Auschwitz 835


I was involved in the organisation of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz, while First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw. The 50th did not receive anything like the media coverage given to the 70th, of which more later.

Senior British visitors to Poland invariably included a concentration camp on their itinerary, and from escorting people around I visited camps a great deal more often than I would have wished. I found the experience appalling and desolate. The first I ever saw was Majdanek and I recall that I just had to sit helpless and shivering for some time. One thing the experience left me with – including meeting survivors and both Polish and German eye-witnesses, and seeing the architects’ plans for camps – was a contempt for those who claim the whole thing did not happen, or was an accident, or was small scale.

It in no way diminishes the genocidal attack on the Jews to remember that a vast number of Poles also died in the camps, as well as gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and disparate political prisoners. I tried sometimes to diminish the horror I felt at involvement with the camps, with attempts at humour. I was present at a meeting listing the guests of honour; the President of Lithuania was included. I whispered that he was coming to represent the camp guards. That was offensive, and I apologise. But there is a real problem that to this day Eastern Europe – including Poland itself – has not come to terms with historical truth about collaboration with anti-Jewish genocide and other attacks on minorities. I recommend this website, which tackles these issues very honestly and is well worth a lengthy browse.

It requires bigotry not to be able to understand why nationalist resistance movements against Russian occupation became allied with Germany during World War II. That would be reprehensible only in the same sense that allied collaboration with Stalin might be reprehensible, but for the added factor of enthusiastic collaboration with genocidal and master race programmes and fascist ideology. That is what makes the glorification of Eastern European nationalist figures from this period generally inappropriate.

I fear however that the real reason that the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz received so much more coverage than the 50th is a media desire to reinforce the narrative of the War on Terror and Western policy in the Middle East by invoking the spectre of massive anti-Semitism. There have been isolated but deplorable, apparently anti-Semitic attacks of a small-scale terrorist nature in France and Belgium in recent years. But to conflate this into stories of a wave of popular anti-Semitism in Europe is a nonsense. Maureen Lipman’s claim that she may have to leave the UK is not just silly but disingenuous. I do not believe she feels in personal danger of attack – there is absolutely no reason why she should – she is rather making a political point.

There are two factors which could exacerbate anti-Semitism at present. One is the appalling behaviour of Israel and its indefensible action in continually seizing Palestinian land and using its military superiority to dominate and occasionally massacre Palestinians. Regrettably, there are a very small minority of people who wrongly blame Jews in general for the actions of Israel.

The second factor is of course the terrible economic hardship wrought across the whole world by irresponsible banking practices, and the fact that the bankers luxury lifestyles were maintained at the cost of everybody else. There are still a tiny minority of people stuck in the medieval mindset associating banking with the Jewish community. There is in fact a very plausible argument that if any “race” has a disproportionate influence on the development and character of international banking since the mid eighteenth century, it is the Scots! But those who see banking as a racial issue are nutters.

You could construct an argument from these factors, and you could identify that anti-Semitic people do exist. They certainly do. They dominate the very small category of people who get banned even from this free speech blog. But are their opinions intellectually respectable, promoted in the mainstream or able to be expressed openly without fear of either social or legal consequences? No, no and no. Anti-semites are fortunately a tiny and strange minority. I might add that in my numerous and frequent social contacts in the British Muslim community, I have never encountered anti-Semitism (unlike, say, Poland and Russia where I encountered casual anti-Semitism quite frequently).

The final point, is of course, the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-Semitism. That seems to me the fundamental design of the media campaign exaggerating the scale of anti-Semitism at the moment. Yes, we must always remember the terrible warnings from history and it is right to remember those who died in the concentration camps, Jewish, Polish, Romany, Gay, Communist or any other category. But we should be aware of those who wish to manipulate the powerful emotions of horror thus evoked, for present objectives of the powerful.


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835 thoughts on “Auschwitz

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  • Kempe

    ” William Thompson and Brian Hooker, are saying that there is a link between MMR and autism after all, ”

    Then how do they explain what happened in Japan where they stopped administering MMR but the rate of autism diagnosis continued unchanged?

    Sorry Clark, but I thought SB’s post needed to be challenged.

    ” Spiveys article has many pictures and text tell me Clarke how long did it take you to read the article? ”

    Much longer than it takes to realise that he’s talking rubbish I think.

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Kempe
    3:27 pm

    Well, I have no idea, but the link that Dr Thompson alleges between MMR and autism seems to apply allegedly to African-American children. I do not know how many African-American children there were in the Japanese studies, but I surmise that there weren’t many.

    Kind regards,

    John

  • Republicofscotland

    Tell me Clarke, having spent hours reading and studying the article, what do you make of the photos of the same people using different names.

    More of those photos can be found here.

    http://chrisspivey.org/above-the-law/

    Have a look at tell me what you think.

    Thanks.

