

the Japanese, were trying to work through russian intermediaries. the conditions they sought were, No censure of the Emperor, No occupation of JHapan, theat they would try thier own officers accused of war crimes, And they would keep their territorial gains in Manchuria & Korea, but with draw from China, Indochina, and all of the territory they had gained in "the southern resource area".

Togo, the foerign minister, warned that russia would probably deamnd most of Korea & Manchuria, as well as large reparations, but that was acceptable to the Suzuki governemnt, so long as the war ended.

the offer, however, was never made, because Russia had agreed at Yalta to join the war. Both sweden & switzerland also offered to broker a peace, but the Japanese felt thses countries lacked the neccessary prestige in the world community to act as internediary.

I don't the Us., Uk, or France would have accepted any terms at any rate. Since Casablanca the call had been for unconditional surrender. Roosevelt voiced that call and I don't think truman could have backed off from it once FDR died.

One thing that probably had ahuge effect on both the russians entering the war and on the hard line of the US was the state of the Japanese Merchant Marine. they had less than 1.5 million tons of shipping of all types afloat. 90% of their steel merchantment were in port awaiting repairs or afraid to leave port because of US mining operations and subs. the people were about to start starving and we knew it. Russia realized Japan no longer had the means to redistribute forces by sea to meet a new threat.

It's odd, but in reality, Japan, even with over five million soldiers still in the field, was simply no threat. They might blody you badly when you attacked them, but you would initiate any attacks, because they couldn't get to wehre you were. You had to come to them.

Had a negotiated peace been agrred to, Japan would have, in my opinion, been back on the road of conquest within 20 years. Much Like WWII Germany, the milatrists were still in power. They did not recognize that they had been heaten and would have perpetuated a "stab in the back" mentality. Given time to rebuild their merchant marine, secure their lines of seaborne transport, rebuild their air arm and their navy, they quite likely would have been back to the conquest game.

AS to war trials, they couldn't even imprision officers who assassinated their own political leaders. I very seriously doubt they would have done much to officers whose crimes were against the enemy.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Interesting you mention this, because Cronkite argued that this was at the heart of the Nuremburg trials as well. There were no laws anywhere governing genocide; it was not a crime that had been contemplated as possible on that scale. This was a speech on the radio, so naturally it's difficult to have perfect recall, but if I remember rightly, his point was that the charges for which people were convicted and executed at Nuremburg related to retroactively created laws, and that a major challenge in the Nuremburg trials was establishing a moral and ethical respect for that decision by building a strong international consensus.

Interesting listening, that was.

Nuremberg was all about ex-postfacto laws. georing argued, pretty successfully that the trial had no merit in three of the big four nations sitting in judgement.

There was also no quid pro quo allowed the defendants, save Karl Donetiz. He was allowed a quid pro quo, one that probably saved his life, only because of two outstanding maerican oficers and one outstanding British officer. Nimitz, Lockwood and I want to sy Dudley pound, all sent letters to the court, sayinbg the US and UK had practiced unrestricted submarine warfare, in the Pacific and North sea.

The only real difference between Nuremberg and a Soviet show trail was that the defendants were allowed to make a defense of themselves and a couple were aquited. The precedent needed to be set, but the trials were, in reality, very unfair.

Jodel, for example, was given death. A year later, men like Pifer, Von Manstient and bloch were given lesser sentences, when they were, by several degrees, more guilty of ordering and participating in war crimes.

The Japanese class b war criminal trials, conducted by MacAurther in the phillipines were so vindictive and flawed that US jurist, including two supreme court justices were moved to protest. Yamashita, for example was convicted and hanged. He was no boy scout, but his crwoing achievement was the capture of singapore. to be sure, there were murders conducted in Singapore, but Tojo didn't like yamashita, so he had the general transfered to a training operation in Manchuria, well before he could have done himself any harm as far as acceding to or ordering war crimes. He was recalled to defend the Phillipines and that probably sealed his fate. But he ordered Manilla to be abandoned and treated as an open city, just as Mac had. The harbor control officer, a NAVY man and not under Yamashita at all, was the one who turned manilla into a hellhole. Yamashita paid for it with his life though. In my opinion, because Mac Aurther was hell bent on punishing anyone who had had any role in embarassing him as a commander.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

I find it amazing that no one else seems concerned that the man was charged and sentenced for a crime that was completely retroactive. The man said these things THREE YEARS before the law was enacted, yet was still sentenced under that law.

Am I the only one that has a real problem with this, or am I missing something?

 

[thambok]

I have a problem with it.

It seems as though the pendulum is swinging too far in the opposite direction. If you oppress free speech to maintain control, it is no different than oppressing free speech to maintain the truth. Both are oppression, and both are wrong.

Irving has been in custody since his November arrest on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews.

He gave a speech in 1989 asserting that, according to primary source documentation, he could find no evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. He later found primary source documentation in the early 90s, which verified that the gas chambers did in fact, exist. The documents included "personal documents belonging to Adolf Eichmann".

Irving was tried under the 1992 law, which was not in existence when he made his speeches. Additionally, Irving had long ago recanted his assertions, that the gas chambers did not exist, and has maintained that he never denied the Holocaust itself.

State prosecutor Michael Klackl declined to comment on the verdict. In his closing arguments, however, he criticized Irving for "putting on a show" and for not admitting that the Nazis killed Jews in an organized and systematic manner.

The core issue doesn't seem to be denial of the holocaust, or of the presence of gas chambers. It appears that Irving was tried for not conceding to the methodology used to carry out the atrocities.

I think Irving is a fool. I think that his reliance on primary source documentation is a good practice, but not when combined with a myopic view of what documents to examine. But, I think the actions of the Austrian court are worse. Progress cannot exist where new ideas or theories are met with resounding condemnation and reprisal, regardless of their validity. If Irving was wrong, peer review would have addressed it, and apparently did. Irving would have gone down, at most, as a minor footnote in history. Now, he has been put forth into the limelight, adding fuel to the neo-nazi cause.

In my opinion, Austria fucked this one up. Badly.

 

[Couture]

I deny he's being arrested! I do not in fact believe that he even exists.

Oh the irony! The irony! I couldn't resist.