The Leuchter Report Vindicated

[Scott Smith]

No Details/No Holocaust! Well, maybe...

Yeah, no one was gassed because we don’t know everything about what the gassing engine looked like. Does it get more imbecile than this?

Then how do you know it was an engine and not a rhinocerous? What did it look like? Details, please, from the battery of "eyewitnesses."

But why no details?

Lots of details on the relevant issues, actually. But you have to forgive non-technical witnesses if, concerned as they understandably were with many other things, they failed to correctly describe the type of engine used for gassing – assuming that they were wrong at all, that is.

It would be nice to have a technical description from a mechanic, technician, or engineer, but at this point, we don't even know what they purport to have seen. Can they describe ANYTHING about this "ENGINE" or not?

[Hans]

No Details/No Holocaust! Well, maybe...

Yeah, no one was gassed because we don’t know everything about what the gassing engine looked like. Does it get more imbecile than this?

Then how do you know it was an engine and not a rhinocerous?

Scott is always able to surprise: Yeah, he does!

[Roberto]

No Details/No Holocaust! Well, maybe...

Yeah, no one was gassed because we don’t know everything about what the gassing engine looked like. Does it get more imbecile than this?

Then how do you know it was an engine and not a rhinocerous? What did it look like? Details, please, from the battery of "eyewitnesses."

Are we going back to kindergarten, Scotty? While few people may be able to distinguish a diesel engine from a gasoline engine when they see it, just about everyone knows what an engine looks like. Which means that when several people - from the ranks of perpetrators, survivors and outside observers - describe the device as the engine of a huge motor vehicle, there is every reason to assume that it actually was such an engine.

Just two examples for the silly little Reverend:

Q. You could not see the inside of the building of the gas chambers?

A. When the doors were open, I did see them.

Q. When they removed the dead bodies, could you look inside the gas chambers?

A. Yes. The doors were open — they were open almost completely, and when they were opened, the dead bodies fell out, since they had been lying there crowded together. Into a room of 1.90 metres, they forced many inside.

Q. Can you describe the inner structure?

A. It was a room. The floor was somewhat sloping. When the people inside were suffocated, they used to wash the floor with a hosepipe or a bucket of water. When they removed the bodies, they had been suffocated.

Q. Where did the gas enter?

A. That is in the sketch. Here was the gas engine, the engine which forced the gas in. And there were pipes with valves. They would open the valve into the chamber where the people were. There was an engine of a Soviet tank standing there, and in this way the gas was introduced. Here were the doors where people entered from one side, and, on the other, this was the large door which opened along almost the entire wall. And, after forty to forty-five minutes had passed, they would stop, they would open the door, and the dead bodies would fall out. And here was a spare engine next to the three. Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 26 were the engines that generated the electricity, and there, too, there was a motor.

Q. I understand from this that the gas was produced on the spot, or was it brought in ready-made from outside?

A. The gas was produced on the spot.

From the depostion of Ya'akov Wiernik at the Eichmann trial

Q. Where did the gas come from?

A. The gas came from an engine.

Q. They did not bring it from outside — it was produced on the spot?

A. It was Ropa — Ropa gas.

Q. Was it manufactured by an engine, from the exhaust of a diesel engine?

A. Yes. It was gas from an engine. They put in Ropa, which was a kind of oil, a crude oil, and the fumes entered the gas chambers. The people who were the last to enter the gas chambers, the very last, received stabs in the bodies from the bayonets, since the last persons already saw what was going on inside and did not want to enter. Four hundred people were put into one small gas chamber. And when they forced them in, they, on their part, pressed inwards and in this way reached the full capacity, so that only with difficulty could the outer door of the chamber be shut.

From the deposition of Eliahu Rosenberg at the same trial.

Source of quotes:

http://www.ukar.org/eichma02.shtml

But why no details?

Lots of details on the relevant issues, actually. But you have to forgive non-technical witnesses if, concerned as they understandably were with many other things, they failed to correctly describe the type of engine used for gassing – assuming that they were wrong at all, that is.

It would be nice to have a technical description from a mechanic, technician, or engineer, but at this point, we don't even know what they purport to have seen. Can they describe ANYTHING about this "ENGINE" or not?

When negotiating contract drafts, we make a distinction between "deal breakers", other fairly essential issues and clauses that are "nice to have". A similar distinction can be made in regard to the evidence to the mass killings at Treblinka and the other Aktion Reinhard(t) extermination camps: the details you would like to see are "nice to have", but if we don't have them we can do without them because they were and are not necessary to establish the essential facts.

So instead of playing the clown, how about trying to answer these questions, Reverend:

1. Court experts and historians who have assessed the documentary evidence concluded that all pertinent documents – correspondence among officials as well as train schedules, timetables and other transportation documents – clearly point to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka as the final destinations. There is not a single document, however detailed, that even hints at the Jews taken to these camps going any further. Why would this be so if the camps were “transit camps” en route to the occupied territories of the Soviet Union?

2. The rail line leading to Treblinka was a sidetrack of the line going from Warsaw to Bialystok in Northeast Poland. Bialystok was the closest point to the Soviet Union, anyone from Treblinka being resettled in the Soviet occupied territory had to pass through there. Yet a German railroad table for Bialystok shows Jews being taken from there to Treblinka, with the empty cars returning to Bialystok. In other words, they were being moved away from the Soviet territories by being sent to Treblinka. Why was this so?

