Irving Vents 'Holocaust Denial' in Prison Interview
The Times (London)

An unrepentant David Irving today maintained his denial that Adolf Hitler oversaw an organised attempt to exterminate Europe 's Jews. Speaking from jail in Austria, where he was sentenced to three years imprisonment last week for denying the Holocaust, the disgraced right-wing historian questioned whether the Nazis could have really intended to wipe out all the Jews held in concentration camps if, as he claimed, so many had survived the experience. “Given the ruthless efficiency of the Germans, if there was an extermination programme to kill all the Jews, how come so many survived?" he said.

Furor Over Portrayal of India in California Textbooks
San Francisco Chronicle

A kind of Hindu civil war that wasn't always civil erupted in a Sacramento hearing room Monday over what California middle school students should be taught about ancient India. An emotional four-hour hearing ended with a few angry members of the overflow audience shouting at a subcommittee of the state Board of Education after it rejected changes they sought in six new social studies textbooks for California middle school students. A security guard eventually cleared the room and ordered the crowd of almost 200 out of the building. "Learning about Hinduism in my sixth-grade class left me feeling ashamed and angry."

Three Years is Not Enough, Say Irving's Accusers

Austrian state prosecutors are to lodge an appeal to try to lengthen the three-year jail term handed down to David Irving, the British historian imprisoned in Austria for lying about the Holocaust. They said he remained a beacon for the European neo-Nazi movement and had been treated too lightly after the judge at Monday's trial declared Irving's show of remorse to be a case of crocodile tears.

Why Historians Have a Responsibility to Condemn the Jailing of David Irving

An Austrian court has sentenced historian David Irving to three years in prison for Holocaust denial. This constitutes a moment of crisis for historians and in particular for the American Historical Association. How should historians react? The AHA has painted itself into a corner on this kind of issue. As I noted in AHA Perspectives (September 2005) and on HNN, "Historian Sees Contradiction between AHA's Stand on Holocaust Denial and Its Stand on Armenian Genocide," the AHA President at the time, Jim Sheehan, wrote: "Needless to say, the Association does not have a position on the fate of the Armenians." I pointed out that in 1991 the AHA Council had put out a statement deploring Holocaust denial. The AHA condemns Holocaust denial while presenting itself as agnostic on the Armenian Genocide. All of this seems to me to add up to a privileged position for the Holocaust, and an inconsistency which is at bottom political -- another chapter in the AHA's long record of taking political stands while denying that it has politics. An organization that defines certain historical interpretations as unacceptable is on a slippery slope.

Irving Begins Prison Sentence

David Irving's world shrank yesterday to 10m by 10m. These are the dimensions of the cells in Josefstadt jail, Vienna, his likely home for the next three years. As he swaggered into the courtroom, Irving was quite pleased with his lot. His detention cell, he said, had given him the “necessary peace to work on my memoirs”. He made it sound like a scholar’s dream, a kind of sabbatical paid for by the Austrian State. But by last night that cell looked less attractive.

David Irving Sentenced to Three Years In Prison For 'Holocaust Denial'

British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison. He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and interview he gave in Austria in 1989. "I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," he told the court in the Austrian capital. Irving appeared stunned by the sentence, and told reporters: "I'm very shocked and I'm going to appeal." An unidentified onlooker told him: "Stay strong!" Irving's lawyer said he considered the verdict "a little too stringent".

Prison Sentence for Irving Is Outrageous
By Mark Weber

A court in Austria today sentenced British historian David Irving to three years in prison for a 16-year-old violation of that country’s “Holocaust denial” law. This sentence is an outrage. Punishing someone for peacefully expressing an opinion about history is a step backwards to the legal standards of the Middle Ages. The sentence points up a blatant double standard that prevails in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland and some other European countries that punish anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy about the Holocaust.

Irving Case Prompts Austrian Law Debate

The trial of the British historian David Irving has unleashed a debate in Austria about the country's Holocaust denial law, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail. The law was enacted after World War II, and was meant to prevent any further Nazi activities.

Stalin Museum To Open Soon in Russia

The imminent opening of a museum devoted to Josef Stalin has stirred outrage among relatives of the millions he persecuted and has prompted claims that Stalinism is on the march again. After a number of delays, a "Stalin museum" dedicated to the once venerated Father of the People is to be opened at the end of March in Volgograd, the Second World War "hero city" once known as Stalingrad.

