A (Small) Battle Won on Wikipedia

I was browsing Holocaust-related articles on Wikipedia, most of which espouse the “traditional” Holocaust mythology (many virulently) when I came across a reference to David Cole, main on-screen talent in a long and very influential 1992 video debunking tour of the Auschwitz theme park. I noted from the reference that the article itself that concerned Cole had been deleted fairly recently (December 6).

Why wouldn’t Wikipedia, which covers Ernst Zündel, David Irving, and even (scathingly) Holocaust Denial, cover David Cole? Why, indeed? Wikipedia doesn’t provide access to deleted articles (they wouldn’t be deleted if Wikipedia did), but it does provide access to a kind of “audit trail” in which it is recorded “who” (that is, which Wikipedia Editors) deleted an article, and their statements as to why the article should be deleted. The article was established on November 29 by an Editor identified as Ramos221, who has since been deleted. The article lasted a week, and Editor Ramos not much longer. Thank you, Ramos221, whoever you are!

I looked up the Deletion Discussion on David Cole and encountered a few disingenuous citations as to why he didn’t merit coverage on Wikipedia, concluding in four votes to Delete and none to Keep. I recognized one of the participating Editors (WilliamH) as one who has in the past monitored my contributions to Wikipedia on the Holocaust, and altered or, in most cases, deleted them. The other Editors voting were the one that apparently initiated the deletion, and two others that, when I checked them around December 30, had been permanently banned from Wikipedia, which is usually done to notably destructive Editors.

One of the two had been identified as a “sock puppet,” which is a fake account created by an Editor (who may or may not have a “legitimate” account) who wants to make edits without their being associated with his or her “real” account. Having and using “sock puppets” is a way to get around having been banned, and Editors detected doing this are themselves banned, along with their sock puppets, of course. The other banned User also showed all the indications that it was a sock puppet.

Wikipedia, which is nothing if not procedural, has a procedure for calling a situation like this to the attention of Administrators, which are “Super-Editors” who have official responsibilities and powers in Wikipedia. I wrote up the situation I describe above, and in a matter of minutes, the Administrator who had approved the original deletion put the article back!

This small victory is likely to be transient without ongoing vigilance on the part of me and all the rest of us concerned that the truth regarding the Holocaust be allowed even the slightest chance of being detected by the determined researcher. The Holocaust Legacy has squads of Einsatzkommando who patrol Wikipedia day and night and jump on Editors like me and Ramos with amazing speed and ferocity. They have probably already marked David Cole for deletion out of fear that Wikipedia users will discover his persuasive videos through links from his article.

So go check the article fast, while it’s still there! And help me patrol Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet trained yourself to be a Wikipedia Editor, log a Comment to this blog post to let me and the other readers of this blog know that we need to act on Wikipedia. Again.

Elie Wiesel's Hope for America

John Demjanjuk: What does the Guardian judge offensive?

This is the letter that offended the ideals of good journalism at the Guardian

"What kind of justice is it that proscribes the normally accepted right of the accused to challenge the assumption that a crime had, in fact, occurred? Normally the prosecution is obliged to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the crime of murder had taken place. This is not the case in the trial of Demjanjuk. The court will, without proof, arbitrarily accept that the crime took place. Being stripped of his most powerful defence, the accused is reduced to pleading mistaken identity or that he had nothing to do with an unproved murder."

John Mortl

***

The Guardian issued this fearless statement explaining its principled stand:

"We published a letter by John Mortl in the Guardian of 3 December [page 37, and guardian.co.uk] relating to the case of John Demjanjuk, who is accused of assisting in the murder of 27,900 people in Poland. Unfortunately, we misread the letter. The underlying meaning, we now realise, implied Holocaust denial. As soon as we realised our mistake, we removed the letter from the website. It should never have been published and we apologise unreservedly that it was."

The State, the University, the Press. It's a hard row to hoe.

Me and the H-Bomb Part Two: The Gas Chamber of Samuel Crowell

By Chip Smith

PREFACE

In 2010, Nine-Banded Books will publish a newly and finally revised edition of Samuel Crowell's long-developed monograph, The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes. In addition to the text of "Sherlock," the book will include a revised and updated restatement of Crowell's empirical research on German civil defense architecture (largely an expansion of his other major work, Bomb Shelters in Birkenau) as well as a new closing essay appraising a number of revisionist and counter-revisionist texts that have appeared over the last decade.

I mention this first by way of disclosure, but I will say up front that I feel a special obligation about this one. To state it plainly, I think Crowell's book is important. I think it will be read. And I am perhaps naively hopeful that it will be taken seriously by people -- even some few public intellectuals -- who are understandably skeptical of revisionist challenges to the consensus historiography regarding the Holocaust. I don't expect that an encounter with Samuel Crowell will change many minds, but I do think there is a real possibility that some readers will come away with an understanding that, as Crowell puts it, "the revisionist interpretation on the subject of mass gassing [is] possible, and since possible, a particularly unworthy candidate for censorship."

What follows, the second in a three-part series devoted to the Holocaust controversy, is my digressive introduction to Crowell's major theoretical work, The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes. Though I believe that Crowell's other contributions to the literature of revisionism are just as relevant, I have chosen to focus on Sherlock because its central argument is so shockingly novel, and so seldom engaged. I also think the argument will be vindicated, at least in broad form.I've been wrong before. Time will tell.

The third and final installment in this series (part one is here) will be broadly devoted to "Skepticism, Epistemology, and 'Belief in Belief'." In that post, I will respond to a number of points raised in reader commentary and correspondence. I will also revisit the curious case of Irène Némirovsky and Michel Epstein, with a few surprises.

My apologies for the delay.