3. The resettlement of ca. 1.5 million people in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union would have been a complex operation, requiring hundreds if not thousands of German officials to carry it out and at least as many people involved in building projects. Yet no one has ever come forward to testify about such a resettlement, even though this would have made an ideal defense at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and subsequent trials. Former high-ranking transportation specialists in Germany during the war did not offer Soviet resettlement as a defense in post-war trials, even though they denied having known the real purpose of the train transport. No war crimes defendant actually offered resettlement as a defense, even those who denied knowledge of the genocide. Why was this so?

4. As becomes apparent from a number of documents regarding the “economic aspects” of “Operation Reinhard” (alternatively spelled “Reinhardt” or “Reinhart”, I’ll use the “Reinhard” spelling for convenience in the following), the Jews taken to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka were stripped of all their belongings there, including their clothing. Why would that have been done if they were going to be resettled – unless “resettlement” was to be to a place where they would need no clothing anymore?

5. Why would the Nazis, concerned as they were about preserving their own resources and robbing the Jews of everything they had, have invested large sums of money – far more than the costs of the killing operation, which are exactly known from Globocnik’s correspondence with Himmler – into a resettlement project? Or are the Jews supposed to have been simply shoved across the border and left there to die of starvation, exposure and disease? If so, wouldn’t that be similar to the way Stalin got rid of the “kulaks” and no less a crime than the mass killing at the extermination camps?

6. Why were there so many dead bodies at Treblinka in October of 1942 that they could not be sufficiently buried, thus creating a stench that befouled the air as far as Ostrow, 20 kilometers away, which led the local Wehrmacht commander to raise an official complaint about that stench?

7. How many whole bodies, and how many bodies reduced to ashes and other partial remains, fit into pits 7.5 meters deep in the burial area more than 20,000 square meters long and wide that was found after the war by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland? Was there room enough for, say, the 713,555 Jews from the General Government taken to Treblinka until 31.12.1942, according to the Höfle memorandum, or was there not?

[Roberto]

No Details/No Holocaust! Well, maybe...

Yeah, no one was gassed because we don’t know everything about what the gassing engine looked like. Does it get more imbecile than this?

Then how do you know it was an engine and not a rhinocerous?

Scott is always able to surprise: Yeah, Charles, it does!

Hans,

In his post post # 47 (5/30/01 3:56:00 am) on the thread

American TV Dramatization of Wannsee Conference
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... 21&stop=40

of the old forum, our fellow poster Stephen Healey from Australia very accurately characterized the Reverend's problem:

Its just that once a topic comes up that involves his personal biases it seems he is unable to resist the temptation to run the same points again and again, no matter how bad they are, he so desperately wants to believe certain things that he just turns his brain off.

As we again have seen, there's no limit to imbecility when someone turns his brain off in the name of what he would desperately like to believe.

Cheers,

Roberto

[Scott Smith]

So instead of playing the clown, how about trying to answer these questions, Reverend:

1. Court experts and historians who have assessed the documentary evidence concluded that all pertinent documents – correspondence among officials as well as train schedules, timetables and other transportation documents – clearly point to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka as the final destinations. There is not a single document, however detailed, that even hints at the Jews taken to these camps going any further. Why would this be so if the camps were “transit camps” en route to the occupied territories of the Soviet Union?

2. The rail line leading to Treblinka was a sidetrack of the line going from Warsaw to Bialystok in Northeast Poland. Bialystok was the closest point to the Soviet Union, anyone from Treblinka being resettled in the Soviet occupied territory had to pass through there. Yet a German railroad table for Bialystok shows Jews being taken from there to Treblinka, with the empty cars returning to Bialystok. In other words, they were being moved away from the Soviet territories by being sent to Treblinka. Why was this so?

3. The resettlement of ca. 1.5 million people in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union would have been a complex operation, requiring hundreds if not thousands of German officials to carry it out and at least as many people involved in building projects. Yet no one has ever come forward to testify about such a resettlement, even though this would have made an ideal defense at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and subsequent trials. Former high-ranking transportation specialists in Germany during the war did not offer Soviet resettlement as a defense in post-war trials, even though they denied having known the real purpose of the train transport. No war crimes defendant actually offered resettlement as a defense, even those who denied knowledge of the genocide. Why was this so?

4. As becomes apparent from a number of documents regarding the “economic aspects” of “Operation Reinhard” (alternatively spelled “Reinhardt” or “Reinhart”, I’ll use the “Reinhard” spelling for convenience in the following), the Jews taken to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka were stripped of all their belongings there, including their clothing. Why would that have been done if they were going to be resettled – unless “resettlement” was to be to a place where they would need no clothing anymore?

5. Why would the Nazis, concerned as they were about preserving their own resources and robbing the Jews of everything they had, have invested large sums of money – far more than the costs of the killing operation, which are exactly known from Globocnik’s correspondence with Himmler – into a resettlement project? Or are the Jews supposed to have been simply shoved across the border and left there to die of starvation, exposure and disease? If so, wouldn’t that be similar to the way Stalin got rid of the “kulaks” and no less a crime than the mass killing at the extermination camps?

