auschwitz day jews. v nazis

[omaghjoe]

I'm not terribly interested in what Lawnseed is getting at or what he's thinking. I prefer to play the ball rather than the man.

And my point about Iran is very relevant. My point is about misunderstandings and "lost in translation" moments that can have big consequences. My point is about how the holocaust is often hijacked by zionists as a means of undermining Iran and potentially creating more problems. Hardly a "distraction." We're supposed to have learned from the holocaust, not use it as a trump card in political games.

TBF Eamonn in both of your posts on this thread you opened them by trying to explain away the OP

I think the OP is a clumsily worded attempt to draw a parallel between the holocaust during WWII and...

and

If Lawnseed is making the following point then I agree with it....

Its not that I am disagreeing with anything that you say Eamonn, on Israel Iran or anything else. Its just that its nothing to do with the holocaust and I don't understand how anyone could possibly think events of the present are relevant to the holocaust or their perception of the holocaust, it occurred 70 years ago was most likely the worst crime in human history. Of course an event like that is going to influence subsequent events in the future for a long while for both good and for bad, however those events cannot influence the events in the past. Therefore our opinion on them should not be of the present but from the time and place in which they occurred.   

[Eamonnca1]

TBF Eamonn in both of your posts on this thread you opened them by trying to explain away the OP

Look, he obviously upset a lot of people, but there was a kernel of a reasonable point somewhere in his postings that I thought was worth salvaging.

Its not that I am disagreeing with anything that you say Eamonn, on Israel Iran or anything else. Its just that its nothing to do with the holocaust and I don't understand how anyone could possibly think events of the present are relevant to the holocaust or their perception of the holocaust, it occurred 70 years ago was most likely the worst crime in human history. Of course an event like that is going to influence subsequent events in the future for a long while for both good and for bad, however those events cannot influence the events in the past. Therefore our opinion on them should not be of the present but from the time and place in which they occurred.

I'm not disagreeing with any of this. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in their right mind who would try to justify the holocaust or any other atrocity based on subsequent events. My point is that the only positive role the holocaust can play is as a warning to subsequent generations about what can happen when hatred is allowed to take control, and when an entire class of people is treated as a dehumanized inconvenient obstacle to be shoved out of the way and eliminated. And it's a supreme irony that the one nation that seems to have missed this lesson is the nation that owes its very existence to the holocaust.

[Franko]

TBF Eamonn in both of your posts on this thread you opened them by trying to explain away the OP

Look, he obviously upset a lot of people, but there was a kernel of a reasonable point somewhere in his postings that I thought was worth salvaging.

Its not that I am disagreeing with anything that you say Eamonn, on Israel Iran or anything else. Its just that its nothing to do with the holocaust and I don't understand how anyone could possibly think events of the present are relevant to the holocaust or their perception of the holocaust, it occurred 70 years ago was most likely the worst crime in human history. Of course an event like that is going to influence subsequent events in the future for a long while for both good and for bad, however those events cannot influence the events in the past. Therefore our opinion on them should not be of the present but from the time and place in which they occurred.

I'm not disagreeing with any of this. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in their right mind who would try to justify the holocaust or any other atrocity based on subsequent events. My point is that the only positive role the holocaust can play is as a warning to subsequent generations about what can happen when hatred is allowed to take control, and when an entire class of people is treated as a dehumanized inconvenient obstacle to be shoved out of the way and eliminated. And it's a supreme irony that the one nation that seems to have missed this lesson is the nation that owes its very existence to the holocaust.

+1

[seafoid]

Not all Jews were gassed at Auschwitz or the other camps. Many starved to death or died of disease in ghettoes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcd88TOwx5o&feature=related

Lawnseed links ww2 to Gaza and I would be very concerned about what Israel's long term plan for Gaza is. The
sewage system was destroyed a few years ago and the water quality is appalling. 80% of the people depend on UN rations.
People are dying of cold this winter. Where is it all heading ?
Anyone who thinks "never again" is deluded. 
   