Poland Will Not Let Iran Research Holocaust

Poland 's Foreign Minister Stefan Meller on Friday ruled out allowing any Iranian researchers to examine the scale of the Holocaust committed by the German Nazis on Polish soil during World War Two. Meller's remarks came after repeated denials of the Jewish Holocaust by Iranian officials and their suggestions that more research is needed to establish the truth about what happened to European Jews. "Under no circumstances we should allow something like that to take place in Poland ," Meller told Polish news agency PAP. "It goes beyond all imaginable norms to question, even discuss or negotiate the issue."

Krushchev's 'Secret Speech': 50 Years Ago

Russia today marked the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech," in which he denounced the crimes committed under dictator Josef Stalin and the cult of personality surrounding the deceased Soviet leader. Today was an occasion for Russians to reexamine the impact of this legendary speech on their country's history.

Churchill, Hitler, and Newt
By Patrick J. Buchanan

You can always tell when the War Party wants a new war. They will invariably trot out the Argumentum ad Hitlerum. Before the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam had become "the Hitler of Arabia," though he had only conquered a sandbox half the size of Denmark . Milosevic then became the "Hitler of the Balkans," though he had lost Slovenia , Croatia and Macedonia , was struggling to hold Bosnia and Kosovo, and had defeated no one. Comes now the new Hitler.

Holocaust Remembrance: What's Behind the Campaign?
By Mark Weber

It is, of course, fitting and proper to remember victims of genocide, war and oppression. But Holocaust remembrance is not, as its supporters claim, a noble effort motivated by sincere concern for humanity. Instead, this relentless campaign is an expression of Jewish-Zionist power, and is designed to further Jewish-Zionist interests.

Iran Has the US's Number - Professor Arthur Butz Responds to Critics
By Arthur R. Butz

I have been asked “why people are so reluctant to consider” the validity of “Holocaust” revisionism. I shall try to answer that, showing the relationship to Iranian President Ahmadinejad. The principal obstacle to the propagation of revisionism is, simply, fear. At present, the entrenched legend is protected by a system of legal and extra-legal prohibitions (“taboos”). Nobody could dispute the truth of that statement in Europe, where laws in most countries specifically proscribe the expression of revisionist ideas as criminal offenses. For me, the most painful instance of that intellectual terror is the incarceration of my chemist friend Germar Rudolf, presently being held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison near Stuttgart. His heinous crime?

Iran: The Next War
By John Pilger

Has Tony Blair, our minuscule Caesar, finally crossed his Rubicon? Having subverted the laws of the civilized world and brought carnage to a defenseless people and bloodshed to his own, having lied and lied and used the death of a hundredth British soldier in Iraq to indulge his profane self-pity, is he about to collude in one more crime before he goes? Perhaps he is seriously unstable now, as some have suggested. Power does bring a certain madness to its prodigious abusers, especially those of shallow disposition. In The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam, the great American historian Barbara Tuchman described Lyndon B. Johnson, the president whose insane policies took him across his Rubicon in Vietnam. "He lacked [John] Kennedy's ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective thinking," she wrote.

Zionist ADL Denounces Iran News Agency for Promoting 'Holocaust Denial'

Over the last three months an Iranian news agency has provided an open platform to Western Holocaust deniers, in effect aiding the Iranian government's efforts to promote anti-Semitism and to cast doubt on the historical truth of the Holocaust. The semi-official Mehr News Agency, whose articles are made available on the Internet in Farsi, Arabic and English and widely circulated throughout the Muslim and Arab world, has featured interviews with some of the world's most active and notorious Holocaust deniers, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which works to expose the activities and rhetoric of Holocaust deniers..."It is no coincidence that at a time when the leaders of Iran are placing a new emphasis on promoting Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, an Iranian news agency is serving as the megaphone to some of the West's most notorious Holocaust deniers," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.

New Century Trends

Predicting the future is always a perilous enterprise. As Isaac Asimov demonstrated in his seminal science fiction series The Foundation Trilogy, even the most intricate and scientific of prognostication techniques is bound to be derailed by unpredictable and unlikely events. Nevertheless, the analysis of trends and the construction of paradigms are necessary for people to make coherent sense out of the events occurring in the world around them. Without these paradigms, our perception of society would be nothing more than a miasma of concrete events unrelated to abstractions. We would be as infants, with every occurrence being a new and unprecedented phenomenon.