6. Why were there so many dead bodies at Treblinka in October of 1942 that they could not be sufficiently buried, thus creating a stench that befouled the air as far as Ostrow, 20 kilometers away, which led the local Wehrmacht commander to raise an official complaint about that stench?

7. How many whole bodies, and how many bodies reduced to ashes and other partial remains, fit into pits 7.5 meters deep in the burial area more than 20,000 square meters long and wide that was found after the war by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland? Was there room enough for, say, the 713,555 Jews from the General Government taken to Treblinka until 31.12.1942, according to the Höfle memorandum, or was there not?

Hi Roberto,

Since I am not making my thesis about how many were or were-not killed but only asking what evidence is there for the murder-weapon, your questions about the transit-camp are irrelevant. I suggest you post them at CODOH and see if you can get some interest.

Now, I’m creating another thread about the evidence developed for the Treblinka murder-weapon since it deserves its OWN place and is somewhat off-topic for the Leuchter Report.

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS!

See you there!
~Scott
CLICK!

[Xanthro]

Since I am not making my thesis about how many were or were-not killed but only asking what evidence is there for the murder-weapon, your questions about the transit-camp are irrelevant. I suggest you post them at CODOH and see if you can get some interest.

First, state your thesis. I don't think you actually have defensible one.

The problem is that any real thesis can't simply ignore evidence. You've already admited that people were killed, the evidence supports this. I liked to see your thesis that takes into account all your posts.

Only a fool would post at CODOH as the rules make it balantly obvious that your posts will be censored. It's a bunch of rules that will nearly always be violated on any message board, the selective enforcement at CODOH allows one side to present an argument, while the other side is censored. It just shows the lack of depth the denier side has.

Xanthro

[Roberto]

So instead of playing the clown, how about trying to answer these questions, Reverend:

1. Court experts and historians who have assessed the documentary evidence concluded that all pertinent documents – correspondence among officials as well as train schedules, timetables and other transportation documents – clearly point to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka as the final destinations. There is not a single document, however detailed, that even hints at the Jews taken to these camps going any further. Why would this be so if the camps were “transit camps” en route to the occupied territories of the Soviet Union?

2. The rail line leading to Treblinka was a sidetrack of the line going from Warsaw to Bialystok in Northeast Poland. Bialystok was the closest point to the Soviet Union, anyone from Treblinka being resettled in the Soviet occupied territory had to pass through there. Yet a German railroad table for Bialystok shows Jews being taken from there to Treblinka, with the empty cars returning to Bialystok. In other words, they were being moved away from the Soviet territories by being sent to Treblinka. Why was this so?

3. The resettlement of ca. 1.5 million people in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union would have been a complex operation, requiring hundreds if not thousands of German officials to carry it out and at least as many people involved in building projects. Yet no one has ever come forward to testify about such a resettlement, even though this would have made an ideal defense at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and subsequent trials. Former high-ranking transportation specialists in Germany during the war did not offer Soviet resettlement as a defense in post-war trials, even though they denied having known the real purpose of the train transport. No war crimes defendant actually offered resettlement as a defense, even those who denied knowledge of the genocide. Why was this so?

4. As becomes apparent from a number of documents regarding the “economic aspects” of “Operation Reinhard” (alternatively spelled “Reinhardt” or “Reinhart”, I’ll use the “Reinhard” spelling for convenience in the following), the Jews taken to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka were stripped of all their belongings there, including their clothing. Why would that have been done if they were going to be resettled – unless “resettlement” was to be to a place where they would need no clothing anymore?

5. Why would the Nazis, concerned as they were about preserving their own resources and robbing the Jews of everything they had, have invested large sums of money – far more than the costs of the killing operation, which are exactly known from Globocnik’s correspondence with Himmler – into a resettlement project? Or are the Jews supposed to have been simply shoved across the border and left there to die of starvation, exposure and disease? If so, wouldn’t that be similar to the way Stalin got rid of the “kulaks” and no less a crime than the mass killing at the extermination camps?

6. Why were there so many dead bodies at Treblinka in October of 1942 that they could not be sufficiently buried, thus creating a stench that befouled the air as far as Ostrow, 20 kilometers away, which led the local Wehrmacht commander to raise an official complaint about that stench?

7. How many whole bodies, and how many bodies reduced to ashes and other partial remains, fit into pits 7.5 meters deep in the burial area more than 20,000 square meters long and wide that was found after the war by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland? Was there room enough for, say, the 713,555 Jews from the General Government taken to Treblinka until 31.12.1942, according to the Höfle memorandum, or was there not?

Since I am not making my thesis about how many were or were-not killed but only asking what evidence is there for the murder-weapon, your questions about the transit-camp are irrelevant.

No, Reverend, those are the relevant questions. Your fussing about what exactly the murder weapon may have looked like doesn't matter a damn thing on the other hand.

I suggest you post them at CODOH and see if you can get some interest.

I have, as you well know. And as you are also aware, these questions are rather uncomfortable to you True Believers. That's why you run away from them, ain't that so?

Now, I’m creating another thread about the evidence developed for the Treblinka murder-weapon since it deserves its OWN place and is somewhat off-topic for the Leuchter Report.

