Islam vs. the West: Clashing Sensibilities

It is true two completely different views in life have collided head on. But unlike other conflicting views colliding in the past, the Muslims have been responding with hate and violence. Not all Muslims of course, but it seems radical Muslims have taken control of what is said to be a peaceful religion. I am not saying that is a lie, but I have not seen enough results to back that claim up. Although Islam may feel they are under attack, Westerners feel the same pressure due to the radical Muslims who have declared war on the different values they disagree with. The violent reaction over the cartoons and the threats to kill the people responsible for drawing the cartoons is senseless and brutal. The free speech that they want to end is the same freedom that allows them to practice their religion freely in any Western country. I look forward to this cartoon debate shaping the world around us in different and new ways, but at the same time, the two values in conflict must be defended fully. How that is possible is not an easy question to answer, but once Muslims realize the violent reactions are only causing more and more of an image problem, maybe then can they look for different methods to defend what they believe in. I think the West must also take a look at their values, as Western media has failed its largest test, and allowed this terror and violence to control it. But in the end, I personally believe more good will come from this issue than the harm that is being done, as it has served as a wake up call for both values. I posted the cartoons on my website at http://www.obber.com. I don’t believe brushing this under the rug is going to help much. I also put together a small documentary related to this issue, one that is meant to show the reason why such cartoons would be drawn in the first place.

Mr Muwakkil, I believe that your suspicion as to the cartoons being planted is certainly reasonable. Fleming Rose is an ardent Zionist and knew the reaction the publication of such work would cause. Couple that with the fact that he is friendly with Daniel Pipes, extreme Muslim hater, warmonger and racist pig, and it becomes more than a suspicion.

We can also thank the media for doing their usual yellow and jingoistic journalism by covering only the violent demonstrations and giving no coverage to the millions of Muslims who protested this insult to their faith peacefully. And let’s not forget that the much-demonized Hamas also came out strongly opposing the violent reaction and calling for calm. Of course this got zero American press. Surprise.

No, this was an intentional incitement, designed to encourage Europeans to go along with our new crusade. It will backfire, but that has never stopped the neocons before. They are afterall, safe.

Under their rocks.

“It will backfire, but that has never stopped the neocons before. They are afterall, safe.
Under their rocks.”

Unless they go hunting with Dick Cheney

Are we talking about Danish Neocons here or more U.S. bashing?

Along with freedom of speech we used to believe in the idea of “innocent until proven guilty”.

If nothing else, the cartoons demonstrated how incredibly easy it is to incite large numbers of Muslims to violence. Again.

Lets see, just for fun. How many people were killed as a result of the extremely offensive “piss Christ”? Of Farrakhan’s nastiness regarding Jews and “blue eyed devils”?

Maybe the anthropologists are wrong after all. Some cultures are not only superior to others, but vastly so. . .

Sometimes push really does come to shove. I guess that’s how the demonstrators feel too. However, if it comes to a choice between enforced respect for the gestures of piety others observe or upholding the freedom to express oneself in objectionable ways, I’ll go with the latter. When it comes to the proper role of a journalist (imo), these include informing, stimulating debate, and in op-ed pieces including cartoons, representing an opinion clearly and perhaps provocatively. Unless these standards endure a journalist is nothing but an apologist for a powerful agency.

As we all know, no one campaigns for free expressions that are pleasant. What would be the point? It’s speech that may offend those powerful agencies (including vocal minorities and majorities) that needs protection.

It can be argued that the cartoons were rude, insulting, perhaps sacrilegious. As for whether they’re worthy of rampaging around the city torching diplomatic missions and newsstands, they are not.

I find it ironic that David Irving sits in jail for provoking historical sensibilities while Rose, Pipes, and the rest of the neocon crowd go on their merry ways to even better stir the “clash of civilizations”.  Irving may be a fool, but fools should be ridiculed - not jailed.  Rose, Pipes, and the neocons are the real danger - war criminals who deserve their day at the Hague.

If it weren’t tragic, this could be a laughing matter. I have heard this song of “Western, Christian World” vs. ... before. Back in the 70s the military junta in Argentina, with Mr. Kissinger’s sponsorship launched a campaign against people with leftist tendencies which ended in the disappearance of 30.000 young people in which the “good guys” were of course Western and Christian and the “bad guys” were pro-Russia (which was considered to be in the Eastern World). The border has now been moved further to the East and instead of atheists or commies the enemies now are islamic, but the principle is the same.
So far, the results of the actions of the self-righteous Christian gentlemen have been painful and unjust to others to say the least and usually based on a pack of lies, duly transmitted by the media at their disposal. In my humble opinion, human beings are very much alike everywhere and I refuse to be a puppet of the neocons, fancy name to identify a greedy minority which seems to never have enough of the cake.

The Murder of Ilan Halimi
A Jewish man is kidnapped in Paris, tortured for 24 days and then dies.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008006
----------------------------------------------------

“The murderer, who admits his guilt, was placed in a psychiatric hospital, and may be released soon.”

This sentence is the primary reason for dropping my opposition to the death penalty. Government responsibility should be to protect society from people like this. Execution need not be vindictive, but it is final. (Tookie Williams article)

“Clashing Sensibilities” seems a benign title after reading the above article about the Paris killing of Alimi.  Perhaps “Senselessness Pandemic,” is more descriptive.

So, the cartoon bullshit has resulted in 200deaths worldwide.

Very sad, very painful.

Having reviewed some of the 911 footage, with 2200 deaths, not ALL american, that was sad, painful.

Having thought about the US bombing of Afghanistan; about 2000 men; women, and kiddies, that was sad, painful.

Having seen on TV the shock and awe on baghdad, and the rest of the country, very sad, very y painful. ONLY 20000 dead, in three weeks,what a relief ! ONLY TWENTY THOUSAND DEAD !

I include Iraqi soldiers in that figure, Have you yanks ever thought that those guys hated saddam even more than you, but they h

I’ve been too busy even to read much news lately, but this article caught my eye today:

misinterpretations?

An excerpt:

Bush’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq has set in motion forces beyond his control. On February 23 the Asia Times reported that America’s Pakistani puppet, Musharraf, is “losing his grip.” Some Pakistani provinces are already beyond Musharraf’s control, and the remainder are rioting against “Busharraf” as Musharraf is now known. The infantile American press misrepresents the riots as responses to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, but in fact the target of the riots is the American puppet.

Since “free speech” is soooooooooo important, I’ll play this silly little liberal game.

I think most American liberals are middle class snots that worship at the altar of symbolism and theory and are so unaccustomed to having to do any real work that they don’t even begin to see the childishness of putting “free speech” on an essentialist podium as if nothing ever actually had to be gotten done.

Their parents probably paid good money to child care experts who told them that the absolute free expression of emotion was necessary for healthy development and that their children would be scarred by the word “no”.

The “free speech” and “free expression\” is always sacred under the umbrella of unfettered individual liberty, but when groups riot that is not a valid expression. That is like people saying “no” to the coddled little self.

That good with everybody here? “Free speech” is therapy. It’s not about holding the government accountable and being responsible and effective citizenry, it’s about expressing the self without regard to everybody else.

What a noble cause. Maybe I’ll masturbate in public to celebrate my unfettered right to express myself however I please, wherever I please. Being a responsible adult, gets dull sometimes.

Frog, the holocaust revisionism as crime is strange, no? Whatever you can tell me about how this is going over in France would by me be much appreciated.

What I’m wondering now, is why and how these cartoons became a “free speech” issue? When the alleged and bogus films of Palestinians celebrating the 9/11 attacks was shown on television, I don’t remember hearing, well, whether you agree or not, they should have the right to “free speech”. When there is a school shooting, I don’t hear about the right to bear arms. When politicians lie, I don’t hear about the fifth amendment and how noble it is not to challenge the politicians’ lies because of the fifth.

Has someone responded to the cartoons by proposing legislation in the West to ban the publication of offensive cartoons?

Is the freedom or not to do something the only issue when considering what someone says and the impact it has on others?

Did I wake up in a flat universe that can’t think beyond Coke or Pepsi?

“Free speech” doesn’t wash in sexual harassment cases. Radio stations in Rwanda were charged with crimes for inciting hatred and violence between the Tutsis and Hutus (sp?). If journalists actually cracked a book or file once and a while they might find myriad examples of consequences of speech and we can have a more intelligent conversation on a national level and perhaps collectively work toward a more rational state of mind than “you can’t stop me from doing what I want, and if you do you’re a Nazi.”

Wiley,

The writers of the Bill of Rights had no such a wide open interpretation in mind.  There is a difference between freedom and license (although a bit hard to define at times).

