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Holocaust denier gets three years

 
 
fresco
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 01:12 pm
Poetseductress,

I am tempted to "go along with you, but I am uneasy about the word "believe". This usually involves either (a) denial of consensus of "evidence" as in the case of the holocaust or (b) dogmatic maintainance of a belief in the face of a lack of consensus as in "religion". It is difficult if not impossible separate a person from his or her "beliefs" and the sociopathic problem arises when that person purposely acts to disseminate such "beliefs" amongst others, especially children.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 01:13 pm
We clearly live under a different understanding of personal freedom.
If e.g. someone here would try to get me fingerprinted without being a policeman and having a court order or another legal reason - I would get that person to the courts.
There are lots of other examples - but this isn't a seminar for LLM students in comparing various law systems :wink:
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 01:20 pm
Walter Hinteler wrote:
If you are referring to the Austrian case: there isn't a jury in Austria.

I didn't think there were juries in Austria either, but the "Guardian" story mentioned a jury as well:
    Irving's defence lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, [b]appealed to the jury[/b] for mercy for an ageing man with a 12-year-old daughter and an ill young wife. Even if he did voice views which were "horrible" or "repellent", he was no danger to Austria.

Upon further investigation, it appears that, in some criminal cases, the Austrian judicial system uses eight-person juries (source).

I'll be filing this information under "you learn something new every day."
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 01:23 pm
Thomas wrote:
You see Joe, our constitution can suck too.

I am bitterly disappointed to hear that.
0 Replies
 
old europe
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 01:40 pm
Lash wrote:
How did this happen? The ones who scream from the rafters that George Bush is taking away freedoms are doing more damage to freedom than he could possibly imagine.

They want to blame a newspaper for printing cartoons, and they want to muzzle speech. Now, the comparison to 1984 comes alive.

Watch this grow. Here is where your freedoms are leaking. Across Europe and with the elitist Balancing Voicers, who will tell you what you can and can't say.


Well, Lash, you're basically saying that people are blaming Bush and at the same time are on Bush's side. At least if I got this bit of news right:

Quote:
Washington on Friday condemned caricatures in European newspapers of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, siding with Muslims who are outraged that the publications put press freedom over respect for religion.


link
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 01:48 pm
joefromchicago wrote:
Upon further investigation, it appears that, in some criminal cases, the Austrian judicial system uses eight-person juries (source).


That's not a jury - "Schöffe" or "Geschworener" is a lay judge, with the same rights ("officially") as a "professional" judge. They are elected for a certain period (and can be re-elected in Germany, not just for special cases.)

(And here I'm a kind of expert: did some teaching to those lay judges decades ago when I was in the probation service.)

[In Germany, the "Große Strafkammer" = generally three judges plus two lay judges may act as a "Schwurkammer" as well. And in older court houses the biggest courtrooms mostly still are called "´Schwurgerichtssaal", too, even if only three judges are sitting :wink: ]
0 Replies
 
Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 03:01 pm
"That's SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO capitalized in hopes that Fresco will get it."

now now Louise, I'm sure Fresco gets it.

You are a very opinionated young lady.

Do you want to arm wrestle?
0 Replies
 
PoetSeductress
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 03:12 pm
Holocaust denier gets three years
fresco wrote:
Poetseductress,

I am tempted to "go along with you, but I am uneasy about the word "believe". This usually involves either (a) denial of consensus of "evidence" as in the case of the holocaust or (b) dogmatic maintainance of a belief in the face of a lack of consensus as in "religion". It is difficult if not impossible separate a person from his or her "beliefs" and the sociopathic problem arises when that person purposely acts to disseminate such "beliefs" amongst others, especially children.


Well, maybe I should have used a different word. What I really meant by it, was according to the information at hand, I've arrived at my "opinion". I personally can't "prove" either way. But my gut instinct and logic tells me to accept it as an historical truth.

This is what I meant by "believe". The dictionary has more than one definition for the word. There is nothing inherently bad about "believing". It's a natural part of life.
0 Replies
 
Zippo
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 04:56 pm
Closed archive leads to Holocaust denial claim

Calls for Germany to open up secret cache
· Documents include files on 17 million people

Sam Loewenberg in Berlin
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday February 21, 2006
The Guardian


America and Germany are in dispute over the fate of a vast trove of Holocaust archives yet to be seen by historians or the general public.

The documents are one of the world's largest collections of Nazi-era papers, and include files on more than 17 million people. The archive is kept at Bad Arolsen in Germany by the International Tracing Service (ITS), a branch of the international committee of the Red Cross established to help families find out what happened to their relatives.

