This is my last comment for the year as we are off to spend Hogmanay as the guests of an Ambassador in Paris. Out of deference to my family, who have had the brunt of it these last few days, I am definitely not taking the laptop, so I will no longer be able to take part in the popular new bloodsport of proving your loyalty to the SNP by being nasty to Craig Murray.
My parting thought is that, as every year of my entire life, it has been a disastrous one for the Palestinians. Yet more land occupied, settlements built, homes destroyed, olive trees uprooted, shipping vessels sunk and yet another murderous onslaught on Gaza.
I warmly recommend this rare public appearance by Col. Larry Wilkerson, ex-Chief of Staff to Colin Powell and a fellow recipient of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity. His brief musings here on Israel and Syria come from a deep store of knowledge and a razor-sharp intellect.
Do have a wonderful celebration. The future will be good. We are closer to a transformational change in society than you may realise.
I guess they’re just trying to ban insanity: I’m not sure if that works.
The issue is simply that you misrepresented TonyM’s post.
I corrected that.
Flying off here and there and everywhere doesn’t change that simple fact.
You claimed that TonyM’s quote was out of context. It was not.
You claimed that Hitch described the competing arguments as totally toxic in themselves. He did not.
You’re using other pieces to support an argument when the subject is this very specific piece itself:
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/may/20/books/bk-144
You’re faffing around looking for sanctuary in any and every port, to hide the fact that you misrepresented TonyM’s original post.
Just stoppit. Go to bed, and things will be OK in the morning.
Ach, I’ve changed my mind. I’m happy to stay here and continue. One thing Herbie/TonyM: does your entire argument rest on what you claim to think Hitchens thought? Surely there are other irrefutable reputable sources for your quite dramatic assertions. Please supply them.
“Irving has long been notorious for his view that Hitler never gave any order for the Final Solution and that there is no irrefutable document authorizing it. In court, he was unpardonably flippant on this point, saying airily that perhaps, like some of Richard Nixon’s subordinates, a few of the rougher types imagined they knew what would please the boss. This argument has always struck me as absurd on its face in both cases, but Evans simply reduces it to powder.”
“Anon
And by the way well done, Jemand. You’ve torn them to shreds tonight.”
Shredded Wheat – strands of straw bonded with sugar and formed into individual portions. If you don’t like them, don’t eat them.
I can’t understand why Jemand wants to force other people not to eat things that he doesn’t like. Go back to the supermarket and buy something you do appreciate.
It’s OK not to like Irving. It’s OK to despise those who make light of slaughter. It’s OK to dislike all sorts of things.
It isn’t OK to misrepresent another poster.
You’re simply confusing these things, and are making assumptions that are not valid.
That’s the best I can do by way of letting you off.
Hitch was slated for the mere assessment of competing arguments in this area.
I can live with his conclusions. They seem reasonable.
I can’t live with those who attack anyone who merely questions orthodoxy.
Nor should you. But that’s your choice.
I question everything, and that’s my choice.
I don’t care who likes it or who doesn’t like it.
I make my case and rest upon it.
Quite.
“Irving has long been notorious for his view that Hitler never gave any order for the Final Solution and that there is no irrefutable document authorizing it. In court, he was unpardonably flippant on this point, saying airily that perhaps, like some of Richard Nixon’s subordinates, a few of the rougher types imagined they knew what would please the boss. This argument has always struck me as absurd on its face in both cases, but Evans simply reduces it to powder.”
There’s not much point in lionising the Hitch if you feel uncomfortable with where he sometimes goes.
He often took the piss. Mostly took the piss.
But that’s OK as well.
I think he was being quite serious in that article.
‘Lionising the Hitch’? There are no reputable sources which substantiate what you are (libellously) portraying Christopher Hitchens as believing.
Jemand 3 Jan, 2015 – 12:20 am : “Re Exponential function, you wouldn’t understand. Only someone who appreciates how a dripping tap can fill a swimming pool will.”
I wouldn’t mention it, only you were so scathing – a dripping tap can’t fill a swimming pool
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/evaporation-water-surface-d_690.html
http://www.eea.europa.eu/green-tips/a-dripping-tap-can-waste-as-much-as-one-litre-of-water-per-hour
Technicolour
Holocaust deniers have claimed that the Nazis helped Jews to emigrate and cared for them well in concentration camps.
Maybe the seed of this argument is the false proposition that Israel is helping Palestinians to emigrate and treating them well in their present concentration camps.