I have no problem with the “right” of Muslims or anyone else voicing objections to the cartoons. It is not the voicing which killed the victims of this stupid, inconsiderate published material, nor the resurrecting of it a couple of months later — both of which seem to have been done for the effect of inciting others to ACT rather than simply object.

You might have heard me defending the right to bear arms at any time, but NOT the indiscriminate use of them — either criminally or irresponsibly.

Responsibility is probably what will be lacking in your illustration of the child whose parents allowed the “experts” to coddle the kid beyond common sense limits.

I’m too, am curious about the holocaust denial arrest/punishment. I had no idea there was such a thing.  I hate to hear this view from the Northwestern professor, but would not want to deny him the right to say it.

I have talked with WW2 GIs who were there as part of the liberation and saw it. Years ago I met a bookbinder living in our city who was a survivor, but never wanted to talk about it at all — even after several decades.

I was at Dachau about ten years ago when a bus load of teenagers from Italy came into the museum. I was a few yards ahead of them viewing photos with captions in several languages.  Until they got to the first group of pictures they were as noisy and rowdy as any young kids, then it was like someone turned off a switch.

I doubt the reality of that terrible time will ever be erased — I hope not anyway.

To start off, Islam does not proscribe images of the Prophet. Some branches of it do, but it ain’t in the koran. There are lots of images in museums etc around the world.

In the 1640s Puritan extremists in Cromwell’s army destroyed “graven images” in churches.

It sure is true that Muslims are being demonised in the MSM . And as Maria says, above, this rubbish should be opposed by all of us. Not a question of being a “liberal”, one can be a true conservative and abhor the fostering of hatred. Any hatred.

WILEY
Free Speech is just one of those things we are lucky to have, and don’t appreciate until the FBI come visiting . I take your point that it is largely therapeutic, becos we can holler and scream, be analytical and persuasive, and the Criminals are still ruling ! 
The problem there is to rack the brain about what to DO to change things.

Your second post asks about France. We had a perfectly adequate 1972 Law against race-hatred and anti-semitism.
In 1990 Gayssot Law against denial and revisionism came along. Voted almost unanimously, which I assume due to the power of the zionist lobby. ( i forget their names, but we along with the rest of europe have the equivalents of AIPAC and ADL.)

Other similar laws followed, in fact legislating as to what was historically TRUE, and not ! A load of dangerous rubbish.

I’ve done some reading, ongoing, and I spose I also am a Holocaust Revisionist ! History and historiography is one of my things, and that’s all about revising .

As AntiWar Conservative says above, better to let fools debate and be ridiculed than to turn them into martyrs. We have both noticed how useful it is to have shills and trolls, they stimulate the discussion!

Prosecuting them leads quickly into a judicial and ethical quagmire..

hello whattheheck

I haven’t visited those sites, but seen film, read a lot. I find most of the Deniers/Revisionists objectionable, to say the least .

In france we have the Front National Party , headed by an ex-torturer of the french army in algeria. Close links in the past with swastika-waving Nazis , which they now conceal. They embrace all sorts of holocaust revisionism, which gives it a bad name.

We have had a number of trials here, one book by israel shamir recently banned. Quite a lot of witch-hunting.

Somehow i missed that Northwestern professor, enlighten me ?

(For other readers --Dachau was the very first KL concentration camp in 1933 - for communists, socialists, tradeunionists, monarchists, and personal enemies. Became a work camp, supplying BMW amongst many others. Typhus arrived in january1945,.)

Well Irving was sentenced to 3years. Zundel was extradited , and also r Rudolf (?)another german from the USA. awaiting trial.in germany.

As I noted in lastpost, I’m a revisionist, too, but far from a Nazi. As far as I’m concerned, it is not important to stick with old wrong statistics. Once one passes a certain number of dead, it becomes astronomy, lightyears of dead.  Historians can dispute the details, because we all know that history improves with distance.

Having no political or racist axe to grind, I do find the prevalence of Zionist propaganda interesting. There are debates running about the so-called Holocaust Industry.

Here we are talking about scores of mios of $ invested to promote the Holocaust.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm ?

When I was a kid we learnt History in school, and some of us never stopped .  As time went by, my interpretations evolved, as I did.

I believe that all “the terrible times” should be remembered. No shortage in the history of the world.

Legislating what is historically true, frog? Has everyone gone off their nut? This reminds me of Baptists taking a vote at a Convention to determine whether or not Jesus performed miracles. Except that Baptists have a right to do that, and can do so without making it a punishable crime to believe otherwise and to say as much. (Anyone interested in other peoples’ liberties must appreciate that it is best not to say otherwise at the top of one’s lungs in a Baptist church on Sunday morning, don’t you think?)

I am also interested in historical revisionism. This is one of those categories in which “free speech” is absolutely vital, and where the government usurps the “free speech” because it is a real threat to crooked power and not just the crowd throwing rotten vegetables at bit actors.

I started out as an Art History major, and I had a historiography class I loved. If I were to home school, or start a school I would start teaching the children historiography before history. They could write their own history (doing research of course), and then graduate to doing an historical piece on a family or neighborhood incident that all parties agree are fair game for a project, so that the children could experience for themselves how many stories there are in a story and how tenuous the facts can be.

In response to WTH, I would like to say that the first time I heard and read about holocaust revisionism, I was mortified. Good God, who hasn’t seen the pictures! Then I started doing some serious reading about it and I’m with the revisionists on this one, now. No one is denying that the holocaust happened.* There are some serious, scholarly questions about accuracy though, and in many cases there is simply no evidence to back up some claims that are regarded as historical fact.

Also, WTH, that responsibility thing didn’t get by you, huh? Self-government is not possible without responsibility for self. I’m not talking about anything black and white here, but how we citizens behave in our society has as much impact on the freedom and liberties of others as government. Freedom from anti-social intrusion is a necessity for sanity and liberty.

Also, the reading I did on holocaust revisionism reminded me of some things I think I shouldn’t forget----this “never again” slogan is bull. How many holocausts have there been since WW II? Enough to be up in arms about, don’t you think? The World’s Greatest Victim Status is pathological. Enough. Take a real look at what Israelis are doing to Palestinians now. The oppressed yearn to be the oppressor.

And if you don’t want to do that, then please just ask yourself this question:  Why do we hear only 6 million, 6 million, 6 million? One hundred and twenty five million people died in WW II.

Frog for some reason it seems a lot of people assume that I am in favor of prosecuting or legislating in this “free speech” thing. I am not. I am in favor of people growing up and considering that the “clash” of civilizations has more to do with actions and what comes out of people’s mouths in reference to the “other” culture in the present, than any properties and historical pneuma of the cultures floating about in the ether and then ramming into each other, as if people currently on the planet weren’t responsible for the rancor and violence between the differing groups. You could bind the Koran and King James together with steel chains and they’d never go to war with each other.

*If you want to talk about the denial of a holocaust happening at all, do a search on Armenia.

Wiley
I can see john taylor gatto coming through on your homeschool project! The whole idea being to get kids interested and then they mostly educate themselves. As we can’t help doing still, just comes naturally
.
I Never thought you were into ‘prosecution’, tho your rant may have given that impression to some.

We have obviously been reading in parallel on the Holo-subject. And you have summed it up very well. 

As with the 911debate, we are seeing attempts at steamrollering dissidents.

I saw a clip of Tucker Carlson MSNBC refusing to broadcast a 10second clip of WTC7 for Stephen Jones. And then “You’re going to offend a lot of people if you say it wasn’t the MUSLIMS “.

Yesterday am i heard an interview with a brit jewish lawyer on the Irving Case. Naturally he managed to bring in the spectre of a new nuclear holocaust by the Iranians!

On a lighter note Chirac refused to sign the law obliging teachers to teach the “positive aspects of colonialism” !

On a lighter note Chirac refused to sign the law obliging teachers to teach the “positive aspects of colonialism” !

Frog, there was a time when I wouldn’t have thought, “Oh. Isn’t that nice”. But these days, you have to give the poor children of government credit for wiping their noses.

To Frog and Whileywitch, your comments are interesting and show concern about knowing the truth about different historic episodes. I’m afraid we will never know it because even now, with all the technical developments within our reach, we are absolutely blindfolded and have no way of knowing exactly what’s going on, except for the fact that many people around the world are unhappy and helpless to modify facts. We don’t know where, when , why or by whom decissions are taken constantly that affect billions of people in unknown places. The so-called “Western Christian World” is simply autistic, self-centered and shows no mercy or respect for “the people out there”, feeding prejudices and differences in cultures but always tinting them as “not so worthy as we are”. The minute you let one of those prejudices enter your mind, you are part of the game and miss the true fact that we are all members of the same species, entitled to live a full and humane life in a planet that is ours to take care of and that greed (be it for money, power or fame) is just a sickness which is spreading its deadly virus and threatening to end our possibility of developing a fraternal and compassionate world. Religions, political activity, economics are all partial ways of trying to give answers to the unknown that prevails. The fact that we don’t know why we are here and the evidence of our mortality is of course somehow discouraging but empathy, compassion and love are definitely better than greed, intolerance and division.

maria
“Never Know ?” They got pinochet, or NOT ?
Sometimes the truth creeps out, rises up, emerges .
Sometimes it has to be dug up.
I’m with the people out there.
And i expect many of them who know the Mossad far far better than I ,would agree that these cartoons could easily have been one of their Ops.