  • Clark

    Kempe, yes, it does need to be challenged. My mum always kept dogs, and she always told me, if you get a dog you MUST get it inoculated against distemper. A hippy friend got a dog; I told him what my mum said but he said it was unnecessary. A few months later the dog got distemper and died. Anecdotal, but usually anecdotal evidence is cited to support the alternative arguments.

    Fred, thanks.

  • Clark

    I bet Jenner’s results with cowpox and smallpox has been replicated hundreds of times. I bet I could replicate it in my garage if I tried.

  • Clark

    Republicofscotland, can we please pin down one thing before moving on to another? I’ve already had chases like that with Scouse Billy.

    Do you think the bin-wagon disaster in Glasgow was a fabrication?

  • Republicofscotland

    “Republicofscotland, can we please pin down one thing before moving on to another? I’ve already had chases like that with Scouse Billy.”

    “Do you think the bin-wagon disaster in Glasgow was a fabrication?”
    __________________________________

    Clarke

    I can’t say just yet either way, Spivey has still to publish part two of the article.

    Now Clarke if you’d be so kind as to look at the photos and link, thanks.

    Your opinion is most welcome.

  • Clark

    Republicofscotland, 3:40 pm; about 20% of the way down the page I stopped and looked at a couple of photographs of faces that look pretty similar. Underneath, Spivey has written:

    “Now, all I’ve done here is take the background out, make the photo B&W, blacked Karls pupils, fucked his ear up while trying to darken it… My bad… changed his hairline and blacked his hair, ironed his face and added a shoulder. Check it out on photoshop if you don’t believe me.”

    RoS, Spivey is plainly telling the audience that he’s adapted a photo to make it look like another. What do you want him to say; “I’m a fraud and I know it”?

  • Clark

    RoS, look, Suhayl is a friend, we’ve met twice, spoken on the ‘phone more than that, exchanged umpteen e-mails. He was a GP, worked 70 to 80 hours a week in A&E, he’s worked in hospitals all over Glasgow. He writes fiction, you can get his books in the library. Shall I text him about this? He’s really busy these days; as Mary says, the NHS is in crisis, starved of resources.

    Anything spook-like, he’d be onto it. He reads Lobster magazine. He’ll tell you about all the various groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  • Clark

    RoS, this blog has a wide readership in Glasgow. If anyone suspected the bin-wagon disaster to be a hoax, they’d have posted on here, the famous whistle-blower’s site where the only stuff ever deleted is empty insults and holocaust denial.

  • Republicofscotland

    Clarke if you click the link I provided at 3.40pm, you’ll see the photos clearly.

    No backround touches no nothing.

    thanks.

  • Republicofscotland

    “RoS, look, Suhayl is a friend, we’ve met twice, spoken on the ‘phone more than that, exchanged umpteen e-mails. He was a GP, worked 70 to 80 hours a week in A&E, he’s worked in hospitals all over Glasgow. He writes fiction, you can get his books in the library. Shall I text him about this? He’s really busy these days; as Mary says, the NHS is in crisis, starved of resources.

    Anything spook-like, he’d be onto it. He reads Lobster magazine. He’ll tell you about all the various groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
    ______________________________

    Its your opinion I want Clarke, please just look at the photos in the link I provided, at 3.40pm

    Thanks.

  • Clark

    RoS, photos of people that look pretty similar to photos of other people don’t prove anything. Some people look like others, but photos of the same person can look completely different. Women apply make-up to make themselves look different, or more like a particular look or image – I mean, no one applies make-up to accentuate the unique arrangements of spots and blemishes on their face, do they?

    But then on top of this photographs greatly reduce the visual information, and there are thousands of photographs publicly available these days on social media. Of course you can find photos that make it seem like person A is the same as person B – you’ve got a huge pool to pull matches from.

  • Clark

    I wrote thousands. It’s at least tens of millions, maybe billions. It would be a surprise if you couldn’t find matches. They’re only snaps, not even professional or forensic photos, and even they drop most of the available information. Photos reduce a three dimensional, living, animated face to a low resolution flat image, thereby discarding most of the information.

  • ------------·´`·.¸¸.¸¸.··.¸¸Node

    Since 1989, the US National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out over 2.5 $billion on a ‘no fault admitted’ basis. I don’t know how much of it is specifically related to autism, but some of it is:

    “Officials at the US Department of Health and Human Services investigating Hannah’s medical history said that vaccines had “significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in energy metabolism”, causing damage “with features of autism spectrum disorder”. The officials said that the vaccine didn’t “cause” her autism, but “resulted” in it.”

    http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/09/family-win-15-million-in-autis.html

  • Clark

    Node, that’ll be why they’re playing it down then – minimise compensation claims and push as much pay-out as far into the future as possible.

    Doesn’t mean vaccines don’t work, though. Have to mention that or Scouse Billy’ll have us all living on Nibiru and it’ll be impossible to disprove it.

