Holocaust Dropped From Some UK Schools 1286
dteichman2 writes "It appears that some UK schools are ignoring the Holocaust. A government-backed study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, found that some teachers are reluctant to teach history lessons on the Holocaust for fear of offending Muslim students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. Additionally, similar problems are being encountered with lessons on the Crusades because these lessons contradict teachings from local mosques."
Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
That Is Pathetic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That Is Pathetic. (Score:4, Informative)
Or at least thay would be if it were true.
Here's a hint for you left-ponders -- the Daily Mail is the UK
equivalent of Fox: a racist rag which will print anything which puts
muslims, women, gays, trades-unionists or the working class in a
bad light. Check snopes before posting a story from them.
Re:That Is Pathetic. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That Is Pathetic. (Score:5, Funny)
I call it K`Lyre's Law.
Re:That Is Pathetic. (Score:5, Insightful)
This deserves +5 informative - I read the summary, became briefly angry, and then thought, "wait - I bet that link is to the Daily Mail". A quick mouseover later and I am smiling a wry smile.
The Daily Mail will blow any story out of proportion, and put the most sensationalist spin on it possible, because it knows that if a story makes someone angry, they're more likely to buy the paper to find out more about it.
For the record, if I thought the story was true then I would be just as angry as any other reasonable-minded person. But because of its source, I'm strongly inclined to disbelieve it's anywhere near as bad as the summary makes it out to be. Also, I'm not going to RTFA as I don't want to give the bigots advertising revenue.
Re:That Is Pathetic. (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't dismiss this issue altogether simply because it came from the Daily Mail; if their slant on it could be taken at face value I would consider it cause for serious concern. Unfortunately, the Mail in itself is not trustworthy; I prefer to read these things via a less potentially biased source before passing judgement.
Mail's founder admitted formula is "Daily Hate" (Score:5, Informative)
To quote one article [guardian.co.uk]
More here. [google.co.uk] Can't say whether they're as bad as Fox News or not, because I haven't seen a significant amount of its output (due to living in the UK). However, I personally wouldn't trust the Daily Mail as far as I could throw it.
Anyway, there is probably some truth in the story, but I expect it's been exaggerated, distorted and "enhanced" by selective reporting. For example, I remember reading a story about ecstasy in New Scientist a few years back. It was all about a study which claimed that there were serious effects of the drug on the brain. However, the story also included plausible-sounding criticism and rebuttal of the study by other equally reputable scientists.
I saw the same story in the Daily Mail later that day. It also included the details about the study and the possibly dangerous effects of the drug, and was written in a moderately "reputable" manner. However, unlike NS's report, they didn't hint that there was *any* scepticism about the findings, let alone print those views. Result was that the effect of the story was very different, more one-sided and scaremongering. Fact-by-fact, the Daily Mail story was correct, but it lied by omission.
Mind you, the Daily Mail is full of scaremongering health stories; that's a staple of the front page for them. Along with reports on how something the government has done is going to affect the value of your house, and right-wing political half-truths.
Re:Mail's founder admitted formula is "Daily Hate" (Score:5, Insightful)
That should not be assumed here. If I don't know all the facts of a political story for sure, and read it in a newspaper with a known reputation for right-wing bias and pandering to its readership to sell papers, I'm quite entitled to be sceptical.
Please read this comment of mine [slashdot.org], which you'll note was posted almost 90 minutes before your comment. Salient points emphasised (here) in bold:-
And, as I made clear, my message was *not* an "ad hominem" attack against the facts. It's a valid questioning as to whether the facts as presented are accurate. Since you misinterpreted it as such, it may be true that *you* need to look at logical thinking in *your* country- starting with yourself.
This isn't denying that 3 + 5 = 8. At best we know that the right-hand side is 8, but we aren't sure what the two numbers on the left are. Am I going to take the word of someone with a vested interest in 3s and 5s? Am I heck! They might be 4 + 4, or 6 + 1, or whatever...
Re:Your Fox post was flamebait. (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I think if you paid a little closer attention to what they report, how they report it and what they don't report I think you would find their slant pretty incredible, and as I said, their tactics somewhat genius.
Re:Your Fox post was flamebait. (Score:5, Informative)
You are aware that they do things like assessing reporters politcal loyalties during the interview process and giving regular memos directing their newscasters to do things to support Republicans [wonkette.com], right? You aware that even the CEO admits using it as a propaganda mouthpiece to sell the Iraq War [wikipedia.org], right?