Nice smokescreen . Israel about to gobble up another 20 %of the bantustans, and cut off food supplies too.

Good article on “""FLEMMING ROSE""" By James Petras on the web.

PETRAS /EASTMAN ON SO-CALLED FLEMMING ROSE

Maria, I hear what you’re saying and if I’m reading you correctly you’re feeling a little sad and frustrated? I know I am, though I have a slightly different take---I believe we are all sexist, racist, this-ist, that-ist, all of our lives. So much of what we think isn’t even conscious and we would reject it completely and sincerely if someone could pull it out of our brain and show it to us. But there are all kinds of messages in our unconcsious mind that we aren’t aware of and that we often act on unwittingly. It doesn’t mean that we are all in the habit of harboring extreme hatred and nursing grudges.

This is especially true for us who live in a media saturated information age. We simply cannot critically examine and reflect on every idea and impression that enters our spongey brains. It is often enough to be conscious of various perspectives and to keep the ability to keep the mind open and receptive when new information becomes available or a challenge presents itself.

We will never know the “absolute truth” (in this life anyway), but we don’t need to---it would probably make us crazy anyway. Like the Pinochet example frog mentioned, enough truth comes out to take people to task for atrocities now and then. If Pol Pot were alive, he’d be in court right now. One of his generals went on trial recently. It’s been a long time since their psychpathology ruled their countryside, but they were eventually stopped (though the U.S. still, inexplicably supported Pol Pot after his killing fields were made public) and are being brought to justice. The wheels turn slowly, but they often turn.

Truth and reconciliation happens, too, and it is deep and meaningful for all participants---perpetrators, victims, witnesses, and combinations of the above.

Not to be too contrarian, I see your point, but I would also like to point out that none of this is new to the world. Humans have always fought, and hated, and oppressed, and enslaved, and thought their group superior to others if not the only true humans deserving of respect.

We do need to keep an eye on the motes in our eyes, but I would caution against idealism and absolutism as well. Utopianism is as responsible for mass murder as bigotry.

There is a whole lot of room for improvement in our world. The little improvements count. People can and do change. Progress somehow happens now and then.

Wiley,

I for one have often been very sad, and almost overwhelmed, by the injustice and cruelty around in this world.

When I was a young soldier my government conducted chemical warfare experiments on other,unwitting soldiers. I remember those ‘opportunities’ to get a few £’s and a threee-day homeleave. Google “operation antler porton down”, and think of frog 40years ago.

When I was young, I was brought up to be a bit racist, sexist, etc, but over time have evolved to be less so ! No absolutes, but undeniable progress.

The feeling of sadness, frustration doesn’t last long, and then back to my business of “little improvements”.

Maria

You seeem to be positing absolute unknowables, where I part company with you !

That does not mean I believe in knowing absolute truths. I agree with much of your post, of course, but wish you could use paragraphs. The last half seems to be addresssed to wiley and me, too, but hardly applies. We share your beliefs, too !

Maria

“The fact that we don’t know why we are here and the evidence of our mortality is of course somehow discouraging but empathy, compassion and love are definitely better than greed, intolerance and division. “

My answer is to make up my own little reasons for being here: a search to understand a little more, to try to make some sense of the world, and to try for little improvements.
The ‘mortality’ bit encourages me to do those things for my descendants. For me too. I find life has an enjoyable purpose, good to stretch the brain! Fun to learn from others, work with them.

I agree with your emphasis on empathy, compassion and love. So when I have a political point to make, or some ‘evil’ act or process to expose, this is done without hatred .

I don’t know that the cartoon thing was concocted by mossad, or their friends. But....... Cui Bono ?

I do know that I might have concocted it myself.

For example, I do remember very well that in the late Sixties , when ‘containerisation’ of shipping was beginning to take over, thinking what an ideal way this was to smuggle a nuclear device into New York Harbor....
Well, a soldier’s job is to ‘know the enemy’, invent new tactics on the military and psychological fronts.

So when Mr Muwakkil writes “were it plausible”, I laugh !

Frog,

“Somehow i missed that Northwestern professor, enlighten me ?
”
I googled, “Nortwestern University holocaust denial” and got this among a lot of others.

“Arthur Butz’s place among the purveyors of Holocaust denial is secured by his 1976 book, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, one of the first major works of Holocaust denial in the English language.”

Because he teaches electrical engineering rather than history attempts to oust him have failed. The price we must pay for free speech.

http://www.adl.org/learn/default.asp
------------------------------
My understanding is that initially people were sentenced to Dachau for say, six months hard labor, for crimes such as speaking out against the state, and then released. While violating our idea of freedom of speech it did give some Germans cause to believe (which they no doubt wanted to believe) that the death camp was a myth. Don’t ask, don’t tell would be the next step in denial.

Specific numbers aside the “Holocaust” is perhaps the epitome of genocide due to the details (the devil was indeed in them this time). The total organization: planning, corralling, dehumanizing, cataloging, labeling (color coded and shaped badges), transportation, quest for efficiency, disposal, recycling — make it unrivaled in coldbloodedness.

In many ways it is a metaphor for the human disregard for other humans which sets categorizes man as an animal in the most basic sense. Similarities can be seen in the practice of slavery in our nation’s history and to an all too large degree in some current day practices and policies.

What is the “Special Worker” category other than slavery by another name? Illegal immigrants have placed themselves at the mercy of a sub-minimum wage for fear of exposure. Now, because “They do work Americans won’t do.” a legitimizing of this exploitation is proposed.  Come on… finish the sentence, “They do work that Americans won’t do for slave wages.”

The crowd touting “Free Enterprise” and “Free Markets uber alles!” refuse to let the market price a head of lettuce.

What is Pol Pot instructing children to murder their parents by suffocating them with plastic bags to save ammunition? What is people being “disappeared” and tortured to death and just about everyone else living in constant fear of being “disappeared” and worrying about the fates of their family members and friends? What is having your wife and children kidnapped and raped in front of you?

Enough with “the holocaust” being the epitome! It was horrible. Atrocities are horrible! All atrocities are horrible!

I met a German man who refused to put a Heil Hitler doormat out instead of the Gruss Gott that was typical of Bavarians and he was sent to the Russian Front. He was captured and spent 7 years in a Siberian salt mine. He was lucky he didn’t end up in the siege of Leningrad. Did you know that only one person who survived that seige lived past the age of 40? It was that stressfull.

And now we carpet bomb cities, litter them with mines, and poison them with depleted uranium.

The number of ways that human can make each other unbelievably miserable and desperate, and mangled, and dead are infinite. I see no reason to make the suffering of Jews in the holocaust sancrosanct and above questioning. Let cranks question too, so what? I don’t know about you but I don’t think I owe anyone anything for the suffering done in WW II.

The entire human race can now be extinguished in twenty minutes.  Six billion. Never again.

Wiley,

Whoa!  My comments re: the Nazi holocaust were not meant to diminish any other ones in any way. Of course they are all terrible. It is the German efficiency and organization which I was pointing out. So many seeing it at close range day after day and continuing to do it.

Mankind has been “improving” extermination methods since rock gave way to club. Wars are not rational solutions and all countries eventually disregard civilian enemy casualties if they get in a bind.

Fear is a great threat to ethics — the Heil Hitler doormat is a pretty good example of it at the individual level.

My first-year German teacher’s father was an Austrian professor who was sent to the camps in the late 1930s for speaking out agaiinst Hitler before the anexation. Many were opposed to what happened and they were a visual aid to prevent organized resistance early in the takeover.

To her it matter little what the total score turned out to be. Each one killed was a tragedy to someone.

I wasn’t ranting at you WTH. This deal with throwing holocause “deniers” in prison has got my jockey shorts in a wad.

I noticed after I posted and re-read other posts that you were making an economic point, but my mind couldn’t go there at that time.