That reads like a scream of utter desperation: "Pleeeaaase accept that we need to know what exactly the Treblinka gassing engine looked like". No, Reverend, we don't. However loudly you howl.

[Scott Smith]

Since I am not making my thesis about how many were or were-not killed but only asking what evidence is there for the murder-weapon, your questions about the transit-camp are irrelevant. I suggest you post them at CODOH and see if you can get some interest.

First, state your thesis. I don't think you actually have defensible one.

That nobody was gassed with diesel exhaust because of the technical absurdity of the idea--not even by Nazi Germany--and that very little evidence has been developed about gassings there at all. We have Moral Certainty and Mystery instead of a proper foundation of knowledge regarding what really happened. And I don't know what that is.

The problem is that any real thesis can't simply ignore evidence. You've already admited that people were killed, the evidence supports this. I liked to see your thesis that takes into account all your posts.

If it relates to the murder-weapon we need to look closely at it; otherwise it is probably not relevant to my thesis.

No, I don't "admit" that people were killed. I ASSUME it as true. I do not KNOW amount and method because I do not have any trustworthy facts. I was not there and neither were those naïve souls who think that they DO have trustworthy facts about this problem.

Therefore, I keep an open mind about the matter just as an agnostic does not KNOW the nature of God but does NOT say that God does-not exist like the atheist, because the atheist's negative-proof is no more certain than the religionist's.

That no one was gassed by diesel exhaust is the only thing that I've ever "Denied." I am a Skeptic. A skeptic can doubt all he wants; he waits for the Believer to demonstrate why he should believe. Failing that he does not believe. He believes that it is bad to Believe without reason.

Only a fool would post at CODOH as the rules make it balantly obvious that your posts will be censored. It's a bunch of rules that will nearly always be violated on any message board, the selective enforcement at CODOH allows one side to present an argument, while the other side is censored. It just shows the lack of depth the denier side has.

I have posted on CODOH using numerous pseudonyms many times and fooled the moderator(s) each time. Only once was a post censored without legitimate justification (in my opinion) and that was when I posted some SPAM from neo-German Ernst Klee without any posting comments, which is against the rules.

If you go there intending to cause trouble you will get it, because they do not want to be harassed, which is the preferred method of dealing with Deniers and can be seen by browsing any unmoderated forum where the subject is not banned altogether.

I have always stated that the problem with Codoh is that being a Revisionist site few opposition will post there because it gives Deniers a legitimate forum, so I have wanted more active moderation to spoonfeed anti-Revisionist posters so that there is a debate or real exchange of views. Unfortunately, this is very labor-intensive for moderators who have day-jobs where their employer doesn't pay them to surf the web.

Besides, most Codoh posters are content having a place to go that they can vent without being harassed. Nobody from either side really likes endless Is-Too/Is-Not anyway. Everyone is an amateur debater and amateurs probably believe that ideologues can be converted. As I see it, however, the point is not conversion but respect; when diametrically opposed sides can discuss things without violence and learn to respect alternative points-of-view enough to defend the other person's RIGHT to hold his view, then that is progress.

People then look for common ground and tolerate differences. Do you believe that Dan and I could be friends if that were not so? I'm strongly anti-religious and he is just the opposite. Yet we have never been cross against each other once. Neither of us, I believe, are going to try to remake the world in an image that harms the other for that reason--while internecine ideologues will kill and maim each other over far less. By the way, I haven't made friends defending some of the anti-Deniers either. But when someone gives an inch once in a while, sometimes an inch can take you a mile.

[Scott Smith]

That reads like a scream of utter desperation: "Pleeeaaase accept that we need to know what exactly the Treblinka gassing engine looked like". No, Reverend, we don't. However loudly you howl.

Hi Roberto,
You've never been able to ignore my fermented beverages yet. And I don't think you can now!

But what you hold as irrelevant matters little to me. Actually, I think that surprisingly-many people have lots more intellectual curiosity than you. And the more you howl, the more you make MY points by default: I DON'T have all the answers. Roberto DOES.

Intellectual diversity means agreeing-to-disagree. But I don't think that is tolerable to you, whenever YOU disagree, that is. Am I right?

[Roberto]

Xanthro wrote:
Scott wrote:
Since I am not making my thesis about how many were or were-not killed but only asking what evidence is there for the murder-weapon, your questions about the transit-camp are irrelevant. I suggest you post them at CODOH and see if you can get some interest.

First, state your thesis. I don't think you actually have defensible one.


That nobody was gassed with diesel exhaust because of the technical absurdity of the idea--not even by Nazi Germany—

That’s a thesis the Reverend still has to demonstrate. And if he could demonstrate it, his conclusions would still be irrelevant, as often explained.

and that very little evidence has been developed about gassings there at all.

That’s plain nonsense. There may be little detail about what exactly the gassing engine looked like, but such detail is not required either in order to establish what happened. The gassing procedure from arrival of the trains to commencement of body disposal, on the other hand, has been described in a detailed, coherent and coincident manner by defendants and witnesses at various trials alike. It is also complemented and corroborated by documentary evidence to the transports to the extermination camps and the stench of enormous quantities of insufficiently buried corpses (Why could the corpses not be sufficiently buried, Reverend?) emanating from Treblinka death camp, and by the physical traces of the burial sites found after the war at Treblinka and more recently at Belzec. So there is “very little evidence” only to those who refuse to look at the evidence.