  • glenn

    Anyone genuinely interested in whether Andrew Wakefield is a brave truth-teller, or not, should take a look at this :

    http://www.badscience.net/2010/01/the-wakefield-mmr-verdict/

    Extract:

    “Even if it had been immaculately well conducted – and it certainly wasn’t – Wakefield’s “case series report” of 12 children’s clinical anecdotes would never have justified the conclusion that MMR causes autism, despite what journalists claimed: it simply didn’t have big enough numbers to do so. But the media repeatedly reported the concerns of this one man, generally without giving methodological details of the research, either because they found it too complicated, inexplicably, or because to do so would have undermined their story.”

    One might easily conclude it was the fault of an hysterical, scientifically illiterate media class that gave rise the the MMR scare. Much as they did over the contraceptive pill back in the mid 1990’s, and continue to do on a regular basis. The media like to quote some study, often incomplete and unrepresentative of the larger picture, and breathlessly report that “Scientists say…” when in fact the body of science says no such thing.

  • glenn

    Re: Vaccination claims. Sometimes, an industry will pay out to make lawsuits go away. Doesn’t mean that vaccinations don’t work, any more than the occasional payout by the auto industry means that cars “don’t work”.

    Everyone is a bit different from everyone else. Diseases will come along for which there is no cure (HIV, ebola, etc.), but some rare individuals will not get sick, or will recover by themselves. Then again, a medicine or vaccination which works fine on the vast majority, will cause a bad reaction in a very few people.

    This does not mean – as raving lunatics would have you believe – that the entire thing is a complete scam.

    *

    RoS: With regard to your runaway dustcart. It’s very cute to sit on the sidelines, but since you’re apparently ambivalent about whether this was a “false flag”, you must have some idea of why some secret agents would want to perpetrate such a thing. Could you at least explain that, as even your hero Scouse Billy has no idea (presumably because his hero Spivey hasn’t come up with anything either).

  • Clark

    Republicofscotland, it’s not my opinion, it’s legally a fact. Or at least it is at present, and let’s hope it stays that way. Would you agree?

  • Clark

    Test the way you’re theorising by turning it around. What if the state takes some CCTV camera picture of someone doing something, then hunts through social media looking for photos that look similar. They land on your face and say that you performed the actions caught on CCTV.

    Now tell me about opinion.

  • Clark

    Of course this is exactly what The System* is doing, with its semi-corporate mass surveillance system – collating millions of vague correlations like this, and then acting on them.

    (* it’s not exactly “the state”, is it?)

    Spivey’s work certainly helps to illustrate such folly. An out of control bin-wagon can end up as a terrorist incident! As parody, it’s brilliant.

  • glenn

    Thank you, John Spencer-Davis. Apart from a lot of innuendo, was there anything of substance in there? Please highlight it. It’s a bit much to spend 30 seconds – as you said – in researching a rebuff, and expecting your debatee to expend vastly more effort to look through your link and counter it.

    Likewise, referencing some 3-hour Milton Freeman video, or a boring, protracted speech on YouTube from some dubious “authority” as a supposed answer (as favoured by disreputable Liverpudlians around here), is a weak response. Please make your arguments, and since they are going against the mass of medical science, they ought to be damned good ones. Not just casting aspersions on some individual who highlighted flaws in the reporting which caused the MMR scare. All you did just then was tackle the man instead of the ball.

    Extraordinary claims, as has been rightly said, requires extraordinary evidence.

  • Republicofscotland

    “Republicofscotland, it’s not my opinion, it’s legally a fact. Or at least it is at present, and let’s hope it stays that way. Would you agree?”
    ______________________________

    Tell me Clarke what is legally a fact?

    …………………………….

    Legally, those photos would not of themselves establish equivalence of identity. And that’s a good thing.
    ____________________________________

    How so Clarke, when all the intelligence agencies around the world, carry photos of suspects, which they use to legally identify a person.

    Explain to me Clarke how a photo can’t legally identify someone.

    If I showed you a photo of say Henry Kissenger or John F. Kennedy or Elvis Presley or David Cameron, could you legally identify them?

    Do police not use Mugshot books to legally identify criminals?

  • Scouse Billy

    Well done, John – the Wakefield affair stinks.

    Glenn, you haven’t made a case – try reading Wallace’s chapter.
    I have and his statistical analysis is above reproach – he notes that the Royal Commission should have comprised professional statisticians rather than doctors.

    When you’ve read it and grasped it, I’ll be happy to debate the issue with you. Until then I suggest you desist – frankly you appear to have a psychopathic need to engage me on this topic.

    John, well said:

    Here is Dr Wakefield giving his side of the story in 2011, if you are interested:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra0QtTUuFIc

  • Republicofscotland

    “Spivey’s work certainly helps to illustrate such folly. An out of control bin-wagon can end up as a terrorist incident! As parody, it’s brilliant.”
    ________________________________

    Clarke can you please direct me to where it says the Bin Lorry event was a terrorist incident.

    Thanks.

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