It can’t go there now. I have lots of work to do. But, if you want to expand on the economic point, I’d be interested in reading it later. Something in your post got me thinking about conscription and draft as slave labor.

holocausT

Wiley, thank you for your concern. I am neither sad nor frustrated, maybe simply tired. Somehow, I have made an effort to understand man’s history on earth but taking into consideration that we cannot possibly alter the past , but have a personal responsibility in the state of present affairs, the sooner we learn that the world is what we make of it the bigger the possibility of creating a better scenery for future generations.
Religions, racisms, nationalisms, are barriers in that direction. I cannot accept that a God (whatever its name) decided to talk to a particular group of people at a particular time leaving the rest of mankind out. In the name of God all kind of cruelties, wars, and unjustice have been performed. The same goes for nationalities, kingdoms, empires. Do present kings and queens truly believe they have a right to live privileged lives and “rule” over millions? The trilogy of governments, armies and priests has repeated itself for ages, exercising power over men through fear and their power to make them feel as inferiors. Even, the so-called “democracies” are a modern version of the same. People think it’s a privilege to be able to choose among a handful of candidates that the minute they step into office feel they are entitled to do as they please and never consult the common man about anything important. Thus, they start wars, rise or lower taxes, decide what’s good or evil and influence with their decisions everybody’s lives.
Freedom of speech, at its best, is just a cheap way of letting the constant accumulation of steam find an outlet so it doesn’t entail the peril of a big burst. In addition to the old triad of power we now have to face the concentration of wealth with corporations, their merges and their insaciable greed constantly setting the rules of the game which are tools to keep us too busy trying to make a living to leave any surplus energy to take an active part in matters which concern us all, such as ecology, true education, the development of forums where we could discuss matters openly. So, we continue being fed lies and excuses for all the wrong-doing while plastic garbage and chemicals invade rivers, oceans and land, while millions starve, while millions consume unnecessary junk, others consume drugs, or buy weapons to feel safer, while countries continue to enlarge their armies and arsenals and people are so blind that they think it is a privilege to engross the “defense ranks” with their children . They are so cunning that the “War Ministries” were turned into “Defense Ministries”, Israel proclaims the need to get the Palestinians into a diet and nobody opposes their mean attitude, while weapon manufacturers enlarge their profits, as do the pharmaceutical companies and the media cooperate by missinforming or “entertaining” their audiences. So, you see, all this perception really makes me tired, although I am not giving up or stop doing every moment of my life what I feel my duty to others. Perhaps, we are too entangled in the mesh to take meaningful actions but any little one counts. Perhaps, we could just start by “refusal” to be part of it.

Well I’m glad that you’re not sad nor frustrated, Maria. If I weren’t busy with gardening tasks getting ready for spring I would be miserable over the state of our world.

Please don’t think I’m picking on you. I don’t blatantly disagree with what you say, but I think these things are complex and I’m working on precise speech.

Somehow, I have made an effort to understand man’s history on earth but taking into consideration that we cannot possibly alter the past , but have a personal responsibility in the state of present affair… the sooner we learn that the world is what we make of it the bigger the possibility of creating a better scenery for future generations.

I understand this desire, and the desire to find ones own place in history (a place that only exists in our own heads.) We can’t alter the past, though we can alter our perception of it. I, too, believe that we have personal responsibilities in the state of present affairs and even that we are born with a debt---not to groups and identities, but to life and the planet.

… the sooner we learn that the world is what we make of it the bigger the possibility of creating a better scenery for future generations…

I think this is perhaps a dangerous thought, and a natural human tendency. The world is a whole lot more than what we make it and a whole lot more than what we can understand in a million years. The life cycle of a drop of water, for instance, is eight hundred years long. We have not even begun to see the entire effect of the industrial revolution. The seeds of our destruction may be sown already, and it is possible that there is nothing we can do about our impending environmental demise.

(But we don’t have to be murderous animals.)

I don’t say that to be pessimistic, I say it sincerely for the sake of realism. The human race needs to humble itself a little. If we face that, then we are more likely (I think) to be a little less cock-sure about our abilities to “fix” things, and more likely to embrace prophylactic and preventive measures like the Kyoto protocol. Some things we need to fix fast as we can, but we need to be fearful enough not to risk breaking things we can’t fix---like tectonic plates. And we need to be cautious so that we don’t create situations in which we cannot adapt gracefully, if at all---like nuclear winters.

Religions, racisms, nationalisms, are barriers in that direction.

These are the results of behavior and thought. They are not discrete entities that form concrete barriers. They cannot just be gotten rid of, people have to change their minds, their behaviors, and their social organization. People also have to feel safe to do so, and safe to openly examine their own prejudices without being shamed or damned. To solve the problems related to these isms, we must deal with people not institutions.

Most wars, BTW, are land and resource grabs. All that religious stuff is just marketing. If you die in battle you’ll be rewarded in heaven (so it shouldn’t bother you that the V.A. is cutting your medical coverage and benefits). You’ll be a hero, a martyr, you’ll get laid.

<i>The trilogy of governments, armies and priests has repeated itself for ages, exercising power over men through fear and their power to make them feel as inferiors. Even, the so-called “democracies” are a modern version of the same.

Yep, kings, clergy, armies. Lords, vassals, fiefs---less than a couple of thousand of years of various brands of feudalism is a drop in the bucket. We have made a little progress, we’ve just gotten unbelievably dangerous in the process.

One thing is certain, it is very difficult to produce new land, however one wants to fight over it, or impress their in-laws with it.

I want to address the rest of your post later, chores willing.

peace

typo correction for clarification: If you die in battle you’ll be rewarded in heaven (so it shouldn’t bother you that the V.A. is cutting your medical coverage and benefits). You’ll be a hero, a martyr, you’ll get laid. is my statement, not Maria’s.

Talk about Clashing Sensibilities…

Has the academic world gone crazy?  This equates to hiring Rudolph Hess during WW2 while closing West Point!
-------------------------------------------

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Taliban Man at Yale
University officials are embarrassed--but not embarrassed enough.
Monday, March 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Are there no limits to how arrogant and out-of-touch America’s Ivy League schools can get? Last week it emerged that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is now a student at Yale while at the same time the school continues to block ROTC training from its campus and argues for the right of its law school to exclude military recruiters.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110008051

It’s probably just another crony appointment, WTH.  A member of the Taliban attending Yale isn’t as offensive to me as people who have no earthly idea what they are doing being appointed to FEMA, the EPA, and the CPA. If he starts slapping women around for not wearing vales, or otherwise harrassing them he should be expelled.

It is a terrible contradiction, though isn’t it?  Someone in this administration needs to figure out what a terrorist and terrorist sympathizer is. This guy is probably NOT on the no-fly list, and Kennedy can’t seem to have himself removed from it, so clearly, there is much rotten in Denmark these days and reason does not have the upper hand.

Wiley (and maybe some others),

It is always offensive when people denigrate the Nazi and general European Holocaust which killed six million Jews (one third the world population and half the European population of Jews by 1939 census count).  Even proportionately speaking nothing has ever matched this in history!  To compare Nazi extermination of Jews with Israeli treatment of Palestinians is beyond ridiculous.  In 1948, there were 1.25 million Palestinian Arabs. Today there are almost 9 million, 3 million of which live in Palestine and another million in pre-1967 Israel--a strange genocide indeed!!!  Israeli Sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling calls Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians “politicide” which is far more apt than genocide and describes the process of eliminating a group as a viable and distinct political entity.  This is also horrible but far different and has aspects which are condemned as genocidal in nature by the UN Charter and Convention on Genocide.  I oppose the Zionist occupation of Palestine as much as Kimmerling or anyone else for that matter and have often wondered at the necessity of a Jewish State at all ( which exists only because of Christian persecution of Jews both during and before WWII). 

Wiley, I think your figures on WWII deaths are inflated. I’ve seen 50 million on the light side and about 80 million on the high side. No matter.  The real thing that makes the genocide against the Jews unique and so frightening is neither the order of magnitude, nor the proportion killed, nor even the stoney silence it evoked from a disinterested world (which is pretty typical).  The real unique thing about it was that it was the first (and only) totally planned genocide by a highly technologically advanced and modern state that was to be carried out for its own sake (not to obtain land, wealth, property, or access to resources) by virtue of pure racial obsession and hate EVEN WHEN DOING SO ENDANGERED THE OVERALL MILITARY OBJECTIVES OF THE THIRD REICH as it did on the eastern front according to many of Hitler’s best generals like Hans Guderian and others!  The creation of complex and integrated systems of railways, gas chambers, crematoria, and other genocide infrastructe has no precident in history.  The mobilization of modern science in the service of such a macabre project is also unprecedented.  The vast sociology of the holocaust focuses not on the human side of the tragedy but on the implications it has for the capacity of the modern state to create sufficient alienation both moral and otherwise to carry out such a deed with little or no resistence!  Yes, many people were carted off to the “east” never to be seen again but it is widely agreed that it was really all about exterminating the Jews as a whole as per the minutes of the Jan, 1942 Wannesee meeting of Hitler and the leading SS officials.  Many genocides-no matter how long in coming-are spontaneous--this was the ultimate in modern state planning.