If you can't tell that sort of stuff by watching them, then they're succeeding.
Re:That Is Pathetic...There is more (Score:5, Insightful)
And it won't be for years, and probably never will, because whether people want to openly admit it or not... Arabs are considered animals and there blood is not as valuable as Jewish or Western blood.
Re:That Is Pathetic...There is more (Score:5, Insightful)
These are Palestenian REFUGEES. And where are they refugees from?
There own homes
50 years ago those people were kicked out of there homes and forced to leave. They have no identity, no home. They aren't citizens of Lebanon.
To put this in perspective how would you feel if someone kicked you out of your home with all of your neighbors and you had no place to go but a neighboring country. You and your neighbors and family members have no home no identity no citezenship and have to live in slum camps for 50 years.
You may not rob a bank, or blow up a building, but your grandson might.
I am Lebanese, and while I understand that you might not be as educated about these issues as I am, or for that matter even care, but I want you to realize that this is a SERIOUS problem, and it is only getting worse with ignorance and neglect. I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but I believe that ALL people deserve basic human rights.
Re:That Is Pathetic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That Is Pathetic. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're inferring emotion, based upon your own preconceptions. Moderation is a numerical system. Things are not "violently" moderated. They might be "quickly" or "repeatedy" moderated. Can you show me an example of a post that mentions the holocaust or holocaust denial and which was not either completely offtopic, or an emotional appeal instead of a logical argument?
Now don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of discussion of the holocaust. My grandfather did not like to talk about the war, but he made a point of telling all of us kids that the deniers were full of crap because he saw the furnaces full of bones and the camps. For the most part, however, the topic is not pertinent to subjects being discussed on Slashdot and an impartial audience probably should mod them down, regardless of nationality.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Almost all of the survivors, verbally or in their written memoirs, remember a dream which frequently recurred during the nights of imprisonment, varied in its detail but uniform in its substance: they had returned home, and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved person, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to. In the most typical (and most cruel) form, they interlocutor turned and left in silence. [Primo Levi: The Drowned and the Saved]
And the diatribe issued by a member of the SS to camp inmates upon arrival:
However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed: they will say that they are the exaggerations of Allied propoganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you. We will be the ones to dictate the history of the [camps] [Simon Wiesenthal: The murderers are amongst us]
The nazis had such an effective shredding campaign, we only know the death toll is between 4 and 8 million. Inmates themselves were responsible for furnace operation and ash disposal, teams being regularly disposed of to prevent information leaks. The retreat at the end of the war was accompanied by systematic recall/slaughter of prisoners, and was given more importance than millitary strategy. Holocaust sympathisers are making the holocaust perpetrators win from beyond the noose. And yes, you may invoke godwin's law.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Some estimates calculate that one possible reason Germany lost the war in the east was due to none other than their "cleansing" campaign. It took away men and resources as well as solidified the populace in the east against them. Had they done the opposite, and behaved as the liberators from Russian oppression that there were first hailed as, the outcome could have been drastically different....
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Oddly enough, JW's were the only group given the opportunity to sign a paper denouncing their faith and walk away. Very few of them did it.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Gypsies were also the target of systematic extermination.
The Roma most definitely were (Score:5, Insightful)
If they weren't victimized as systematically, why so much official propaganda and policies on the subject? See Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porajmos [wikipedia.org]
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I'm making a mistake attempting to have a rational discussion of this on the internet, but here goes.
The most prominent primary target of the Nazi's killing spree was indeed the Jewish people, and their story of systematic, legitimized oppression, and how the general German populace went along with it by degrees is the most harrowing. It teaches us that when you start institutionally marginalizing a people or class of persons, even if only slightly at first, you go down a road which may lead to something truly horrific.
That having been said, the current state of holocaust education effectively denies the deaths of the millions of non-Jews by focusing exclusively on the deaths of the Jews. It invalidates their suffering. You yourself implicitly said it was unimportant. And thus, people grow up thinking that genocide is some kind of rare thing which confines itself to one people at a time, and not only is this not correct, but the message is injured. Think I'm wrong? Ask an average American high school kid about Darfur, or the Armenians, or the purges in the Soviet Union, or Cambodia.