Holocaust Denial, Meet Climate-Change Denial

These two denials will meet, December 3, in London, at an event held under the auspices of the Index on Censorship magazine. I celebrated what now is becoming known as ClimateGate on this blog a couple of days ago ("A Hack-in for the Rest of Us,") and now, the sort of institutionalized censorship arrayed against climate-change skepticism is being appreciated as similar to the grand-daddy of them all, the censorship of Holocaust skepticism. The perpetrators are different, the cause seems different, but the methods are the same, and money is coming from the same places - taxpayers like you and me.

Way back in 2006, a fascinating piece appeared in the Daily Articles of the Ludwig von Mises Institute that extensively adumbrated ClimateGate. It is a spoof e-mail from a "generic" colleague to Richard Lindzen, possibly the doyen of professionally qualified skeptics of the climate science of Global Warming, and it complains to him how his refusal to participate in the Climate-Change Industry is damaging not only his career, but the careers of his colleagues and the climate-change profession in general. In light of recent events, it seems especially percipient.

There's still time to get over to London in time for Censorship's event. But bring lots of warm clothing - it's cold in London this time of year, Global Warming or no.

Fredrick Toben is out of jail and talks about it

Amazon Kindle Books, leading the way to darkness

Oct. 15, 2009--10:55pm
New York City

From Michael Santamauro

Now it is all 22 of the Kindle books from Theses & Dissertations Press that is part of The Holocaust Handbook Series of 22 titles, have been banned from Amazon. This all happened today, at a slow moving process without Amazon telling me they were doing this, nor will they tell me why they did it. The softcover editions are still available. I hope this is a mistake on the part of Amazon.

When you click on the banned title it says it cannot be sold to registered Kindle users in the United States. Until last week all the millions of Kindles (E-readers) were only registered in the United States. Maybe the new international version of the Kindle is putting a block on Holocaust Revisionist books that is causing this confusion in their system.

This is the first time in Amazon's short history in selling books wirelessly with the Kindle (E-reader), that they have banned books for their content. They sell millions of books a month with their Kindle.

Break His Bones Ad

Here is one of the new ads that I am submitting to student newspapers around the country.

My book, Break His Bones, presents a human face to students who have been taught for decades that it is a “sin” to question the gas-chamber stories, that only a moral monster would question the “unique” monstrosity of the Germans.

Break His Bones exposes the double standards that the professorial class, along with the rest of the Holocaust Marketing Industry (Holocaust Inc.) exploits to suppress and censor the call for a routine examination of the gas-chamber question.

By running this ad in student newspapers we will reach, accumulatively, tens of thousands of professors and their administrators, and hundreds of thousands of students.

The ad will cost on average about $100 -- $125 per run. Your contribution will ensure that the ad will be read by university students around the country, and that each of these students, with a couple clicks on his keyboard, and $4, will get a copy of Break His Bones, a book unlike anything he/she has ever read.

It will be clear to one and all that no one is going to “make money” selling a 320-page book for $4 with free postage and handling. Money is not the purpose of the ad. I want students to have the opportunity to see a side of the revisionist struggle that they have been successfully blinded to because of a Holocaust Marketing Industry with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, an ignorant press, and at the bottom of it all a broken-backed professorial class that will not stand up for its own ideals.

Once the ad is running, you will be able to follow the story on the CODOH blogs, and in Smith’s Report.

The Harvard Crimson -- Don't Ask, Don't Tell Journalism

This release was sent to the national press,
on campus and off, this date.

=========================================================================


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Bradley R. Smith, Founder
Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust
PO Box 439016
San Ysidro, California 92143

Desk: 209 682 5327
Email: bradley1930@yahoo.com
Web: www.codoh.com

14 September 2009



The Harvard Crimson -- Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Journalism

On 09 September the Harvard Crimson published a letter from its own staff titled Obligations of the Press.” The letter addressed an advertisement run by Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) that asked two questions.

The first question asked why General Dwight Eisenhower, in his 550-page book Crusade in Europe, did not mention the WMD (gas chambers) that the Germans used to “exterminate” millions of Jews and others.

The second question asked for the name, with proof, of one person killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. No Harvard academic has offered a reply to either question.

The letter from The Crimson staff observed that “the advertisement offended large segments of the campus,” and that “we believe this item should never be found in the pages of a college newspaper.”

Why? Because the questions “promote hate and could actually jeopardize the psychological and emotional well being of others in the Harvard community.”

What others? Was the psychological and emotional well being of the Palestinians at Harvard jeopardized? The Lebanese, the Syrians, Egyptians or the Iraqis? How about the Koreans, the Japanese, the Chinese? The Brazilians, Argentinians, the students from Liberia and Uganda?

How about students of German decent at Harvard? Who at the Harvard Crimson has ever expressed concern about the psychological and emotional well being of Germans? Let’s not joke around. If the accusation is against Germans, it’s good to go. Decade after decade for more than half a century. It is taboo to question the gas-chamber accusation. Not to deny it, but simply to question it. Issues of psychological and emotional well being be damned. No time for that. We’re talking about Germans here.

Following the lead of Harvard faculty, which is only natural, the Crimson staff writes: “We hope to see The Crimson and other college newspapers refrain from printing similar content going forward.”

The staff of the Harvard Crimson has stated it clearly. The “obligation” of the press with regard to the gas-chamber question is:

Don’t ask. Don’t tell.

Some of us feel a different obligation. Ask. If you get an answer you believe is reasonable, tell others. That is—do ask, do tell. It’s called a free exchange of ideas. It’s a concept that makes the same promise to those who believe what The Crimson staff believes about the gas-chamber story that it makes to those who question what The Crimson staff believes about the gas-chamber story. That promise is to shine the light of day onto the question and to reveal what is there without fear or favor.

Light has no interest in fear, no interest in favor. The one interest of light is to reveal clearly that which it is bathing in its own essence.