We have Moral Certainty and Mystery instead of a proper foundation of knowledge regarding what really
happened.

Better cut out those hollow slogans, people are getting tired of them. The foundation of what we know about the extermination camps is conclusive eyewitness, documentary and physical evidence. “Moral certainties” exist only on the part of those who unreasonably shun that evidence because it doesn’t fit into their bubble of Faith.

No, I don't "admit" that people were killed. I ASSUME it as true. I do not KNOW amount and method because I do not have any trustworthy facts.

No, Reverend. You don’t know what you don’t want to know. What is more, you dismiss the facts as not “trustworthy” without having even looked at them in order to avoid looking at them and maybe, oh Mein Führer, even having to acknowledge that you have little or no arguments against them and that they leave little or no room for your “doubt”.

I was not there

That’s about the silliest argument I can think of on an issue like this.

and neither were those naïve souls who think that they DO have trustworthy facts about this problem.

Almost equally silly. Those “naïve souls” have at least looked at the evidence and followed it where it leads, something the very thought of seems to scare the Reverend shitless.

Therefore, I keep an open mind about the matter just as an agnostic does not KNOW the nature of God but does NOT say that God does-not exist like the atheist, because the atheist's negative-proof is no more certain than the religionist's.

Blah, blah, blah. Better cut it out, buddy. The number of readers becoming aware that the only “religionist” here is the Reverend himself is likely to be growing every day.

That no one was gassed by diesel exhaust is the only thing that I've ever "Denied."

Much a do about nothing. Tell us, Reverend, what the hell does it matter if the exhaust that killed all those people came from a diesel or from a gasoline engine?

I am a Skeptic.

So much that you blindly and uncritically believe whatever Uncle Brad, Uncle Freddy and other enlightened spirits would like you to believe, right? Come on, buddy, tell us another one.

A skeptic can doubt all he wants;

He just shouldn’t doubt his gurus. Their word is law, ain’t that so, Reverend? At least to the True Believer who masquerades as a “skeptic”.

he waits for the Believer to demonstrate why he should believe.

Exactly, Reverend. This skeptic is still waiting for a convincing demonstration of a) the relevance and b) the substance of your contentions.

Failing that he does not believe.

Well said, Reverend. That’s just why reasonable folks like Charles, Hans, Tarpon, Xanthro and myself have never fallen for your crap.

He believes that it is bad to Believe without reason.

Which is exactly what the Reverend does. He blindly believes that certain things incompatible with his ideology did not happen, not only without but completely against reason and evidence.

Quote:
Only a fool would post at CODOH as the rules make it balantly obvious that your posts will be censored. It's a bunch of rules that will nearly always be violated on any message board, the selective enforcement at CODOH allows one side to present an argument, while the other side is censored. It just shows the lack of depth the denier side has.

I have posted on CODOH using numerous pseudonyms many times and fooled the moderator(s) each time.

Why shouldn’t you have, Reverend? You’re one of the family, after all.

Only once was a post censored without legitimate justification (in my opinion) and that was when I posted some SPAM from neo-German Ernst Klee without any posting comments, which is against the rules.

“Spam” seems to be a “Revisionist” term for substantiated argumentation/information they are in no condition to counter. I have a proud collection of censored posts to show:

Open debate?
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... =240.topic

Open debate? (continuation)
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... =205.topic

More "open debate" ...
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... =211.topic

And I thought they had learned something ...
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... =174.topic

and I strongly doubt that the Reverend can demonstrate any of them to have been “spam” rather than substantiated arguments that the moderator feared his “Revisionist” proteges might have nothing to put up against.

If you go there intending to cause trouble you will get it, because they do not want to be harassed, which is the preferred method of dealing with Deniers and can be seen by browsing any unmoderated forum where the subject is not banned altogether.

Why, do these freaks consider being faced with the fallacy of their argumentation to be “harassment”? And I thought they wanted open debate …

I have always stated that the problem with Codoh is that being a Revisionist site few opposition will post there because it gives Deniers a legitimate forum,

Another of the Reverend’s statements that are dead wrong. The main reasons are the following: i) the outrageous nonsense you get to read there, which many people feel they shouldn’t waste their time on, and ii) the moderator’s censorship practices, which are what keeps the forum from being gradually taken over by reasonable posters. Imagine what would happen if two or three knowledgeable critics followed the example of “Cortagravatas” (my character) and there was no censorship. DvD’s nightmare, I would say.

so I have wanted more active moderation to spoonfeed anti-Revisionist posters so that there is a debate or real exchange of views.

What’s that, “more active moderation”? Moderation should be moderate rather than “active” if there is to be a “real exchange of views”, don't you think so?

Unfortunately, this is very labor-intensive for moderators who have day-jobs where their employer doesn't pay them to surf the web.

Cut out the crap, buddy. I wouldn’t be surprised if DvD did what he does for a living and got handsomely paid for it by Uncle Brad. He would also have much less work if he restricted his moderation to periodical controls of the use of offensive language, like the moderators of this forum do, instead of examining every post that comes along for pretexts of refusal before publishing it.