Wiley, I’ll leave you with this thought.  There is a reason the Nazi genocide against the Jews had such impact and is still regarded today with such horror--and it has little to do with the Jews themselves!

WTH
At 22, this guy was the taliban’s ARI FLEISCHER .

Frog,

I miss Ari. This Scott Whats-his-face is just NO FUN. Too stern.

Honestly, I have never been able to understand how anyone can stand the job for any of the presidents I can remember.

The best press conference I ever watched was Eisenhower cofronted by a little old gal who had been there forever (can’t think of her name).

It went something like this…

Reporter, “Mr. President the milk industry workers have indicated that they intend to go on strike unless their demands are met. The Dairy Management Association has refused to even meet with them.  Mr, President would you care to give us an idea of what you intend to do about this problem?”

Ike, “No. Next please.”

You can’t look at the wall, cabdriver and see the Warsaw Ghetto? Why not? Why is that unthinkable?

Do you think that the mechanical carpet bombing of cities or the dropping of atomic bombs is any less horrifying or mechanical than the Nazi holocaust? Do you think the horror in Cambodia that killed a third of the Cambodian population was not as evil as the Nazi holocaust?

I think all murder and genocide, and politicide (as if that leaves people less dead), and omnicide is wrong. World War II ended over 50 years ago. How many “holocausts” have there been since? Why is it that the suffering of all the victims of genocide since doesn’t merit the outrage of The Holocaust?

You can believe that the exterminating of Jews in Europe trumps all other mass murders in the history of mankind, if you like. I don’t. I think the most important mass murders in the history of mankind are the ones that are happening NOW. Forgive me if that’s a politically incorrect conclusion that doesn’t take into account the proper structural analysis of history.

Cabbie,

Herzl , Jabotinsky and Co had good reasons for inventing Zionism well before Hitler.
Hitler did not build the european railway system.

I regard all massacres , “politicides”, as equally evil.  I disagree that the Holocaust is unique, and should take pre-eminence over every other horror in history and the present day.

Look at what the Holocaust industry has done to improve the World ! Lots of disneyland museums, wars, and more wars, and the Zionist tail wags the USA dog.

Anyone who disagrees with israel’s expansionist and warmongering policies is condemned as an antisemite , even hounded by ADL/JDL etc.
And highly unlikely to get elected to anything in the USA ?

Well, the USA has declared war on half the world, at least, “"” with little or no resistance""" from Americans, because those that are not with you are supposed to be against you !

Sociologically the USA is approaching where Germany was in the mid Thirties.

Wiley, Frog, Cabbie:

It seems a weird topic to be trying to quantify. With any other topic it would be good stand-up material.
“My holocaust is worse than yours!” “Is not!” “Is too!”

-----------------
When Jews (or anyone including the U.S.) resort to killing people as a policy, it is equally sad for mankind.  It may not justify the actions, but may make it understandable that this is an historically universal approach to problem solving.

None of us is far away from resorting to violence when conditions fit. Fear is one of the best motivators and the best reason not to run a country based on majority rule by electronic polling.  At least democracies are generally a bit slower to act than dictatorships - theocratic or secular.

Biblically the Jews have a bad track record when in the power seat, but who doesn’t? There isn’t much new.
Everything needs historical context.

Dropping the Atom Bomb was expedient when total casualties (on both sides) were considered. The lingering after effects of radiation were not so widely understood. Emotions were high in the U.S. having taken hundreds of thousands of military casualties. Japan’s “sneak attack” was an easy selling point and the kamikaze religious attitude foretold of annihilation as the alternate solution.

At least we got another fifty years out of the extreme end of WW2 due to MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction.  Some subsequent wars without an unconditional surrender have not been resolved — Korea and the 1991 Gulf War.

The other post war genocide situations: Nothing was done by the allies prior to WW2 to prevent the Nazi attrocities and the U.S. refused to absorb Jewish immigrants in large numbers. It should be noted we were totally unprepared militarily, but could have taken refugees.

We are up to our asses in criticism now for removing Saddam & Sons, Sadists Inc. If not for something like a 9/11 what politician in his right mind (I’ll let that go by.) would touch getting involved. Bosnia only got action after thousands were already murdered and then (without U.N. involvement) because Europe was threatened and there were no trading relations to be negatively affected by any of the participants.

Declared War: The term War on Terror is too broad. (Bad packaging.) Actually, the Muslim extremists declared war on us and were allowed to conduct it with little resistance until unavoidable (9/11) — bad for the global Economy-Above-All-Else types.

Something to consider:
• Similarities between the current war and the Indian Wars of the 1870s and 1880s. (religious beliefs, torture, economic factors)

• The Civil War Reconstruction period — Negroes granted voting and property rights and the time it took and is taking to equalize citizens.  It is way too soon to see if democracy works for the Sunnis, Shites and Kurds.

What would have been the outcome of WW2 if Japan’s Kamikazes were equipped with nuclear weapons?

How about Iran?

WTH

Your joke about the standup comicry is much closer to the truth than you thought ?

A courtcase here in frogland was recently dropped—some pressure group was attacking a serious historian for “denying” the genocidal nature of the Atlantic Slave Trade !

Robert Fisk tells us that after 30years reporting from the Mideast, he has NEVER seen it in such a dangerous state as today.
Talking about “context” , he doesn’t know the whole story about who is directing the deathsquads in Iraq, but damn all to do with “islamofascists”, I am sure.  Those guys are mostly useful idiots.

If even the Israeli boss of Shabak (internal security) can now let slip that the world was a safer place with Saddam, he is only saying what many are coming to recognise.  Yuval Diskin is his name.

As for Kosovo, Ossama and friends’ troops were recruited to fight there on the side of the KLA by “our” secret services. A staged “massacre” and time for another lovely war. Its now a major crime and drug centre, and the serbs are being ethnically cleansed.

You see how closely the secret services and the “terrorists” are connected ?

Whatever you call it, the war on terror is not just badly packaged. The whole concept is bogus, just a pretext for increasing the power of the Executive, making giga$$$$ , and keeping the population of the planet scared and divided.

“IRAN” is just a propaganda game, hyping up the old bullshit to see how far they can go to make you really scared.

As for kamikazes, not needed. Suitcase nukes have existed for years,such as the old 155mm shell from my youth.
MINI NUKE
Plenty of those around in the ex USSR? Valerie Plame and other CIA were engaged in combating that sort of nuclear proliferation. Routine serious police work, not sabre-rattling, not propaganda campaigns to scare the shit out of us all.

.

Frog,

I don’t know if the world was safer WITH Saddam or, if true, for how long. But it was more stable and less noisey back then.  I think 90% of what passes for news is just noise — it’s deciding which 10% is genuine that’s unsettling.

IMO the world was safer before the end of the Cold War when two super powers used any and all means to checkmate each other. Now we have a lot of unaccounted for nuke material floating around the underground market.

The worst thing about the Iranian president (couldn’t pronounce his name even if I could remember it) is his religious leanings.

Even if the Big Bang theory of creation is unproven I think the Big Bang ending is plausible.

WTH
Sorting the info is the “unsettling” duty of any citizen who would hope to be worthy of the name.
It doesn’t come for free, takes time and effort, but gets easier, and more fun, as time goes by and one starts to recognise patterns.

Here’s for some history.
In 1972 Nixon back from Moscow crazily believed that swords could be turned into ploughshares.
Nightmare news for the arms manufacturers.

Luckily two White Knights were at hand when Ford succeeded Nixon. DAH DI DAH ! ZORROS TO THE RESCUE .!!

“"Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon’s treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of FEAR.

They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn’t know about, that the CIA didn’t know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with.

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld’s position a “complete fiction” and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone."”
MORE WAR !! MORE $$
Cynthia McKinney tried to get this article by Thom Hartmann into the Congressional Record. Don’t know if succeeded !

So, whenEVER, EVER, EVER, someone tries to terrify you with “terrorism”, “Musim Islamofascistic Clashes of Civilisations”, take a good deep breath.

STOP and THINK.

WHY DO THOSE MEGALOMANIACAL MONEY-GRUBBING MOTHERS WANT ME TO BEHAVE LIKE A HEADLESS CHICKEN ?

<a href="http://www.freedomtofascism.com/">MUSSOLINI-TIME A’COMING ?>/a>

Well, fascism sounds softer than nazism, same difference.

£££££££££

“"The archangel reported that the Almighty has become increasingly irritated with the vogue for politicians to claim that He is behind their policies - especially if these involve killing large numbers of humans.

According to Gabriel, God spake these words: “That George W Bush once had the nerve to say: ‘God told me to go end the tyranny in Iraq, and I did.’ Well, let me tell you I did no such thing! If I’d wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I could have given him pneumonia.