The other day Israeli spokesmen at the UN were saying that Palestinians could not get a state for themselves by force. Oh yeah!!?? Hasbara propaganda usually starts by turning commonsense on its head. As we know well on this blog. Not so much non-sequiters, as total non-starters.
Their inside-out, upside-down arguments, like Irving’s on the Holocaust, have a one-sided, Apartheid purpose, posing as truth-seeking, but in reality trashing the truth. They start with the point they want to make and twist it backwards to make it look as if it is connected to irrelevant facts.
Just saying after scanning the gist of the thread, forgive me if I now go back to bed.
I’ve quoted him directly, and he says:
“These are, however, the now-undisputed findings of all historians and experts on the subject. And if they are sound, then it means that much “eyewitness” testimony is wrong. It necessarily changes our attitude toward the everyday complicity of average Germans. It also means that much of the evidence presented and accepted at Nuremburg was spurious. Of course, we knew some of this already–the Nazis were charged by Soviet and Allied judges with the massacres at Katyn in Poland, which had obviously been ordered by Stalin and are now admitted to have been.”
I’m happy with his evaluation generally as I’ve said a number of times.
But that’s not the question.
The question is why you misrepresent the piece above, as you did when TonyM posted it.
That’s the bit you don’t like.
He actually said that, unqualified, and all you’re saying is that you like all the other bits but don’t like that bit.
Why?
Hitchens:
Differences of opinion between these two schools (one which believed that the motivation behind the Holocaust was purely ‘functional’, and one which believed that it was genetic in origin*) and discrepancies in the evidence, have recently permitted the emergence of something that is more of a phenomenon than a “school,” by which I mean the movement of “Holocaust denial” or (because it consists of two contrasting tendencies) “Holocaust revisionism.” This movement contains some Nazi revivalists in Germany and elsewhere, some crackpots and conspiracy theorists and one practicing historian, an Englishman named David Irving. Among revisionist forces there is even more confusion; they either argue that nothing much happened at all and that the whole thing is a fabrication or they maintain that the unforgettable piles of corpses were the result of epidemics, to be blamed on the disruption of food and medical supplies by Allied bombing. (It will be seen at once that this latter faction has no good explanation for why the Jews of Europe were packed into remote camps in the first place.)
* my brackets
He then proceeds to show that, from the evidence, Irving, as a historian, is utterly discredited. In his terms, that would then leave the “Nazi revivalists and crackpots and conspiracy theorists”. Are you sure you people want to keep trying to quote Hitchens?
Giyane: Eichmann did initially urge Jewish people to emigrate to Palestine; he would have preferred not to kill them. But when the orders came through, he carried them out.
We’re not talking about Irving. You’ve only introduced him as a distraction.
We’re talking about what Hitch himself says, in his own words.
Not what Irving says. What Hitch says.
In his own words:
“These are, however, the now-undisputed findings of all historians and experts on the subject. And if they are sound, then it means that much “eyewitness” testimony is wrong. It necessarily changes our attitude toward the everyday complicity of average Germans. It also means that much of the evidence presented and accepted at Nuremburg was spurious. Of course, we knew some of this already–the Nazis were charged by Soviet and Allied judges with the massacres at Katyn in Poland, which had obviously been ordered by Stalin and are now admitted to have been.”
Now. That’s what TonyM posted. That’s Hitchen’s view. It accords with something I was saying earlier in the Bauman etc argument.
Why do you feel that you need to pretend that Hitchen’s own stated view, quite clearly stated there above in his own words needs to be sullied in any way by reference to Irving.
Hitchen’s has slated Irving, but even with his slating of Irving he is still stating the above as his considered view.
What’s Irving got to do with Hitchen’s own view of the evidence?
Absolutely nothing. Why did you introduce Irving other than to distract from the issue you fear to address.
So, bring it back to the beginning.
What exactly is it that you have a problem with in Hitchen’s view above.
That’s the question. The only question. The question that I addressed in my very first post on the matter.
And no amount of Irvingism will distract from that.
Have you an answer or do you intend to insist on dishonest distraction?
Your choice.
Hitchens:
I myself feel constrained to state here that my mother’s family is of German and Polish Jewish provenance and that on my wife’s side we have not just an Auschwitz “survivor” in our lineage but a man–David Szmulewski–who was one of the leaders of the communist resistance in the camps as well as one of those who smuggled evidence out of it and later testified against the war criminals in court. I look forward to a time when I won’t feel any need to mention this.