Besides, most Codoh posters are content having a place to go that they can vent without being harassed.

The poor sensitive babies obviously consider it “harassment” to be faced with arguments that take their nonsense apart. Hence they shun the hostile world of open debate and prefer to stay around the cozy Codoh fire under the moderator’s fatherly protection.

Nobody from either side really likes endless Is-Too/Is-Not anyway.

Dead wrong, buddy. I love it. And you hate it because you can’t cope with what is nothing other than a legitimate debating method.

Everyone is an amateur debater and amateurs probably believe that ideologues can be converted.

Well, I have long given up bringing ideologues like the Reverend to reason.

As I see it, however, the point is not conversion but respect; when diametrically opposed sides can discuss things without violence and learn to respect alternative points-of-view enough to defend the other person's RIGHT to hold his view, then that is progress.

Respect is earned, my dear boy. It requires views and arguments that deserve being respected. Propaganda lies such as the “Revisionists” propagate do not command any respect.

People then look for common ground and tolerate differences.

Common ground with hoaxers and liars? Toleration of hate propaganda? The Reverend must be joking.

Do you believe that Dan and I could be friends if that were not so? I'm strongly anti-religious and he is just the opposite. Yet we have never been cross against each other once. Neither of us, I believe, are going to try to remake the world in an image that harms the other for that reason--while internecine ideologues will kill and maim each other over far less.

A bad comparison. Religiousness and agnosticism are views that deserve to be respected. Hate propaganda is not. Besides, what makes Dan an amenable fellow – as opposed to the Reverend – is that he doesn’t keep sermonizing his opponents and trying to hammer his “truth” into their heads.

By the way, I haven't made friends defending some of the anti-Deniers either.

Looks like Smith’s peers think very little of his “respect and tolerance” stance. And he has shown damn little of it on this forum himself.

But when someone gives an inch once in a while, sometimes an inch can take you a mile.

The Reverend’s fervent hope that, to his great distress, never materialized on this forum. Too many fellow posters seem to have realized that the more you appease a bullying bigot, the more bullying he will become. The only language a bully understands is a blow in his snout. That’s the language I speak with Reverend Smith.

You've never been able to ignore my fermented beverages yet.

Let’s say that I’ve never resisted the temptation of throwing them into your arrogant face. That’s far more accurate.

And I don't think you can now!

It’s rather difficult, as a matter of fact. Taking apart the Reverend’s rambling is just too much fun.

But what you hold as irrelevant matters little to me.

It matters a lot to our more reasonable fellow posters. What matters to the Reverend ceased to matter to me a long time ago.

Actually, I think that surprisingly-many people have lots more intellectual curiousity than you.

What do you call “intellectual curiosity”? Pondering about the seven questions I asked you in my post of May 07, 2002 9:28 pm on this thread, questions that you keep running away from, Reverend? Or making a fuss about the utterly irrelevant question whether a gassing engine was or not a diesel engine? The latter I would call intellectual masturbation rather than intellectual curiosity.

And the more you howl,

I don’t howl, Reverend. That I leave to you.

the more you make MY points by default: I DON'T have all the answers.

I don’t want “all” the answers. Just some reasonable answers to those seven questions.

Roberto DOES.

No, he never said he did. He just has no problems with following the evidence where it leads – something that the Reverend seems to fear like a vampire fears the cross.

Intellectual diversity means agreeing-to-disagree.

Agreeing to disagree requires reasonable and sustainable arguments on both sides. Where one side produces propaganda lies, there is no room for agreement to disagree.

But I don't think that is tolerable to you, whenever YOU disagree, that is. Am I right?

No, you are wrong as usual. I may disagree with views and arguments that I respect. In what concerns the nonsense produced by your kind, however, “disagreement” is not the proper term. “Contempt” is far more appropriate.

[Erik]

Since I am not making my thesis about how many were or were-not killed but only asking what evidence is there for the murder-weapon, your questions about the transit-camp are irrelevant. I suggest you post them at CODOH and see if you can get some interest.

First, state your thesis. I don't think you actually have defensible one.

That nobody was gassed with diesel exhaust because of the technical absurdity of the idea--not even by Nazi Germany--and that very little evidence has been developed about gassings there at all. We have Moral Certainty and Mystery instead of a proper foundation of knowledge regarding what really happened. And I don't know what that is.

The problem is that any real thesis can't simply ignore evidence. You've already admited that people were killed, the evidence supports this. I liked to see your thesis that takes into account all your posts.

If it relates to the murder-weapon we need to look closely at it; otherwise it is probably not relevant to my thesis.

No, I don't "admit" that people were killed. I ASSUME it as true. I do not KNOW amount and method because I do not have any trustworthy facts. I was not there and neither were those naïve souls who think that they DO have trustworthy facts about this problem.

Therefore, I keep an open mind about the matter just as an agnostic does not KNOW the nature of God but does NOT say that God does-not exist like the atheist, because the atheist's negative-proof is no more certain than the religionist's.

That no one was gassed by diesel exhaust is the only thing that I've ever "Denied." I am a Skeptic. A skeptic can doubt all he wants; he waits for the Believer to demonstrate why he should believe. Failing that he does not believe. He believes that it is bad to Believe without reason.