The German government and ITS insist the personal files cannot be released immediately because of international agreements and German privacy law. But they are under pressure from the US government and Holocaust scholars to make them available.

Last year 20 countries, including Britain, published a joint statement backing the US position and calling for the "urgent" release of Bad Arolsen documents to researchers. One senior American researcher has called the refusal to open the archive "a form of Holocaust denial".

The sensitive nature of the material is not in dispute. The archives contain details of horrific medical experiments and files on alleged collaborators among concentration camp inmates. It also includes documentation on the lebensborn (lifespring) programme, under which tens of thousands of infants born to women in Nazi-occupied countries and fathered by German soldiers were sent to special educational facilities, where they were raised in the dogma of the "master race". Some lebensborn children may be unaware of their past.

The German government says it is committed to opening the archives, but not before privacy controls have been put in place. This is complicated because the privacy laws of many countries must be reconciled, a German foreign ministry spokesperson said. "Before opening the archives to researchers indiscriminately, questions of privacy and liability for the misuse of this sensitive data needs to be addressed."

The ITS has also come under fire for withholding access to the documents, and scholars claim the service's director for the past 20 years, Charles Biedermann, treats the collection as private records rather than as the product of vast state bureaucracies. Mr Biedermann did not return calls asking for comment.

The ITS website carries a statement saying the organisation "knows of the endeavours to ... make the stock of personal documents accessible to historical research".

The ITS is digitally scanning the papers "to comply with these justified interests". There is a reported backlog of several years in dealing with tracing requests, and the digitising of the records still has years to go.

"They have been stalling for eight years," said Johannes Houwink ten Cate, professor of history and genocide studies at the University of Amsterdam and one of the leaders of the campaign to open the archives.

US officials were also unavailable for comment yesterday, a federal holiday, but Edward O'Donnell, the special envoy for Holocaust issues at the state department, told the New York Times: "Our objective is to open the archive, and we will continue to push."

Senior officials at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, which wants to acquire copies of the files, have been scathing about the German handling of the issue. "This is a scandal and a big scar on the image of Germany," Sara Bloomfield, the museum director, said.

Paul Shapiro, the director of advanced Holocaust studies, declared: "Hiding this record is a form of Holocaust denial."

guardian unlimited
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 05:09 pm
Adding to the above (that archive is not far away from here [Bad Arolsen, Große Allee 5-9] and I personally know some persons working there):

the archive was founded 1943 in the UK by the Allied and is under control of the International Red Cross, supervised by a committee with members from Belgium, France, Greece, UK, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and the USA, who meet once per year more or less secretely.

The Federal Archive in Koblenz, all German historical societies, the Council of the Jews in Germany etc are asking since years to open ALL sources - but although it was thought that the committee would allow it in 2005 nothing had happened since than.

Published 18.10.2005 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland:
Quote:

International Holocaust Task Force Urges Opening of Bad Arolsen Archive

Meeting in Warsaw June 30th, the 20-country Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research reiterated its call for immediate steps to be taken to open the archive of the International Tracing Service (ITS) at Bad Arolsen, Germany to scholars and other researchers. In this regard, the Task Force welcomed the decision May 30th in Rome of the International Commission of the International Tracing Service to entrust an intergovernmental committee of experts to assess the conditions under which the 30-40 million Holocaust-era documents at Bad Arolsen can be made available for research, including on the basis of a proposal to copy or digitize them. Considering the time elapsed since the archive was assembled in Germany after World War II, and the historical importance of the documents deposited at Bad Arolsen to a fuller understanding of the Holocaust, the Task Force urges the member countries of the International Commission to address this matter on an urgent basis.
0 Replies
 
2PacksAday
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 06:57 pm
I can see why Germany and Austria would be so heavy handed on this issue. But it does not excuse them from taking things beyond what is rational.

Perhaps as Walter said, these laws will go out of effect or lessen at some point in the future. Maybe another ten...twenty...thirty... years needs to pass, before they feel the threat is over.

I hope this idea does not get a firm foothold in the US...although at times it seems it already has...from both side of the political spectrum.
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 06:58 pm
Pretty good post, 2Pax.
0 Replies
 
2PacksAday
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 07:38 pm
Thanks Lash...I know that I sometimes come across as a typical "southern bigot" but on most issues I tend to be more reasonable and open minded.

-------

Seems Canada has similar laws.

David Ahenakew

In connection with the remarks, which were made on tape with his knowledge, Ahenakew was convicted on July 8, 2005 of wilfully promoting hatred against Jews, and was fined $1,000. On July 11, 2005, he was stripped of the Order of Canada, which he received in 1978 for his work in advancing Indian education. He is only the second person, after Alan Eagleson, to have lost the honour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ahenakew
0 Replies
 
InfraBlue
 
  1  
Tue 21 Feb, 2006 10:49 pm
2PacksAday wrote:
I can see why Germany and Austria would be so heavy handed on this issue. But it does not excuse them from taking things beyond what is rational.