I didn’t need the president of the United States to send in hundreds of heavy bombers and thousands of missiles to destroy Iraq - even though I appreciate that Halliburton needed to fill its order books.”

“How do Bush and Blair think it makes me look to all those parents who have lost sons and daughters in this grubby business? Don’t they know that the Muslims they’re taking out worship the same Me that they do?

It’s a public relations disaster that ought to set Christianity back hundreds of years. Though knowing the fundamentalists, it’ll probably have the reverse effect"”

THE MONTY PYTHON TAKE ON GOD VERSUS BUSH,BLAIR, AND OTHER HYPOCRITES

Big surprise for many amurricans—ONE GOD, (SAME GOD) , TWO PROPHETS.

“They worship the same ME !!!!”.

“"Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon’s treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of FEAR.

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld’s position a “complete fiction” and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone."”

Rumsfeld has a hard one for nuclear war, that is unfathomably vulgar, and delusional. He really believes we can “win” and has been lobbying for it his whole career. He is one sick puppy. He has been briefed by the best and brightest all along and is very knowledgeable but none too bright, and prone to wishful self-congratulatory thinking.

(I’ll check more into your mini-nike story later, frog---haven’t seen that one yet).

It was while reading up on a little Rummy history lately that I finally figured out why the number of warheads on a Russian missile was classified to US. when I was in the Air Force.  I read recently that each Soviet missile carried 3---THREE!!!---that’s a small number. We were told “up to 12”.  It hit me like a sack of bricks that that information was classified to us because they (1) didn’t want us to know how far behind the Soviets really were in the nuclear arms race and (2) they wanted us all to believe that we were a strictly defensive operation that would never launch a first strike. Every war scenario we played started with a Soviet submarine attack.

Lies, lies, damned lies.

Wiley,

Why would you leap to such an unwarrented and outright stupid conclusion that I don’t equate the Israeli apartheid wall with a kind of Ghettoing the likes of which the Jews of Europe experienced for many centuries.  I am involved with the Jewish peace movement and as I’ve previously said oppose even the idea of a Jewish state. I have good reason to feel this way.  I lived in Israel for over three years (July 1992-September 1995) and saw not only maltreatment of Arabs but the fact that Zionism has entirely failed the Jews in its supposed mission to provide respect, security, prosperity, freedom, and sovereignty.  Israel is a highly unequal and oppressive place for Jews where about a third of the Jewish population lives close to the poverty line despite two decades of nearly uninterupted economic growth. Israel is a highly externally dependant country that is universally despised, constantly at war, and repressive of individual liberties across the board.  I finally left in disgust two months before the murder of Rabin by a Jewish religious fanatic.

The bombing of Hiroshima doesn’t compare to the Nazi Holocaust though it tragically took over a quarter million Japanese lives if I’m not mistaken.  The complete distruction of the Japanese people was not the goal.  The right insists it was to get an unconditional Japanese surrender, the left senses that it was to “win the peace” through a nuclear demonstration effect to the Soviet Union. Take your pick.  Neither entails the total genocide of ALL Japanese simply because they were Japanese.

Next cases.  Modern Genocides Rwanda, Cambodia, etc.  The tragic outcomes of years of fomented communal conflict or failed, unnecessary military campaigns by the west leaving crisis brewing in these enormously impoverished and strife torn countries.  Horrible beyond belief with the West similarly culpable for ignoring/contributing to the problems.  Not the same as the Nazi genocide. Again, the extermination of such an order of magnitude through the deliberate planning and execution of a genocide program which marshalls all the contributing powers of modern science, industry, bureacratic organization, and military efficiency to the sole purpose of exterminating an entire people across an entire continent as the denumont of two thousand years of severe persecution has never has any historic peer and I hope never will!

One final thing. If people could bring themselves to stop resenting the Jews just long enough to see that the reason for holocaust remembrance is to highlight not overshadow other modern genocides much would be accomplished!

Wiley,

I have just reread one of your above posts and it does seem you are really nuts--or are you just pathologically thoughtless and insensitive.  What about the Holocaust don’t you get!? What do you want to deny?! Do you hate Jews?! Lots of people seem to!  Let me tell you the 6 million figure comes from Eichmann himself. What else perplexes you? That Zyclon B didn’t leave a steely blue hue in ALL the gas chambers called Prussian Blue.  Many forensic chemists claim it doesn’t necessarily always do so because the compound is heavily sensitive to conditions.  Feel better? Believe me if there was a way to plausibly deny what occured respectible people would have done so long ago!  The Jews are in fact correct for insisting on the world’s greatest victim status. It seems they are the world’s most CONSISTENT victim. The horrors of the WWII genocide sure didn’t impress many of the Europeans who perpetrated it. Even after the German surrender in 1945 over 1,500 Jews were killed in pogroms in Poland like the one in Kielce that took 42 Jewish lives. The civilized US liberators who refused to bomb the railway lines into Auschwitz weren’t excessively moved by the tragedy either.  In 1948, the 80th US congress passed an immigration bill which deliberately wrote the remaining 300,000 Jewish refugees languishing in Allied DP camps out of eligability for US Visas (Truman by executive order had allowed 160,000 in up to that point probably to take the heat off the UK and Palestine for a while).  If you want to know why this horrible place called Israel exists its because the Jews were forced to go there when the real preference of most was the Anglo-phone West which closed the door on them.

And so Wiley, we come to the real question of modern anti-semitism!  It may interest you to know that the Holocaust is the only modern tragedy that is a continual battle ground between the victims and their detractors over issues of truth and legitimacy.  No other genocide has to plead for credibility or for respect for its victims.  The Armenian genocide is NEVER actually denied (some crazed Turks notwithstanding) just frequently and unfortunately ignored.  It never occurs to “progressives” that one reason that “revisionists” (who are pretty much all active neo-Nazis or highly supportive fellow-travellers) are attempting to make fascism respectible by denying one of its most hideous crimes.  If they plug away long enough over time in the current political atmosphere they will succeed and democracy-not the Jews per se-will be the biggest loser.  The fascists are politically motivated in what they are doing and they are in this for the long haul. They believe time is on their side and it is if people like you say the things that you do. Even Frog and WTH (who visited Dachau) don’t go to the extremes you do on this issue of apologizing for revisionism. One of the reasons I’m so appalled is that you criticize the anti-Muslim cartoons saying they aren’t necessarily protected speech due to their effect.  Those who claim that free speech is absolute are spoiled and over pampered-insensitive to others’ rights in this regard! This same reasoning doesn’t extent to people who disrespect the dignity of those like Ann Frank and millions of others who died in one of the most incredible genocide machines in history.  The Nazis spared no resource or effort in their singleminded purpose even when it harmed their military cause.  This is truely remarkable.  Wiley, perhaps you can explain such pathological hate. It baffles the imagination of many others including myself.

Dear Cabby,
thankyou so much for your personal recollections of israel.
Like wiley’s from the USAF, and mine from the british min of defence chemical/biological experiments on soldiers, they authenticate history.
( not sure if that"s english, I usually think in french !)

The Holocaust Industrialists are certainly not “pleading for credibility and respect for the victims”, they are ramming their version of history down everyone’s throats, and they have unlimited Money and Political Power.

The inevitable consequence of this campaign is that it is often so hysterical ,violent, and unscrupulous that it prompts many people to ask themselves WHY ?
What are they trying to hide ?
My own interest was spurred by the propaganda against Irving, for that very reason..

I’m old enough to make up my own mind about Irving, and detest his fascination for Nazism and his racism in general. Well that’s his particular disease, but it doesn’t automatically mean that absolutely everything he ever wrote was pure invention .

History is full of “what ifs ?”, and I am quite capable of living with a large amount of uncertainty !  No choice, that is life !
What if the world might be a better place with saddam still in place?
What if the USA had long ago stopped financing Israel ?

So, with great respect, I disagree with your stuff about being the Star Victims of history, that Hitler devoted ALL the resources of the Reich to extermination. The real history is always more complicated , often a complete muddle.

Frog,

The only problem with your assertions is that they’re wrong.  It is NO accident that holocaust revisionism is the sole preserve of neo-nazis and their sympathizers-they are politically motivated and want to mainstream fascism by denying its greatest crime.  The ultimate intent is to create and promote a viable fascist movement in the US which they are well on their way to doing.

The so called Holocaust industry (term coined by anti-Zionist Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein of whom I have great respect) is not trying to push a particular version of history on anyone. Their ongoing effort to collect data, create a large literature, and piece together a puzzle to explain one of the most complex and inexplicable genocides in history is important work and has great political and historic value for all societies.  It is widely believed (and I think rightly) that had Hitler not persecuted the Jews but enlisted their aid we might still be fighting the war (or all speaking German!).  This may be an exaggeration but it makes the point that this is certainly one case where the logic of the other genocides doesn’t fit.