Are you two still here? I’ve been looking back through this thread trying to work out what your disagreement actually is, but I just can’t fathom it… Would you summarise please?
I have a number of intelligence sources Clark and always commit to at least six different origins if they exist. I do however find your critique of PressTV somewhat fortuitous.
Oh I forgot – did you feel able to comment on my short bullet points with reference to Iain’s excellent criterion of the new counter-terrorism and security bill?
Palestinian man crushed to death inside overcrowded Israeli checkpoint
Posted by John Hilley on January 3, 2015, 1:47 am
The sheer wickedness of it.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=751058
I recall coming through one of these barbaric facilities with our group, and seeing hundreds of Palestinians crushed inside an adjoining caged area. Realising their distress, we tried to remonstrate with some of the soldiers sitting in another inspection booth, urging them to do something, but they just shrugged, warned us to get away and sat eating chocolate bars and crisps. I’ll never forget the look of cruel, vacant indifference on their faces.
RIP Ahmad Samih Bdeir.
John
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1420249633.html
Mark, hello. My PressTV comments follow from that argument between John Goss and Anon; John was quoting a PressTV article which quoted old Nazi propaganda about the death-toll at Dresden in WWII. I didn’t know that was Nazi propaganda; 200,000 seemed to be the accepted death-toll when I was a teenager. Modern estimates are around 25,000. But PressTV were still pushing the 200,000 figure and John Goss failed to question it. When Anon argued, John just argued back without checking any other sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden#Second_World_War
Mark, it’s too late at night for me to even think about that bill right now. I’ll have a look tomorrow. My pointless argument with Jemand and trying to work out why Tech and Herbie can’t agree has pretty much worn me out.
Israeli forces have attacked Palestinian demonstrators protesting against the ongoing Israeli settlement building and the separation wall in the occupied territories.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/01/03/391348/Israeli-forces-attack-protesters-in-W-Bank
Thanks Clark – No I do not remember arguments. My bullet points were
Mark Golding – 2 Jan, 2015 – 6:28 pm
I’m asking Tech to substantiate her criticism of TonyM’s post citing Hitchen’s view:
“These are, however, the now-undisputed findings of all historians and experts on the subject. And if they are sound, then it means that much “eyewitness” testimony is wrong. It necessarily changes our attitude toward the everyday complicity of average Germans. It also means that much of the evidence presented and accepted at Nuremburg was spurious. Of course, we knew some of this already–the Nazis were charged by Soviet and Allied judges with the massacres at Katyn in Poland, which had obviously been ordered by Stalin and are now admitted to have been.”
but she can’t do that so she’s pretending I’m David Irving in disguise.
Anyway.
This is amusing, I suppose, in a tribal kind of way. This is probably what she wants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KxEFqs9yRg
Philosemitism is overdone, but you can’t have such cohesion without hating the other.
Muslims for now.
Both Hitch and Amis. Poor muslims. Not to worry. It’s all in a good cause.
Mark, there’s an interesting discussion in progress on the Wikipedia talk page about Operation Ajax, Iran, 1953. You may find it interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#Parliamentary_Democracy_vs_Monarchy_continued
Laughing in our faces, contd.
While many people are feeling flat after their festive celebrations, MPs are planning to make the New Year fizz. I hear Commons authorities have ordered £2 million worth of ‘bespoke own label wines and champagne’, subsidised by the taxpayer.
They will also fork out £1.25 million jointly with the House of Lords over the next five years on a ‘variety of listed wine products’ to be sold in Westminster bars. Last year, former Commons Clerk Malcolm Jack told the Governance Committee the Lords had declined to merge the two Houses’ catering, fearing ‘the champagne would not be as good’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895012/SEBASTIAN-SHAKESPEARE-talking-Princess-Beatrice-s-racy-new-pal.html
Herbie, I still don’t understand. All three of you seem to agree with Hitchens. What are the disputed assertions?
Trust is a wonderful even admirable quality in our world of mistrust and uncertainty:
Iran allegedly “tentatively agreed” to transport a large portion of its uranium stockpile to Russia for conversion into reactor fuel. The P5+1 group, namely United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France, plus Germany, is scheduled to meet the Iranian delegation in Geneva on January 15.
http://rt.com/news/219507-iran-us-uranium-agreement/
Here is the AP report source.