Only a fool would post at CODOH as the rules make it balantly obvious that your posts will be censored. It's a bunch of rules that will nearly always be violated on any message board, the selective enforcement at CODOH allows one side to present an argument, while the other side is censored. It just shows the lack of depth the denier side has.

I have posted on CODOH using numerous pseudonyms many times and fooled the moderator(s) each time. Only once was a post censored without legitimate justification (in my opinion) and that was when I posted some SPAM from neo-German Ernst Klee without any posting comments, which is against the rules.

If you go there intending to cause trouble you will get it, because they do not want to be harassed, which is the preferred method of dealing with Deniers and can be seen by browsing any unmoderated forum where the subject is not banned altogether.

I have always stated that the problem with Codoh is that being a Revisionist site few opposition will post there because it gives Deniers a legitimate forum, so I have wanted more active moderation to spoonfeed anti-Revisionist posters so that there is a debate or real exchange of views. Unfortunately, this is very labor-intensive for moderators who have day-jobs where their employer doesn't pay them to surf the web.

Besides, most Codoh posters are content having a place to go that they can vent without being harassed. Nobody from either side really likes endless Is-Too/Is-Not anyway. Everyone is an amateur debater and amateurs probably believe that ideologues can be converted. As I see it, however, the point is not conversion but respect; when diametrically opposed sides can discuss things without violence and learn to respect alternative points-of-view enough to defend the other person's RIGHT to hold his view, then that is progress.

People then look for common ground and tolerate differences. Do you believe that Dan and I could be friends if that were not so? I'm strongly anti-religious and he is just the opposite. Yet we have never been cross against each other once. Neither of us, I believe, are going to try to remake the world in an image that harms the other for that reason--while internecine ideologues will kill and maim each other over far less. By the way, I haven't made friends defending some of the anti-Deniers either. But when someone gives an inch once in a while, sometimes an inch can take you a mile.

Since

Poor ET seems to have a language problem

, he is always grateful when someone who obviously hasn’t a language problem formulates thoughts that he can agree with without any problem.

Thanks, Mr Smith!

Of course, this cannot be compared with the problems solved by the following approach:

As to Medorjurgen, he follows the evidence where it leads because he is genuinely interested in the historical facts, and he doesn’t give a damn about what the likes of the philosopher believe.

http://quantum.phpwebhosting.com/~marcu ... 8&start=50

But, of course, agreement leads to “kind” :

As to the “kind” that I refer to, that is the result not of any prejudice but of the assessment of the arguments of people like yourself. I’ve been at it long enough to read out the pattern of a True Believer’s stance, believe me. You folks are not exactly very imaginative and differ little from each other in your argumentation, like you had been to the same school.

http://quantum.phpwebhosting.com/~marcu ... 6&start=75

If the sceptic school of Scott Smith is a “True Believer’s stance”, then I REALLY has a language problem!!

[Roberto]

Since

Quote:
Poor ET seems to have a language problem


, he is always grateful when someone who obviously hasn’t a language problem formulates thoughts that he can agree with without any problem.

Translation: Since ET has a problem bringing across his “Revisionist” nonsense, he is grateful for the Reverend’s repetitive proficiency in doing so.

Of course, this cannot be compared with the problems solved by the following approach:


Quote:
As to Medorjurgen, he follows the evidence where it leads because he is genuinely interested in the historical facts, and he doesn’t give a damn about what the likes of the philosopher believe.

http://quantum.phpwebhosting.com/~marcu ... 8&start=50

Exactly, my dear nutter. There are seven questions I asked on this thread that your hero keeps running away from, for instance. Care to give it a try?

But, of course, agreement leads to “kind” :

Quote:
As to the “kind” that I refer to, that is the result not of any prejudice but of the assessment of the arguments of people like yourself. I’ve been at it long enough to read out the pattern of a True Believer’s stance, believe me. You folks are not exactly very imaginative and differ little from each other in your argumentation, like you had been to the same school.

http://quantum.phpwebhosting.com/~marcu ... 6&start=75

A kind that my observation has lead me to conclude ET belongs to as well, despite his language problem and his attempts to dress up his nonsense “philosophically”.

If the sceptic school of Scott Smith is a “True Believer’s stance”, then I REALLY has a language problem!!

Not only a language problem, but a serious problem of inversion of terms and concepts that smacks of a psychological disturbance, a dishonest agenda or both. Or can our philosopher explain what “skepticism” that shuns conclusive evidence, focuses on irrelevancies and blindly follows the teachings of gurus with an obvious ideological motivation could possibly have to do with skepticism?

[Erik]

Quote:
But, of course, agreement leads to “kind” :

Quote:
As to the “kind” that I refer to, that is the result not of any prejudice but of the assessment of the arguments of people like yourself. I’ve been at it long enough to read out the pattern of a True Believer’s stance, believe me. You folks are not exactly very imaginative and differ little from each other in your argumentation, like you had been to the same school.

" target=_blankhttp://quantum.phpwebhosting.com/~marcuswendel/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1786&start=75


A kind that my observation has lead me to conclude ET belongs to as well, despite his language problem and his attempts to dress up his nonsense “philosophically”.