I would rather teach kids that if they start letting intolerance into their hearts, not only is it going to be the people of x super-vilified minority who go against the wall, it's going to be your little sister with a bum leg, your evangelical uncle, the sad beggars in downtown, those two boys holding hands, anyone who voices a dissident opinion, and everyone you know who's not white, brown, yellow, or whatever the uber-race is supposed to be.
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Actually... (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Mutilating infant boys without their consent isn't much at all.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
(FWIW, I am not a muslim.)
Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)
Well I can 100% guarantee that it won't be Jerry Falwell.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Do most people in the US talk to muslims? I hear condemnation of suicide bombings from muslims all the time.
As I'm sure you're figured out by now, Falwell died last week. I think your argument is for more muslim televangelists. Sure, there are very vocal TV personalities who refer to themselves as christians and loudly proclaim all sorts of things. Sure televangelists would go on TV and and denounce people who set off bombs, but I bet they would not refer to them as "radical christian bombers" and neither would the papers. Did you hear anyone call the unibomber a "christian radical bomber?" What about the oklahoma bombers? Most of the suicide bombers are not acting for religious reasons so much as political reasons. It is just that religion and politics are as tied together there as they are in the US, but there they admit it.
Why don't you learn to speak arabic and get a satellite dish. Then start watching religious and political programs from the middle east and report back as to how many christians there are on said TV denouncing the actions of the US military in the middle east.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you agree that there's a difference between privately admitting something to friends, and publicly proclaiming it to everyone?
I think your argument is for more muslim televangelists.
It doesn't have to be televangelists. I would just as much expect Sean Hannity -- as much as I might otherwise disagree with him -- to cleverly mock their claim to being Christian.
Did you hear anyone call the unibomber a "christian radical bomber?" What about the oklahoma bombers?
No, because they didn't make their Christianity a defining part of their justification for violence. Now, I'd agree there's some asymmetry in the use of "radical Christian" vs. "radical Muslim", but that wasn't my point. My point was that Christians would be more vocal about getting across the idea that those people aren't following Christianity if it were widely believed otherwise.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
The term "radical" means that you and your group are in the practice of killing people who don't follow your beliefs. The only "radical Christians" that I can think of are abortion-doctor murders. There hasn't been a whole lot of this; they target individuals; and they don't target random people in the general public. OTOH, radical Muslims murder about 50,000 people a year and are actively pursuing nuclear weapons. Radical Christians are common criminals, whereas radical Muslims are a significant threat to civilization.
I'd say there's quite an asymmetry the dangers these groups present.
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I am sick of hearing about "the tiny minority" (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares what a minority of muslims think and how much influence and power they project, when the MAJORITY of the united states desired to invade an innocent country for no other reason than imperialistic agression.
That the most militarily advanced country in the world is trigger-happy is a far far far bigger problem. (Don't forget that USA foreign policy - meddling in the middle east - is more or less the entire reason that many of these muslims are vocal).
"A LOT, tens of millions(!), of hate-filled Muslims worldwide, ready to erupt into violence. "
an approximation:
300 million americans, roughly 50% of whom supported GWB's war of agression. That is 150 million americans who vastly threaten the security of the rest of the world.
Why do you focus so much on these moslems? The problem is a bit closer to home than you think mate.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyways, if you think that Muslims hate Jews "Just Coz", then you may want to consider the fact that the best time in Jewish history (according to most Jewish historians) was actually when Jews lived in a Muslim state. Here's a titbit from the pages of history that also gets skipped in history classes:
http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/jewish/jew-history.h
Even under Israel, the vast majority of Jews do not have the ideological freedom they used to. If you are willing to have pre-conceived ideas challenged, perhaps you'll find the following interesting:
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=5006&aid
http://www.notinmyname.org/ [notinmyname.org]
http://www.nkusa.org/ [nkusa.org]
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/index.c
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/jews_against_zi
http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/jewish_anti_zio
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7887&aid
DISCLAIMER: I am a Muslim. I have Jewish friends. Lots of them. Jews and Muslims have lived together for centuries, it is just not true that Muslims and Jews hate each other out of some culturally ingrained ideological perception. It is the nationalist incarnation of the Jewish identity in the militant form known as "Zionism" that Muslims and indeed most Jews oppose. Unfortunately, Zionism seems to have the support of the political right in western countries, which is why it *appears* that Muslims oppose the west. We do not. We oppose the occupation being carried out by Israel, in the same say that we oppose any injustice caused by anybody, including other Muslims.