Holocaust revisionism never has had any respect outside its own circles. They tend to only quote each other or distort independant data and in any case have never published acceptable peer reviewed scholarship or made any inroads into mainstream academia. This is not because they are victims of a politcal campaign against them but because they are racist crackpots with nothing to offer anyone outside the fascist movement.  Most non-Jewish scholars, quite free of any pressure, willingly distance themselves.

You assume in a very insinuating and bigoted way that “the Jews” and their “holocaust industry” are hiding something.  What do you think it is? Why would Jews make anything up? We were all much better off without persecution in the first place and have gained nothing from the holocaust. Israel is an uneconomic and barely feasible non-proposition for most Jews--constant war, death, boycotts, hate, and what no one actually realizes--grinding poverty for most of the Jews that live there.  Spending one and a half months in army reserve duty until you’re 45 years of age isn’t attractive either.  Israel was no bargain (except for US geo-strategic interests) and most Jews would be better off in the US.Perhaps this is why more than 25% of all Israelis live outside of Israel on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. There would be more but for family considerations and visa restrictions! In another five years, the Jewish state will be less than half Jewish anyhow. Then who will the conspiracy mongers blame for political pressure to support Israel?

So with regard to your last comment about the history of the holocaust being a muddle like most history I disagree. The “holocaust industry” has clarified quite a bit and it refutes “revisionist” claims with greater force and persuasion.  If the Jews aren’t history’s star victims, Frog, can you nominate a more suitable candidate for the position? I’m open to suggestions and so are many others.

Cabby

Why so goddam touchy ? First time I’ve been called insinuating and bigoted, i shall treasure it !

On second thoughts, please please do not answer that question, too much ranting is bad for one, and I esteem you far too highly to wish you any harm. Ypur paragraph above on Israel is brilliant.

NOW, i also have great respect for Norman Finkelstein, and it seems to me that your interpretation of what the “Holocaust Industry” is, as defined by him, is 100% wrong !

$ permitting i shall maybe buy his books one day, so for now i go by extracts, references by others, and the reviews of them at amazon.

Some examples of quotes from him year 2000 book I found here---
<a href="http://www.rense.com/general69/short.htm"> FINKELSTEIN QUOTES</b>

Maybe the guy who wrote the article is some sorta nazi, maybe he took them wildly out of context, maybe lots of things. I count on you to put me right where i go wrong, witout shouting.

As for Star Victims, who cares ? no world shortage today, as we speak.

For example, who were the Star Most Evil Colonisers ? My vote would be the Belgians in the Congo, but so what ?

QUOTES ??? I HOPE !

All history is revisionism !
For example I grew up believing that the recent nuclear bombs were used to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers.
Typical lazy acceptance of propaganda.
For example, maybe Japan could have been blockaded and starved to death ?
Not a question of left/right belief. Just historical research leading wherever it leads, without preconceptions, testing hypotheses.

Frog,

Not all history is revisionism. This is a self-conscious appoach.  Finkelstein and I don’t see the same holocaust industry. He sees an “industry” emerging just after the 1967 Israeli war of aggression which opportunistically and cynicaally exploited the past suffering of the Jews of Europe for dubious political purposes like the US imperialist agenda. I see the potential for such an industry to expose fascism and genocide both today and historically. Let’s not through the holocaust industry baby out with the imperialist bathwater.  By the way Jeff Rense is a kind of Neo-Nazi like Zundel.  Beware!

cabdriver, you turned an increasingly interesting conversation which started from an article Islam vs the West into a panegiric of the Jewish people and their martyrhood. You know, the Russians lost many more lives during WWII and nobody felt any gratitude towards them and decided they were next on the list of “evil doers”. So, you see there have been many victims in this world and so what? One of the problems of mankind is its eternal division into groups which feel they are different or entitled to be considered “special”. I, myself, am the product of three different european nationalities with their own particularities, customs or cultures, maybe that’s why I can’t understand the insistence on segregation. Ever since I could read and write, I have been astonished by the fact that instead of looking for common grounds to attempt to make the earth a home for all, different groups try to make us believe they have a private connection with God, that they have been chosen and promised different blessings, consequently leaving the rest of humanity which doesn’t belong to that group as “strangers”. Argentina, my country, received arabs and jews in great numbers. Most of them found a way to make a living and prosper there. The Jew community was the second in the world (after USA’s). I could sense they were never discriminated, on the contrary, they all had the opportunity of developing industries, attend universities and live as a whole prosperous lives. Nevertheless, after several generations they still feel they belong to a close community and have been sending their children to Israel for military duties and sent economical help, something which is seldom done by other communities which consider themselves to be “Argentine citizens with ....... ancestors”.  Who is acting in a racist way, in view of this?

Cabby
“Self-conscious approach” is beyond me !
I know i’m stoopid, but struggle on in my fumbling way.

For me all history is about “revising” previous versions, otherwise no point in doing it, eh ? Since “revisionism touches such a vital nerve in some, I am happy to proclaim myself a “revisionist”.

First of all you proclaim your admiration for Finkelstein, then you say “we don’t see the same Holocaust Industry”.

Well, which is what ?

You obviously have NOT read ANY of Finkelstein’s work. If you had, it would be obvious that he is hostile to everything you hold dear.

I had a hypothesis about you being two ‘cabbies’, one being a completely rational critique of Israel today, the other being a very typical hysterical Holocaust promoter. Team- work ?

The second half of your last post is deep rubbish.

Our readers should look at it three times, and then may well bin it.

No idea if jeffrense is a neo-nazi, but he does group reports from Reuters and others in one site for easy reference. You telling me to “beware” is a puerile joke. I was trained by excellent instructors to always be aware, always vigilant, and yes O cabby, you do not quite measure up .

My suspicion is that cabby is just another Shill. His deep reticence on Finkelstein is pretty good proof. First off he says he’s a great guy, then we are somewhere completely different.

Finkelstein is 100% away from cabby. STOP.

Wiley, could you callup our witch- deconstructors from lumens country and beyond ?

Frog,

I have read much of Finkelsteins work, heard him publicly share a podium with Ali Abunimeh the founder of “the electronic intifada” (Abunimeh was the better speaker by far that day) and know his views.  He teaches political science here in Chicago at De Paul University in a very Chic, gentrified north side community called Lincoln Park!  Finkelstein’s problem with the Holocaust Industry is that it is used to promote the wrong message not that it exaggerates the extent of the genocide as neo-Nazis claim.  Finkelstein divides Holocaust scholarship into two somewhat neat periods: pre-1967-the year of Israel’s expansionist war of aggression in which the West Bank and Gaza were siezed from Jordan and Egypt, and post 1967.  In the early years of Holocaust scholarship the topic was explored in a way as to expose the horrors of Nazism with no hidden agenda. This was when Raul Hilberg was held to be the main scholar in the field and appropriately he positively reviewed Finkelstein’s book with a “blurb” from the review on the back of the dust jacket.  In the aftermath of the 1967 war a latent, pent-up torrent of scholarship emerged which seemed to have two purposes.  One was to promote sympathy for a policy of uncritical support for the State of Israel.  The other was to teach about the Holocaust as an example of inexplicable evil which had confounded all sociological analysis and which was testimony to the truth of the existence of a truely manichean universe of absolute good and evil.  This ahistorical, transcendental, and depoliticized account formed a new kind of pro-American pedagogy which aimed to conflate all “evil” into one big enemy to be faced down by the forces of absolute “good”, ie Israel’s new benefactor, The USA.  Here Nazism was conflated with communism, terrorism, Arab Nationalism, and any other foe of the US imperialist/Zionist axis.  Gone was the historic and deeply politiclzed understanding of the Holocaust that called everyone to account, the Westerners who did business with Hitler while ignoring the genocide against the Jews and others.  The same westerners who ignored early fascism hoping it would clear Europe of the left parties and trade unions in time for the west to come in and reconstruct the continent in the interests of an open world economy under US hegemony were similarly exhonorated. 

Some of the literature focused on the west’s obstruction of rescue and resistence efforts but it is a marginal part of the project.  What Finkelstein objects to in the Holocaust Industry is its Zionist bent and its slanting the moral lessons in support of US imperialist agenda, not that it reports the full extent of the genocide and its unprecedented nature. You confuse the leftist objections with the far-rightist ones.  In addition, Finkelstein’s objection to the “case for Jewish exceptionalism” is a refutation of people like Lucy Davidowicz and Daniel Goldhagen who focus intently of the Jewish aspects of the genocide as a purely unique ethno-historic experience and eschew a real sociological critique of the modern state and the dangerous alienation it breeds as do writers like Zygmunt Baumann and Enzo Traverso.

Further, people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. The fact of the Nazi genocide is no more forced on people than is the fact that the earth is round and that it orbits the sun.