[AZOffaly]

I think all of that is more or less universally accepted and agreed seafoid, at least on this board. The issue is when somebody says they have no sympathy for the victims, because of what Israel is doing now. I can't understand that point of view at all.

[Hardy]

TBF Eamonn in both of your posts on this thread you opened them by trying to explain away the OP

Look, he obviously upset a lot of people, but there was a kernel of a reasonable point somewhere in his postings that I thought was worth salvaging.

No, there wasn't. It's partly because of the imbecilic attitudes of people like him that the danger of atrocity is ever-present. The unavoidable implication is that somehow the Jews deserve less sympathy than some or all other groupings of people. It was that attitiude, introduced by fanatical ideologues and embraced by the great unwashed, that led to the holocaust in the first place. It is precisely that attitude that needs to be the focus of our eternal vigilance so that every time it appears it is stamped out before it takes root.

Its not that I am disagreeing with anything that you say Eamonn, on Israel Iran or anything else. Its just that its nothing to do with the holocaust and I don't understand how anyone could possibly think events of the present are relevant to the holocaust or their perception of the holocaust, it occurred 70 years ago was most likely the worst crime in human history. Of course an event like that is going to influence subsequent events in the future for a long while for both good and for bad, however those events cannot influence the events in the past. Therefore our opinion on them should not be of the present but from the time and place in which they occurred.

I'm not disagreeing with any of this. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in their right mind who would try to justify the holocaust or any other atrocity based on subsequent events. My point is that the only positive role the holocaust can play is as a warning to subsequent generations about what can happen when hatred is allowed to take control, and when an entire class of people is treated as a dehumanized inconvenient obstacle to be shoved out of the way and eliminated.

Exactly, and that's why lawnseed's post was so repugnant in suggesting that this particular group of people was less deserving of sympathy than some or all other groups. It's the first step to dehumanisation, which is the first step to justification of atrocity.

And I  just want to note that Benny Cake's intervention was even more abhorrent.

And it's a supreme irony that the one nation that seems to have missed this lesson is the nation that owes its very existence to the holocaust.

Indeed. But that's a lot different to suggesting that the holocaust is retrospectively justified by the present day policies of the Israeli state.

[Edit] I would rewrite your comment as follows:
...it's a supreme irony that the one nation that seems to have missed this lesson is the nation that owes its very existence to the holocaust.

[Hardy]

Not all Jews were gassed at Auschwitz or the other camps. Many starved to death or died of disease in ghettoes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcd88TOwx5o&feature=related

Lawnseed links ww2 to Gaza and I would be very concerned about what Israel's long term plan for Gaza is. The
sewage system was destroyed a few years ago and the water quality is appalling. 80% of the people depend on UN rations.
People are dying of cold this winter. Where is it all heading ?

Why are these ruminations posted on a thread about the holocaust?

Anyone who thinks "never again" is deluded. 

Yes. That's why we need vigilance against casual demonisation of groupings, races or nationalities. Criticise Israeli policies because they are evil, not because of the nationality or religion of those who conceived them. I despair if we have missed the main lesson of the holocaust - that it was not the result of an evil intrinsic in Germans but a result of the potential for evil intrinsic in mankind and could happen anywhere in the appropriate conditions.

[seafoid]

Hardy

do you think people now are more intelligent than those our age in the 30s? I don't. The potential for genocide is always there.

[Hardy]

That's my point.

[seafoid]

That's my point.

the thing is to keep society stable. That means controlling inequality and controlling rich people tearing the arse out of things.
The 1930s were the result of a major economic crash. It's not rocket science.

[LeoMc]

That's my point.

the thing is to keep society stable. That means controlling inequality and controlling rich people tearing the arse out of things.
The 1930s were the result of a major economic crash. It's not rocket science.

Not every crash led to a war, the depression was a contributing factor used by the Nazis tro demonise the Jews. Withour putting words in Hardys mouth we need to be vigilant becasue of the potential to demonise against entire groupings, whether it be Muslims or Israelis.

