lie shaped bricks
Holocaust Conference in Iran Provokes Outrage - New York Times
ahmadinejad, the president of iran, has organized a conference to investigate whether or not the holocaust happened.
there are people out there who believe we never landed on the moon. there are people out there who believe something really fishy happened on september 11th, 2001. there are people out there who believe in reincarnation (his name is jesus), and that some races are genetically inferior to others, and there are even people who believe that the space bus is coming and we'll need exact change to get on it when it does.
people believe all kinds of crazy shit.
personally, it doesn't even make sense to me to discuss "believing" in the holocaust or history. either it's something that affected your life or it isn't. saying the story your life is partially built on is a lie doesn't change anything. it's the actions of the present we have control over. history is over.
ahmadinejad thinks the holocaust is a propaganda tool developed to manipulate the world into justifying israeli behavior -- in exactly the same way many people believe the iraqi incursion into kuwait was a story created to justify an american grab for oil in the first gulf war. does it make any difference now? the time to expose lies is the present. was pearl harbour expected by FDR? what difference does it make now? except maybe to say we all need to question what we're told more.
i think there's nothing wrong with questioning the stories we're told. making the questioning forbidden is counter productive. jews and gypsies and homosexuals were executed, i believe, during the second world war. it wasn't why anyone outside of the warsaw ghetto fought the war but i believe it happened. perhaps it was justification for creating the state of israel as far as jews were concerned, but it was not why britain split the land up in the first place. it was just one factor in their pre and post-war political manipulations. the holocaust is not a justification for israeli occupation of palestine. it's just one factor in a stupidly complex problem.
arguing about it is as helpful as saying, "you weren't even hungry when you ate that piece of cake, so give it back."
you can't build anything by lobbing grenades into history. ahmadinejad can dispute the holocaust if he wants, but it's not news as far as i'm concerned. if he had a conference on the american occupation of iraq, that would be news because it's happening now and we could actually do something with the information presented: question it or ridicule it. here they've gathered to question something that the opposition won't even dignify with a counter-argument. it's just a firecracker. a loud noise that will only hurt you if you're stupid enough to hold it in your hand.
you're in pain now? let's talk about that.
(text of the nyt article to follow)
A gathering in Iran billed as a conference to “debate” the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews continued on its second day to spark outrage in the West, drawing fierce criticism today from European leaders, the Vatican and the White House.
The hail of criticism came as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told participants of the conference in Tehran today that a committee should be set up to investigate whether the Holocaust occurred. Among the more than 60 participants in the conference was the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who asserted today that Israel feared an inquiry into the Holocaust more than it did the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons.
The Vatican today called the Holocaust an “immense tragedy” for all humanity, and it issued a statement that there was no doubt that the Holocaust took place and that it must serve as a warning for people to respect the rights of others. The statement used the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, Shoah, and expressed “great compassion” for what happened to the Jews during World War II, according to Agence France-Presse.
“The last century saw an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, which led to the killing of millions of Jews of all social categories merely because of the fact that they belonged to that people,” the Vatican statement said.
The White House said in a statement today that the gathering of Holocaust deniers in Tehran is an “affront to the entire civilized world, as well as to the traditional Iranian values of tolerance and mutual respect.”
“While people around the world mark International Human Rights Week and renew the solemn pledges of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was drafted in the wake of the atrocities of World War II, the Iranian regime perversely seeks to call the historical fact of those atrocities into question and provide a platform for hatred,” the statement said.
The conference in Tehran, which began Monday, attracted Holocaust deniers, discredited scholars and white supremacists from around the world, who made presentations questioning whether Nazi Germany used gas chambers to exterminate some six million Jews and millions of other “undesirables,” as well as other aspects of the historical record of the Holocaust.
Mr. Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, has frequently claimed that the Holocaust was a myth used to justify the occupation of Palestine, meaning the creation of the state of Israel.
“The creation of the Zionist regime and turning the Holocaust into propaganda has become an instrument for the United States and Britain to dominate the Middle East,” he said today at the conference, according to the Iranian news agency ISNA.
Urging that a committee should investigate the Holocaust, Mr. Ahmadinejad said Western governments should not object to its work. “I believe that the roots of insecurity and injustice should be confronted,” he said.
Mr. Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, endorsed the need to investigate the Holocaust, which he considers to be a myth. “I think Israel is more afraid of this conference than of Iran having nuclear weapons,” he said in an interview today. “They are afraid a taboo has been broken.”
Mr. Duke said he was at the conference to support further inquiry into the Holocaust. “The conference has been much more than we expected,” he said. “There have been scholars from around the world and from major universities.”
On Monday, Mr. Duke asserted that the gas chambers in which millions of Jews perished did not actually exist. In prepared remarks published by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, he contended that the depiction of Jews as the “overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine.”
Last summer, Iran held a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust, in reaction to a controversy over cartoons published in Denmark that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad.
While many Western countries have recently urged that Iran and Syria be included in negotiations to deal with conflicts in the region, including the violence in Iraq, some have pointed to the conference as indicative of the extremist nature of the current Iranian government.
The White House said that it recognizes that not everyone in Iran agrees with the most extreme elements in the regime there, and that the United States would stand with those who seek “to overcome oppression, injustice, and tyranny.”
During his monthly news conference today, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, held out little hope of engaging Iran in constructive action in the Middle East, and expressed revulsion at the Holocaust conference, calling it “shocking beyond belief.”
“It’s not that I’m against the concept of reaching out to people,” Mr. Blair was quoted by Reuters as saying, in a reference to efforts to include Iran in peace efforts. “The trouble is, I look around the region at the moment, and everything that Iran is doing is negative.”
“You only have to see what is happening in Iran in the past couple of days to realize how important it is that all people of moderation in the Middle East try to come together and sort out the problems,” he continued.
“I mean, they hold this conference yesterday which — you know, maybe I feel too strongly about these things — but I think it is such a symbol of sectarianism and hatred toward people of another religion. I find it just unbelievable, really.”
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, condemned the conference today and said Germany would never accept it.
In several European countries, denial of the Holocaust is a crime.
Franco Frattini, the vice president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, today expressed “shock” that the conference was convened.
“In the face of this event, I want to state my firm condemnation of any attempt to deny, trivialize or minimize the Shoah, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Mr. Frattini said in a statement.
“I clearly reject these views which, in utter disregard of historically established facts, constitute an unacceptable affront not only to the victims of that tragedy and their descendants, but also to the whole democratic world,” he said.
He said that the European Commission was determined to use its powers to fight “these repugnant phenomena.” He called for the commission’s proposed Framework Decision on Combating Racism and Xenophobia to be adopted as soon as possible.
On Monday, Germany summoned the Iranian chargé d’affaires in Berlin to express its anger over the conference. The French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, also condemned the gathering.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that 67 people from 30 countries were participating in the two days of meetings. On Monday, Rasoul Mousavi, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, said it would provide an opportunity to discuss the Holocaust “away from Western taboos and the restriction imposed on them in Europe.”
Among those attending the conference was Robert Faurisson, an academic from France, who said in his speech that the Holocaust was a myth. Mr. Duke invited conference participants to stand in honor of Mr. Faurisson and applaud him for standing up for his beliefs.
Bendikt Frings, a psychologist from Germany, said Monday that he had come to the conference to thank Mr. Ahmadinejad for initiating discussion on the subject. And Frederick Toben, from Australia, said Mr. Ahmadinejad had opened an issue “which is morally and intellectually crippling the Western society.”