Zündel 'Holocaust Denial' Trial Points Up Free Speech Double Standard

The trial of an author charged with denying the Holocaust resumed in a German court yesterday, coming at an awkward time for Europeans citing freedom of speech to defend the publication of cartoons that have enraged the Muslim world. Ernst Zündel, 66, in jail since he was deported by Canada last year, faces charges of inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. Saying the Holocaust didn't happen is a crime in Germany, Austria, France and several other European countries. Mr. Zündel's work includes a book called "Did 6 [Six] Million Really Die?" Another Holocaust denier, British historian David Irving, faces trial in an Austrian court beginning Feb. 20.

Men and Women Think Differently

An academic row has erupted after one of the world's leading scientific journals refused to publish an article which claims that men and women think differently. Peter Lawrence, a biologist and fellow of the Royal Society, accused Science of being "gutless" after it explained that its decision was because the piece did not offer "a strategy on how to deal with the gender issue". In his paper, Mr. Lawrence questioned why, when 60 per cent of biology students are female, only 10 per go on to become professors. This "leaky pipeline" has been blamed on discrimination and a lack of choice which, if corrected, will produce equal numbers of men and women in science. But Mr. Lawrence dismissed "the cult of political correctness" that insists men and women are "equivalent, identical even" and argued that "men and women are born different".

US Prepares Devastating Attack On Iran

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb. Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt. They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.

Mozart

Some guys have it and some guys don’t. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, now exactly 250 years old, obviously had it. By age eight he was already writing symphonies you can still hear on the radio. And there is no sign that the Mozart fad will blow over very soon. A couple of years later he was writing operas, which culminated, for me, in The Magic Flute toward the end of his short life. To my mind the saddest fact in musical history is that he died at 35. Nobody can imagine what his inexhaustible imagination would have produced if he’d been granted another five years. If he’d lived to threescore and ten, there would have been no need for Beethoven, whom I also adore.

Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

O' Reilly and Lipstadt Denounce Arthur Butz

Bill O'Reilly and Deborah Lipstadt Discuss Arthur Butz’ Holocaust Views. The O'Reilly Factor - Fox News television - Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006 Video Clip

"Context and Perspective in the 'Holocaust' Controversy”
Arthur Butz

The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Arthur Butz

Israel 'Museum of Tolerance' to be Built on Muslim Graves

Skeletons are being removed from the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a $150m (£86m) "museum of tolerance" being built for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Palestinians have launched a legal battle to stop the work at what was the city's main Muslim cemetery.

Momentum Builds for US War Against Iran

What President George W. Bush, Fox News, and the Washington Times were saying about Iraq three years ago they are now saying about Iran. After Saturday's vote by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report Iran's suspicious nuclear activities to the UN Security Council, the president wasted no time in warning, "The world will not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons."

Zundel Lawyer Challenges Judge As 'Holocaust Denial' Trial Resumes

A defence lawyer for longtime Canadian resident Ernst Zundel, a German white supremacist accused of repeatedly denying the Holocaust, challenged a judge Thursday to remove himself from the case over perceived bias. Zundel, 66, who emigrated to Canada in 1958 and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001, returned to court Thursday to face charges of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead.

Trial Highlights Limits of Free Speech in Germany

According to prosecutors, Ernst Zündel is one of the "most active" Holocaust deniers today. He began distributing Nazi and neo-Nazi propaganda in the 1970s and has written several books praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Since 1995, he has been associated with a Web site that carries his name and is one of biggest online repositories of Holocaust-denial propaganda. But Zündel, who was born in Germany's Black Forest region, was only able to engage in such activities because he was living outside of his native county, in Canada and the United States.

Iran is World's Most Serious Threat Since WWII

Israel's Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon said on Tuesday morning that Iran is the biggest problem facing the world since World War II. He said the UN Security Council must force Iran to accept real supervision that would prevent the further development of its nuclear program. If they continue with their plans, Ayalon warned, Iran may have the know-how needed for the production of nuclear weapons by the end of the year.

Iranian Paper Plans Holocaust Cartoons

A prominent Iranian newspaper said Tuesday it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Hamshahri, one of Iran's largest papers, made clear the contest is a reaction to European newspapers' publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which have led to demonstrations, boycotts and attacks on European embassies across the Islamic world.