Another titbit that you won't hear mentioned in school: No real Muslim supports the governments of Saudi Arabia or the other monarchical crackpots currently referred to as "the leaders of the Muslim world". These tinpot dictators were put in power at the end of WWI by the allied powers to secure their interests over middle eastern assets such as the Suez Canal and this new stuff called "oil". This policy of putting puppet regimes is so commonplace I don't understand how people can think that fucktards like the king of Saudi Arabia even remotely represent the attitudes and beliefs of Muslims when they have such an incestuous relationship with with the western neo-nobles like the Bush family.
Holy crap, I really intended for that to be a short post.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
"Let us not become so tolerant that we tolerate intolerance".
I think this is that kind of a scenario. And, as always, complacency will only lead further into oblivion. If this is what is happening, then it really is time for the UK to wake up. Really, that time has already come and gone, but if they finally do realize what is happening, we can forget that they're late to the party, and embrace the fact that they showed up at all.
However, the hard question is what is there to be done about this. Frankly, I am hard-pressed to see a solution to this crisis. As the percentage of the people who espouse these beliefs rises within the UK population, they are going to feel increasingly empowered, both by the virtue of their numbers, as well as due to the apparent utter impotence of the British in the face of their assault.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's a perfect statement here. To me, this situation is unbelievable.
"The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'."
By that logic, schools in the US shouldn't teach about slavery, fearing a confrontation of an 'anti-black' sentiment among racist hicks.
I don't think any reasonable person could argue that the holocaust didn't happen. If there's a strong anti-Semitic view in the mosques of England, I suppose there's nothing we can do about that. But that doesn't erase the fact that the holocaust happened and school children should learn about it.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Equilibrium?!
This is called appeasement... or better yet - catering to the demands of terrorists. Yes, you heard me. If a teacher is afraid to teach the [i]history[/i] of the Holocaust (and let us not kid ourselves - it's not a P.C. kind of fear, but fear of disruptive behaviour and violence), then this is terrorism by definition.
Remember - "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
The history has been toned down A LOT in most US schools, to the extent that if it is mentioned at all, it's just Custer's last stand.
Unfortunately, it appears that a lot of americans are uncomfortable with the idea that America has just as bad a history as all those evil-doers out there. And because of that discomfort, the subject is dropped or sevearly watered down.
The cut has already been made. The only question is was this appeasement or terrorism?
Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
The Iroquois were slavers, and had a policy of killing anyone they regarded as surplus. Most of what we think of as "plains Indians" were originally refugees from Iroquois slaughter, dating from shortly before whites made a significant push past the Appalachians. My friend's grandmother (born about 1810) told him tales about the westward migration and its causes, as told to her by *her* grandmother, who was one of the refugees who fled the Iroquois.
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact is that most of the Indian deaths were from disease and infection. There were a whole host of diseases brought from Europe with which the native Americans had no resistance due to geographic isolation. Without a land connection to tropical locations in Africa and Asia where disease breeds even today, those diseases were unable to travel to locations in Australia and especially the Americas. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Americas was a relatively disease-free paradise. However, the native Americans ended up paying once the Europeans did arrive.
Every single European expedition that went through resulted in mass deaths of natives in that area. That's why when British colonists landed in North America there were large areas already cleared and ready for farming. The native people had recently lived there, but had died from mass disease.
And before anyone thinks the Europeans did this on purpose, let me remind everyone that germ theory came about hundreds of years later. The Europeans certainly did not know that merely coming in contact with the native Americans would end in mass death.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
How exactly do you consider NOT teaching a subject specifically because a teacher is afraid of offending the ignorant to be concentrating on education?
"Equilibrium"? What? Giving equal time to the uninformed? That's the role of TV news and radio talk shows, not of a teacher.
This is just like the whole nonsense with creationism in the U.S. So, 40% of people in the United States think that creationism is just as valid a scientific theory as evolution by natural selection. The answer to that is not to pander to them, but to educate them.
Beating a dead horse (Score:4, Insightful)
The usual pro-confederacy arguments are that they were fighting for states' rights and not for slavery. These are both patently false.
The southern states were the ones arguing for federal supremacy over states. They wanted the federal government to enforce slavery laws in free states. They argued that a slave owner should retain ownership of those slaves while traveling in free states, and that slaves who escaped to free states should be returned to their owners. Hardly a states rights position!