[big balla]

Hardy

do you think people now are more intelligent than those our age in the 30s? I don't. The potential for genocide is always there.

I wouldn't say we are any more intelligent now but we certainly have access to lot more information. I read somewhere that the average I.Q has risen every decade for the last hundred years or so and that someone with the average IQ 100 years ago would be considered retarded in todays levels!
I think it is possible for something like this to happen again, but, With modern rolling-news media, camera phones being everywhere, there isn't a chance that it could be happening without the rest of the world knowing about it and, you would hope, putting a stop to it.

[seafoid]

Hardy

do you think people now are more intelligent than those our age in the 30s? I don't. The potential for genocide is always there.

I wouldn't say we are any more intelligent now but we certainly have access to lot more information. I read somewhere that the average I.Q has risen every decade for the last hundred years or so and that someone with the average IQ 100 years ago would be considered retarded in todays levels!
I think it is possible for something like this to happen again, but, With modern rolling-news media, camera phones being everywhere, there isn't a chance that it could be happening without the rest of the world knowing about it and, you would hope, putting a stop to it.

I think 5 million people have died in the war in DR Congo since the 90s

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/apr/05/how-millions-have-been-dying-congo/

"Peter Eichstaedt's short book, Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict
Minerals in the World's Deadliest Place*, takes up the story where Jason Stearns leaves off. Eichstaedt, a formidable journalist and Africa expert, traces the whole grimy trail of exploitation. It begins with ragged villagers digging the gold, tin, or coltan (used in computers and cell phones), continues up through the militias who tax the diggers ruthlessly, on to the négociants who in turn sell to the comptoirs in the eastern Congo cities of Goma or Bukavu, who deliver the ore to international smelting corporations, mostly in Asia. So far efforts to smash this chain—which still finances the militias in their campaigns of mass rape and massacre—have been unsuccessful"

DRC has most of the world's coltan, without which smartphones can't operate.

And Libya- that was a good war in 2011

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/26/human-rights-abuses-libyans-mental-health-problems-report

""Widespread and gross" human rights violations in Libya, including disappearances, arrests, torture and deaths, have left nearly a third of the population suffering from mental health problems as violence and lawlessness continues, according to a new report.
Research by Dignity – the Danish Institute against Torture – shared with the Guardian, paints a devastating picture of the human consequences of the regionalism, tribalism and factionalism that have wracked the north African country since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi three-and-a-half years ago.
"Libya has a practice of not seeking help for psychological problems, and the few trained psychologists and psychiatrists have very limited experience of treating trauma and consequences of torture and war," the report said.
"In addition, severe social stigma exists regarding those affected by mental illness. Psychiatric symptoms are attributed to the act of pagan symbols like the evil eye, magic or sorcery."
Ahlam Chemlali, one of the Dignity field workers, recalled how "videos of rape and torture were so widespread and popular that people would name characters from the videos, like the 'butcher from Misrata' or the 'rapist from Brega' as if they were actors playing in a horror snuff movie. Filmed torture seems to have been a consistent way of spreading or exposing fear."
The report recalls the exhilaration in Benghazi when the Libyan revolution began in February 2011 but concludes that both the short-term consequences of the internal conflict and the long-term legacy of 42 years of Gaddafi's rule remain unaddressed."


Libya has huge resources of light, sweet crude.

Rupert Murdoch etc are not going to tell you about this.

[Sidney]

I think all of that is more or less universally accepted and agreed seafoid, at least on this board. The issue is when somebody says they have no sympathy for the victims, because of what Israel is doing now. I can't understand that point of view at all.

It's because they're sick, twisted sociopaths with no concept of empathy or common humanity whatsoever. It's pretty depressing to realise this forum actually contains posters like that.

[Eamonnca1]

Lawnseed's comment about not having sympathy for the holocaust victims and survivors is repulsive. Of course it is. But that does not change the fact that the point about Gaza is a valid one. We should not be repeating history by dehumanizing and entire race and spreading unfounded rumours about them sacrificing their children in the name of Allah by using them as "human shields." That's a latter-day blood libel.