With all due respect, you need to do some serious research!

Maria,

First of all I didn’t start the conversation about the Jews and the Holocaust.  If you followed the postings on this thread you have seen that the discussion somehow turned immediately toward david irving and “holocaust revisionism” in the postings of “the anti-war conservative” and was picked up by “WTH”, “Wileywitch”, and “Frog”. I merely responded way later in the discussion.  I find it amazing that you glossed over several earlier disrespectful postings about the subject by others and only later singled out mine as inappropriately “starting” the conversation.  I find your attitude distinctly anti-semitic and justly so.

I know Jews from Argentina. Argentina is virulently anti-Jewish. The fact that many Jews have successfully pursued business careers there doesn’t mean there isn’t profound hatred of Jews in that country. Ever hear of Jacobo Timmerman?  The Prisoner without a name in a cell without a number? I realize that Argentina has a long history of political repression by many European style fascist dictatorships but the Jews were singled out there for special persecution. The world is quite aware of this fact. After all your country bent over backwards to assist and hide the worst Nazi criminals after the War.  Eichmann was captured there.  Argentina is full of Nazi sympathizers. I really don’t know how any Jew could live there! 

I really don’t blame the Jews in Argentina for helping Israel (even though I don’t approve or think this is the answer). I’d want to act on my frustration with Argentine hatred as well.

By the Way Maria, You need to improve your English.

Cabdriverinchicago, sorry about my English not being so good as you would expect it to be. I learnt the little I know, as well as French, Italian and Portuguese on my own, the hard way, with no teachers or paid lessons. As for my being antisemitic, it’s too offensive even to reply. I married a jew many years ago and have three children by him, so I have been surrounded by jews for many years, being a victim of their discrimination, not the other way round.  He and his family, as well as many friends of theirs arrived in Argentina penniless, with war traumas and found understanding and helpful people who opened their hearts and homes to them. They never fully integrated, looked down on us and made us feel all the time we were not qualilfied to be their pars. Children born from no -jew women are even considered not full members of their community because our wombs apparently are not the same.
Even after that experience I never developed hatred or justify in anyway what the Nazis did to them, but that doesn’t mean I am not surprised at their attitude towards those of us who haven’t had Moses for an ancestor. That’s all. End of my participation.

Cabby
after a close re-reading of your posts, and doing my homework!, i confess to having been taken in to a small extent by the revisionists.

Well, even a small extent is too much.

Whether the way to fight them is with Denial Laws, i’m not sure, still thinking, but my instinct is no.

A serious question, Finkelstein criticises Wiesel severely; What is your view ?

Also a few of your favourite websites would help me ? You can cut and paste, and if you want to be really helpful a very little html, too!

That method would also maybe save you some time, as a quick rebuttal can often be made with a reference to scholarly work ?

The “Holocaust Industry” deserves all the criticism, and might well contribute to a rise in antisemitism. I’m with you for the serious sociological critique.

Frog,

I don’t read ANY Holocaust revisionist material but I do read stuff by Finkelstein and others who accept all the valid historic evidence for the facts but object to the self rightous moralism which politically slants the lessons such that they validate US militarism as the defender of civilization against “evil” as determined US leadership.  I suggest Zygmunt Baumann’s Modernity and the Holocaust whereby he sociologizes the event mostly in order to make the case AGAINST Jewish exceptionalism. I also recommend Enzo Traverso’s Marxism and Auschwicz and The Origins of Nazi Totalitarianism in which he sees the alienation brought about by modern mass society as the culprit which enabled the suffient disengagement of man from his moral sense to “follow orders” and engage in rote, mindless routines at the behest of officialdom no matter how brutal or repulsive.  Also the role of ideology and propaganda wiegh in significantly.  Try those two authors in addition to Finkelstein.

Maria,

I don’t know about your family but I do know about Argentina.  The country was known, especially during the “dirty war” of the military against the poltical opposition, as one of the worst bastions of anti-semitism in the entire world.  Of the 10,000 peope who disappeared in this horrible period (1976-1983) 1000 to 1,800 were Jews according to various human rights organization estimates.  This would place the Jewish number of disappeared at 10-18% of the conservatively estimated total despite the fact that Jews are barely 1% of the entire Argentine population. 

In addition human rights reports from the period well document the military’s having singled out the Jewish community as a consequence of having defined them as inherently subversive.  Jewish poltical prisoners were tattoed with nazi swastikas during this time as well as being tortured, beaten, and killed in captivity.  Raul Alfonsin, the post dictatorship democratically elected leader, made special appeals and investigations within the Argentine Jewish community in order to heal some of their grief. 

I don’t suppose the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center and the 86 deaths and over 200 injuries would have any connection to Argentina’s long history of anti-semitism.  This occurred during the successful phase of the Israel/Palestine peace process.

Maria, I’m sorry you dropped out of the discussion but these are things for Argentine Christians to consider when maligning Argentine Jews for their solomn reclusiveness.

I also became aware of a peculiar characteristic of more Orthodox Jewish culture you seem to be exhibiting of a willingness to argue emotionally in public with much shouting and waving of hands, all the while maintaining strict rules of reason, and then end their argument by shaking hands and making amiable agreement to meet again.  I have to say I found this an admirable trait in contrast to my own family’s tendency to act this way in private, but to pretend otherwise to the world while letting inflicted wounds fester.  I also find admirable the opposite characteristic among my many Japanese friends who feel that such emotional displays at any time must surely end in deadly violence.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the Jewish exceptionalism of the Über-Zionists is as objectionable or more as conventional anti-semitism.  The üntermenschen of the Holocaust included the Roma, Africans and Slavs as well as leftists of all stripes.  Tens of millions of Slavs were slaughtered where they stood or died in the labor camps right alongside the Jews.  Half a million disappeared from the face of the earth at Stalingrad alone.  No-one seems to give a whit’s notice of the Gypsies.  This tendency to make the Nazi Holocaust a tragedy of uniquely Jewish suffering is a source of resentment and anti-Jewish sentiment that I find difficult to address with Russians with whom I have had correspondence.  It is an exasperation of the problem.  It is good that Jews from ordinary Zionist backgrounds like Finkelstein and Chomsky expose these hypocrisies, but unfortunate that they are so much excluded from the mainstream of US civil discourse.

In terms of the present article, I think the Islamophobic screeds of the ‘clash of civilizations’ types are little different from the Nazi’s use of latent anti-semitism to whip up the masses in their rise to power.  The violence of demonstrators in Islamic countries has more to do with feelings of economic and cultural impotence than religion.  The overwhelming number of deaths are those of the demonstrators themselves at the hand of security forces protecting the property of Western nations.  A not insignificant fact that recieves little notice. 

As a primary example of genocide in the modern world, I would suggest the treatment of Native Americans, particularly in the continental US.  After all, this was the precedent the Nazi’s used in their justification for eliminating their various classes of üntermenschen.  I’m sure driving hack in the windy city you must come into contact with many ethnicities.  Have you ever met an Illini?

Oops!  The first half of my post got lost in the ether.  Sorry about that.

LB,

In my hacking experience I’ve never met an Illini.  Nor have I met a Potawatami, the major tribal group from this area which by treaty in the 1830s, just before Chicago’s legal incorporation as a municipality, agreed to move west of the Mississippi River after decades of armed conflict with the European settlers.  Billy Cauldwell, who was half Potawatami, brokered the agreement between the White settlers and the Native Chief and consequently a major street in Chicago’s posh Edgebrook neighborhood was named for him!  Chicago is full of Native American history (Fort Dearborn? Captain William Wells?) and many people are well aware of the violence surrounding the early settlement and building of the City.

Yes, the history of the Native Americans is well known and certainly well documented.  I’m no expert but I seem to have read that when Columbus arrived the North American Native population was about 18 Million. Today, it stands at less than half a million.  They are overwhemingly impoverished and have a far less than average life expectancy.  Theirs was a true Genocide as was the South American Natives whose population was reduced from over 15 million to one and a half million from the arrival of Cortez in the early 16th Century to the mid-17th Century.  Forced labor in the silver ore mines plus diseases spread by Europeans killed most of them.  In both cases land and riches were saught by a foreign conquerer.

This is one of history’s great crimes but tell me LB, how do you assess a modern crime that takes place in the mid-twentieth century whereby in about half a decade, a planned genocide by a thoroughly modern state takes place merely for its own sake. The Nazis created the SS at great cost and effort to spare no expense and put every resource of the Third Reich at their disposal in order to achieve the total annihilation of a nation (yes the Jews are a nation with their own distinct culture, languages, communities, and history in addition ot religion) despite the fact that the Germans would not benefit but suffer an unnecessary sacrifice.  Many people feel that had Hitler embraced the Jews fully as fellow Germans he may