Quote:
If the sceptic school of Scott Smith is a “True Believer’s stance”, then I REALLY have a language problem!!


Not only a language problem, but a serious problem of inversion of terms and concepts that smacks of a psychological disturbance, a dishonest agenda or both. Or can our philosopher explain what “skepticism” that shuns conclusive evidence, focuses on irrelevancies and blindly follows the teachings of gurus with an obvious ideological motivation could possibly have to do with skepticism?

I can’t help it, but Orwell comes to mind.

A Google search found the following two quotes that have application here.

"Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."
- George Orwell, 1984

Roberto might argue that I “double-think” when I profess skepticism but harbour belief.

Double-think: The faculty of simultaneously harbouring two conflicting beliefs - coined by George Orwell in his Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary. (Chambers 1977).

But according to this quote you double-think if you harbour two conflicting BELIEFS!

Immanuel Kant considered an antinomy – perhaps another term for double-think? – necessary to awake you from your “dogmatic slumber”.

(Encycl. Britannica : antinomy, “…in philosophy, contradiction, real or apparent, between two principles or conclusions, both of which seem equally justified; it is nearly synonymous with the term paradox.”)

Caygill’s “A Kant Dictionary”(Blackwell) and the article “the antinomy of pure reason” : “Kant considered the antinomy ‘a decisive experiment, which must necessarily expose any error lying hidden in the assumptions of reason’.”

“It is the search for ‘absolute completeness’ on the basis of spatially and temporally limited experience that leads reason into the antinomies. Kant considers it ‘unavoidable’ and ‘natural’ for reason to do so, but by presenting the antinomy hopes both to shake reason from the ‘slumber of fictitious conviction’ while not casting it into ‘sceptical despair’ – the ‘euthanasia of pure reason’!! – or leading it to the ‘death of sound philosophy’ in the dogmatic attachment to a single position”(op cit, sid 77)

Oscar Wilde said something like : “skepticism is the beginning of belief”. I’m not sure what he meant, but he might have been a “Kantian” in considering it necessary to doubt in order to believe, since dogma or despair are the alternatives(?).

Roberto might want to skip “the beginning” of the Wilde quote? “Holocaust skepticism is Nazi belief”, or something like that?

It is “double-talk” rather than “double-think”?

Or can our philosopher explain what “skepticism” that shuns conclusive evidence, focuses on irrelevancies and blindly follows the teachings of gurus with an obvious ideological motivation could possibly have to do with skepticism?

The sneer quote on the kind of skepticism that shuns etc, does not exclude the existence of a relevant form of skepticism – the one that doubts the irrelevant skepticism, maybe?

The irrelevant sneer variety perhaps is more of a “thought crime”?

Here is a definition from a Google search :

crimethink - To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. To doubt any of the principles of Ingsoc.
All crimes begin with a thought. If you can control a person's thoughts, you can stop crime before it happens. Orwell put it this way : "Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death, Thoughtcrime is death....The essential crime that contains all others in itself."

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns_frames.html

Is it hatespeech? “Hatespeech is death. Hatespeech does not entail death, Hatespeech is death…the essential crime that contains all others in itself”.

Once the definition is introduced, it must be stipulated and directive. Its extension must be determined.

Here another Orwell quote fits in :

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

The extension of the crimethink definition is determined by those who control the present.

[Roberto]

Orwell comes to mind indeed.

The “Revisionist” tactic of inverting the meaning of terms, such as dubbing themselves “skeptics” although they actually adhere to a quasi-religious creed that allows for no skepticism, and deriding as “believers” those who actually do nothing other than apply common sense and critical thinking to the nonsensical articles of faith that “Revisionists” adhere to, is so Orwellian that good old George would probably rotate in his grave if he knew what he is being used for by these freaks.

Truth is Propaganda, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery – I wonder if ET has ever read Orwell’s 1984 and, if so, if he understood anything of it.

[…]O'Brien turned away. He took a pace or two up and down. Then he continued less vehemently: 'The first thing for you to understand is that in this place there are no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious persecutions of the past. In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisitlon. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed them while they were still unrepentant: in fact, it killed them because they were unrepentant. Men were dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the Inquisitor who burned him. Later, in the twentieth century, there were the totalitarians, as they were called. There were the German Nazis and the Russian Communists. The Russians persecuted heresy more cruelly than the Inquisition had done. And they imagined that they had learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew, at any rate, that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victims to public trial, they deliberately set themselves to destroy their dignity. They wore them down by torture and solitude until they were despicable, cringing wretches, confessing whatever was put into their mouths, covering themselves with abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one another, whimpering for mercy. And yet after only a few years the same thing had happened over again. The dead men had become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them true. And above all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will never have existed.'
[…]
The faint, mad gleam of enthusiasm had come back into O'Brien's face. He knew in advance what O'Brien would say. That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it. You could see it in his face. O'Brien knew everything. A thousand times better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what lies and barbarities the Party kept them there. He had understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose. What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy? 'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore-' He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five. 'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.' He pulled the lever back and continued: 'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others ; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were- cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'

Fortunately my situation is not what Winston Smith’s was in relation to O’Brien. The lunatics are neither more intelligent than I am, nor do they have any power over me.