The war of 1812 was a disaster, economically, for the New England states which depended so heavily on trade. They spent three years getting up the nerve to send a delegation to Washington to bring up the subject of secession, but the war ended before they could do anything. The southern states were the most vocal in condemning secession as treason. How interesting that when their ox was being gored, they acted immediately, not even trying to negotiate with the federal government. So much for honor!
As for economics, which is the usual neo-confedrate blame for northern aggression, it was slavery which put the south at a disadvantage, in that it made labor so cheap that industrialization was too expensive. It really hurt the small farmers who had to do their own labor. I have never understood why poor whites, then or now, backed the slavery system which kept them in poverty. No self-employed man can compete with slaves. The expense of overseers doesn't come close to compensating for the cheap maintenance (crowded crappy housing, no elders to take care of) of slaves.
It was a war for the rich white southerners. Nobody else would have benefited from secession.
Re:Sunshine and ridicule would work wonders (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sunshine and ridicule would work wonders (Score:5, Insightful)
Should we have protesters outside of christian churches every time there is a sermon on 1 Timothy (it is blatantly sexist)? Should we chant and jeer outside churches that teach the parts of the bible about male genital manipulation (circumcision)?
Sure, why not?
Idiotic delusional nonsense is just that regardless of what the particular trivial details that are the only distinctions between these various "absolute truths", so they should be ridiculed mercilessly until people are just too fucking embarrassed to be associated with such idiocy.
Where's the problem exactly?
Re:Sunshine and ridicule would work wonders (Score:4, Insightful)
If that is what it takes. Listen up Citizen, we are in a battle for the survival of our civilization, not just a single nation state. One side is going to win and one lose.. or in the words of Ming the Merciless, "be willing to settle for less." I'm as simplistic as Reagan, "We win, they lose." is the only outcome I plan on accepting.
> Face it: if we start exposing religions for being racist, sexist, and overflowing with evil anti-social ideologies, they will all crumble, not just extremist Islam.
Yea, if carried to the extreme. But it wouldn't. Assume we (we being followers of what could broadly be called Western Civilivation) grew a pair and started holding the Religion of Peace(tm) to account for their more dangerous notions. Well it is safe to assume that under the scrutiny there would be a trend to moderate in some while others decided their host country was no longer hospitable and return to somewhere where Sharia prevails. As Islam (at least as taught and practiced in the West) moderated there being less to poke fun at, we would be less motivated to poke fun at em. Eventually a balance would be reached, much like Christian churches and the Enlightenment reached a stable relationship by moderating some of it's more antiquated notions.
Much like the Spanish Inquisition isn't likely to come knocking anymore, Islam has to give up a few of it's more uncivilized traditions if it is to be permitted to live in civilized lands.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring the scientifically-confirmable, historical reality of the holocaust hurts others. Lots of others. I don't think it's going too far to say that a pedagogical approach like this is *catastrophic to any society that implements it. You could end up with an entire generation that doesn't know where fascism tends, and what the real human cost of demagoguery is.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
A reason for teaching of history's atrocities is to show people what horrible things can happen. It's so we don't repeat our mistakes, and that the educated citizenry can identify trends that could lead to a repeat and (hopefully) do something about it.
Could something like the holocaust happen again? Sadly, yes. But the likelihood of it happening is diminished with education.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Cambodia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge [wikipedia.org]
Rwanda: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1288230.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Darfur: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict [wikipedia.org]
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I don't think that way, but that seems to be the only difference.
Mod me down if you must.
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
And it predates the Holocaust. Actually, Hitler likely viewed it as a successful proof-of-concept.
Fear of Islam (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons why I changed my mind on the Danish cartoons that enraged the muslim world so much.
Fear cannot be allowed to dictate what we say or teach.
If you say what you think and someone threatens your life for saying it, they have broken the law in most civilized countries. Send them to jail.
In this case it's not even a matter of belief. It's a matter of fact. The Holocaust happened and denying it is in itself illegal in some countries. Rewriting history is a very serious thing, even though it's being done on a daily basis. History is there for us to learn from so we do not repeat it. We better learn our lessons or we're bound to make the same mistakes over and over.
Re:Fear of Islam (Score:4, Insightful)
Nevermind the fact that the press couldn't accurately and objectively tell the Danish cartoon story without showing the cartoons. No reader or viewer had any idea what the problem was about without viewing the materials themselves. In today's day and age, accurately and objectively telling the news is a secondary objective for news stations. Their primary goals are diversity and inclusiveness in order to keep their viewers and advertisers happy and the money rolling in.