Perhaps as Walter said, these laws will go out of effect or lessen at some point in the future. Maybe another ten...twenty...thirty... years needs to pass, before they feel the threat is over.

I hope this idea does not get a firm foothold in the US...although at times it seems it already has...from both side of the political spectrum.


I think the WWII generation has to die out completely for those changes to occur. There are still too many mental/emotional issues within that generation for there to be a rational approach to this issue.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Wed 22 Feb, 2006 01:45 am
Just to mention some more legal background:

the "Verbotsgesetz" ('ban law') is origianally from April 8, 1945 and was origianally only created to hinder a new foundation of the NSDAP ('National Socialistic Party'). The latest changes were made in 1992.
According to its § 3g, holocaust is a fact and any denying of it a crime.

Both the prosecution as well as Irving have filed an appeal.
A date for the new trial at the highest Austrian court won't be announced in autumn this year.
0 Replies
 
Louise R Heller
 
  1  
Wed 22 Feb, 2006 11:20 am
Walter Hinteler wrote:
Just to mention some more legal background:

the "Verbotsgesetz" ('ban law') is origianally from April 8, 1945 and was origianally only created to hinder a new foundation of the NSDAP ('National Socialistic Party'). The latest changes were made in 1992.
According to its § 3g, holocaust is a fact and any denying of it a crime.

Both the prosecution as well as Irving have filed an appeal.A date for the new trial at the highest Austrian court won't be announced in autumn this year.


I'm astounded by this witchhunt, what's the prosecution hoping for, the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison???

This is Orwellian, if something is a proven fact WHY need a LAW with 10 years in prison PENALTY, to punish anyone saying the OPPOSITE???

In and of itself this law makes people WONDER what could be so wrong about that "fact" that it's gotta be enshrined in criminal LAW???? 10 years' sentences aren't meted out in Austria except to murderers and even then rarely!!!
0 Replies
 
Louise R Heller
 
  1  
Wed 22 Feb, 2006 11:22 am
"......A date for the new trial at the highest Austrian court won't be announced in autumn this year. "

What does that MEAN???? Mr Irving is subjected to indefinite DETENTION????
0 Replies
 
Louise R Heller
 
  1  
Wed 22 Feb, 2006 11:28 am
Sorry, very sorry but this is a travesty.

Please don't bother explaining, this is worse than Stalin.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Wed 22 Feb, 2006 11:41 am
Louise_R_Heller wrote:
Walter Hinteler wrote:
Just to mention some more legal background:

the "Verbotsgesetz" ('ban law') is origianally from April 8, 1945 and was origianally only created to hinder a new foundation of the NSDAP ('National Socialistic Party'). The latest changes were made in 1992.
According to its § 3g, holocaust is a fact and any denying of it a crime.

Both the prosecution as well as Irving have filed an appeal.A date for the new trial at the highest Austrian court won't be announced in autumn this year.


I'm astounded by this witchhunt, what's the prosecution hoping for, the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison???

This is Orwellian, if something is a proven fact WHY need a LAW with 10 years in prison PENALTY, to punish anyone saying the OPPOSITE???

In and of itself this law makes people WONDER what could be so wrong about that "fact" that it's gotta be enshrined in criminal LAW???? 10 years' sentences aren't meted out in Austria except to murderers and even then rarely!!!



It's Austrian law (btw: it's up to 20 years).
There's some discussion going on that this law can't be changed besides by changing the complete constitution: some legal experts have the opinion that the Austrian constittution is per se an anti-nationalsocialistic constittuion.

I'm not an expert in neither Austrian Criminal nor Constitutional Law, just referring from media and law magazines.

Ten years is the very minimum sentence for murder in the Austrian Criminal Code (§75 StGB). It's between 10 years and lifelong.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Wed 22 Feb, 2006 11:42 am
Louise_R_Heller wrote:
"......A date for the new trial at the highest Austrian court won't be announced in autumn this year. "

What does that MEAN???? Mr Irving is subjected to indefinite DETENTION????


I don't know how such is done in Canada or what the relevant laws are there, but to be on remand is thought to be legal and constitutional in a lot of countries besides Austria and Germany. (Some countries keep people even without legal background/authority in prison-like camps.)

I don't know, if this happens to Irving: the Austrian press didn't report about it; thus, it might well be so.

All these procedures are properly following the Austrian Code of Criminal Procedure.
0 Replies
 
 

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