Europe's Double Standard

Europe's Double Standard on Free Speech - Cartoon by Khalil Bendib.

Europe's Disgraceful 'Holocaust Denial' Laws
Mark Weber

What Isolationism?

In his state of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush worked himself into a lather about the dangers of "retreating within our borders." His speech bulged with ominous references to ostensibly resurgent isolationists hankering to "tie our hands" and leave "an assaulted world to fend for itself." Turning inward, the president cautioned, would provide "false comfort" because isolationism inevitably "ends in danger and decline."

Live Not By Lies

Following is the full text of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's essay "Live Not By Lies.'' It is perhaps the last thing he wrote on his native soil [before the collapse of the Soviet Union] and circulated among Moscow's intellectuals [at that time]. The essay is dated Feb. 12, the day that secret police broke into his apartment and arrested him. The next day he was exiled to West Germany.

Holocaust Survivor Memoir Exposed as Fraud
Mark Weber

A Holocaust survivor memoir that has received prestigious literary awards and lavish praise has been exposed as a hoax. In Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, Binjamin Wilkomirski describes his ordeal as an infant in the Jewish ghetto of Riga (Latvia), where his earliest memory is of seeing his father being killed. Wilkomirski also tells how he survived the terrible rigors of wartime internment, at the age of three or four, in the German-run concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz.

The War On Al Jazeera

Nothing puts the lie to the Bush Administration's absurd claim that it invaded Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East more decisively than its ceaseless attacks on Al Jazeera, the institution that has done more than any other to break the stranglehold over information previously held by authoritarian forces, whether monarchs, military strongmen, occupiers or ayatollahs. The United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001, shelled the Basra hotel where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests in April 2003, killed Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad and imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were tortured. In addition to the military attacks, the US-backed Iraqi government banned the network from reporting in Iraq.

Bush's State of the Union Address: Translating the Emperor's Speech

Although not quite as slickly eloquent as Willy before him, Dubya, like his predecessor, is proficient and experienced in the art of speaking one thing and meaning another. Just as often, he makes statements more flowery than they have to be, possibly intentionally so as to make what he’s saying sound less aggressive than if you were to cut away the extraneous poetry to reveal the plain meaning of his words. Below are highlights from his State of the Union speech, translated into clear and candid English.

Bush's Fantasy State of the Union
Paul Craig Roberts

The state of the union is disastrous. By its naked aggression, bullying, illegal spying on Americans, and illegal torture and detentions, the Bush administration has demonstrated American contempt for the Geneva Convention, for human life and dignity, and for the civil liberties of its own citizens. Increasingly, the US is isolated in the world, having to resort to bribery and threats to impose its diktats. No country any longer looks to America for moral leadership. The US has become a rogue nation.

Secret Prewar Memo Reveals More Bush-Blair Deceit About Iraq Attack

Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today. A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.

In the wake of the international uproar that arose in response to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s contention that the Holocaust is a myth, the Mehr News Agency spoke with Arthur R. Butz, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, about his views on the issue.

The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
By Dr. Arthur Butz

It is widely recognised that the Palestinians are among the most politicised and educated peoples in the world. When they went to the polls last Wednesday they were well aware of what was on offer and those who voted for Hamas knew what it stood for. They chose Hamas because of its pledge never to give up the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and its promise to embark on a programme of reform. There were voices warning them, locally and internationally, not to vote for an organisation branded by the US and EU as terrorist because such a democratically exercised right would cost them the financial aid provided by foreign donors.

There's been a lot of talk recently about Israel and/or the United States bombing the nuclear facilities in Iran. I wouldn't worry about that. I believe they are both bluffing. In the first place, just the talk has kicked up the price of oil. In the second place, there is no proof that Iran really wants to develop nuclear weapons. So far, what the Iranians have done and propose to do are legal. They have a reasonable explanation for why they want to develop nuclear power. Oil is their biggest and most valuable export. The less they use for domestic purposes, the more they will have to export.

The neoconservatives who dreamed up the Bush Doctrine -- promoting "democracy" would be the U.S. mission in the Middle East -- may be about to hold yet another "Seconds Thoughts" conference. Certainly, Israel must be having second thoughts on the folly of having yielded to U.S. pressure and allowed Hamas to participate in elections. For Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and employs suicide-bomb attacks on civilians, has just won a sweeping political and moral victory in Palestine.