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him." [usc.edu]
Obviously muslims teach this to children starting at 4-year-olds.
Don't forget
After all there is nothing wrong with islamic ideology, right ? Well, except that they kill dozens of their own children in hopes of wounding a single Jew. Except that they beat everyone into submission, except their complete opposition to free speech, except
Maybe it's just that you don't know about repression (english translation of the arabic word "islam"). So here's a message in hopes of making this clear.
Obviously it won't stop at Jews. They are equally against Christians, just not as public, equally against cripples (because allah punished them for a reason you know), and, God forbid you'd ask what "allah" does to gays (they are to be buried alive on sight, even if some man were to be raped by a gay attacker, he is to be buried alive). That is what the prophet did. That is what every muslim is striving to do.
Illustrations
-> gaza/westbank
-> iraq
-> afghanistan
-> mecca (non-muslims are to be killed on sight in mecca in case you didn't know)
-> cartoon crises
->
urgh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:urgh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:urgh (Score:5, Informative)
So it's being made compulsory:
Scaremongering (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't aware that holocaust denial was a part of the Muslim religion, especially since their holy books etc were written long before it actually happened and I'm not sure exactly what teaching about the Crusades goes on inside mosques but if this teaching is correct then teaching it in schools as well will just re-enforce the lessons and lead to better exam grades for Muslims.
Old news. (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have schools ignoring real science to avoid offending radical Christians.
Re:Old news. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not saying creationism is valid science by any stretch, but the ethcical comparison simply does not exist.
Re:Old news. (Score:4, Informative)
Accomodating religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Accomodating religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed with a reminder: Allowing someone to practice their beliefs is good. Insisting everyone switch to yours is not.
Re:Accomodating religion (Score:4, Informative)
With one exception, none of the other leaders of Germany at the time said anything about Christian belief. They used the language in speeches now and then, but they overwhelmingly fell into one of three categories: A cult-ish series of beliefs around the divinity of nature (strangely not all that different from more modern new age beliefs), or "German Christian" basically Christianity with Christ replaced with German figures including Hitler himself or in science and in particular, Social Darwinism.
Re:Accomodating religion (Score:4, Informative)
The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not commit itself to any particular denomination
You are aware that "Positive Christianity" was a code word for German Christian yes? And you do know what exactly the German Christians believed yes? If the answers to either of those questions was no, you need to go do some more homework. If the answers to the two questions were yes, you clearly have no interest in factual discussion just a misguided sense of personal hatred and vitriol that apparently supersedes your knowledge of Historical fact.
And again, your post fails to address some points that were raised. Namely that Hitler forced the Church to allow him to directly appoint bishops, ended the political party that was affiliated with the church, tried to destroy the confessing church, and threw in jail the leadership of both the catholic and the protest church. Moreover they forced as many churches as possible into the German Church movement (which created the confessing church in the first place), forced a pact onto Rome, etc.
You can dig up a single speech, and completely miss the context of it to make your point. I can dig up a lifetime of animosity towards the Church, Hitler putting to death it's leaders, and his statement that he would destroy the Protestent Church because it would not support him.
For anyone else interested in honest research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Mysticism [wikipedia.org]
Private statements
Hitler's private statements are more mixed. There are negative statements about Christianity reported by Hitler's intimates, Goebbels, Speer, and Bormann.[10] Joseph Goebbels, for example, notes in a diary entry in 1939: "The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay." Albert Speer reports a similar statement: "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"[11] In the Hossbach Memorandum Hitler is recorded as saying that "only the disintegrating effect of Christianity, and the symptoms of age" were responsible for the demise of the Roman empire.[12]
Why is this a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have *got* to be sh!tt!ng me. (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to "lest we forget"???
You know, there's verifiable evidence of the Holocaust. Photos. Movies. Graveyards. Camps. Survivors.
This is a dark day for the human race.
So what about the Jewish people? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure I can see the reasoning though (being serious now): If we piss of the Jews they will complain vs. if we piss off the Muslims the radicals will riot, burn things, etc.
The day we stop discussing facts/history because somebody may be offended is the day we are all screwed.
Revisionism (Score:4, Insightful)
LOOK AT THE DATE OF THE ARTICLE (Score:5, Informative)
It's a pretty notorious one. Cmon editors.
Re:LOOK AT THE DATE OF THE ARTICLE (Score:5, Informative)
Not true, according to the government (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not true, according to the government (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/holocaust. asp [snopes.com]
Questions you shouldn't have to ask. (Score:4, Insightful)
On the one hand, you're denying the validity of the very scientific method itself, which can't possibly be a benefit to the future of your society. On the other, though, you're denying the atrocities societies are capable of, even in our "enlightened" era. If you don't know it happened and don't know it can happen, that has to make it more likely for it to happen again.
I suppose, upon further review, that if I had to choose, I'd rather skip the Holocaust than teach ID. The Holocaust could probably be replaced with the Khmer Rouge, Stalin's purges, and Darfur to accomplish the same goals of warning. You lose a bit of connection, since all those examples are "somewhere else" in a way that Germany in the early 20th century isn't, but they're still perfectly good examples of what can happen.
Moreover, ID is certainly more widespread in this country than Holocaust denial is in the UK, so it's certainly a more immediate threat.
Still and all, the fact that I even have to think about this is ridiculous.
It's a faaaaake (Score:5, Informative)
Don't change history for convenience (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, I am always amazed when I watch the History channel and see how much was left out of or glossed over in the US history textbooks, especially regarding the Revolution. I'm sure that its to give kids the idea that America is great, noble, etc. etc. but I don't think that ignoring our own history (especially the mistakes we've made) does anyone any good.
LIes, damned lies and the Daily Mail (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus the story is dated the 2nd of April so I'm not sure what the submitter was trying to achieve other than to provoke the flamefest that will inevitably ensue.
good one kdawg (Score:4, Informative)
This is Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Quoting: 'There are no plans to stop teaching the Holocaust. Indeed, the education department's plan seems to be ensuring that it is taught everywhere. A spokesman for the Department of Education and Skills (DES) maintained that "The Adjegbo report on citizenship [a different report authored by Sir Keith Adjegbo and released in January 2007] said key British historical events must be taught" and that while "the national curriculum is a broad framework and there is scope for schools to make their own decisions, teaching elements including the Holocaust and key British events will be compulsory."'
It's the Daily Mail (Score:5, Informative)
Daily Mail (Score:4, Interesting)
With all of that said I find the concept of "balanced treatment" in an educational environment revolting. Plurality's sake shouldn't lend itself to falsehoods, lies and distortions and if a fact hurts someone's feeling I'm sorry, but maybe they should just accept that the Earth is round, not flat.
It's just coherent behaviour (Score:5, Insightful)
The Nazis were defeated mainly by the USSR, not by the USA, even if that's not what you learn. The Japanese _were_ defeated by the USA, but the way of doing it, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of civilians in an atomic inferno is presented as rather the right thing to do, or, at the very least, as a great technical achievement. The holocaust is much remembered, and special laws passed to forbid the denial of the fact, but other much bigger killings go as footnotes in history books. Japanese don't teach about "comfort" women. The paper of England in the slave trade is usually hushed in the classrooms. Spain is indignant when Ben-Laden speaks about it being part of Al-Andalus, because in its history books, it's defined as a re-conquering, even if the people that re-conquered it had nothing to do with the people that lost it in the first place. France prefers not to speak too much about torture in Alger. Israelis will tell you that it's all right if they took the land from Palestinian people after WW2, because it "belonged" to them, somehow. I doubt they would return the land to some previous inhabitants of it, if the situation ever came up.
And so on. There is not such thing as "objective" history, and those teachers are just recognizing it. After all, we must remember that George Orwell, who came up with the idea of automatic history rewriting, was British.
Re:Deny everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:teach both.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Denying holocaust? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is AFAIK a religious belief. There are many arguments for or against it, but the simple fact that it happened is the strongest argument for it. There is no reason to believe that it wouldn't happen. Genocide is one of humankind's hobbies... if you will. There was Pol Pot, Husein, Chechin?, and other examples like what the Europeans in general did to the new world. The Japanese have their history, as do many other countries on this planet. There are several really good examples in the South American continent.
In fact, I think if you read the book, the Jews may have been promises the 'promised land' but they committed genocide in the process of claiming it.
Not to get on a rant, but genocide does seem to be rather common. There is no reason to think that the Germans weren't trying a bit of it on their own.
Re:Denying holocaust? (Score:4, Informative)
Really? Could you show us all the extermination camps? Where the victims were tossed into ovens, or babies tossed into the air and impaled upon bayonettes, or the poison gas showers?
Reading your post, that line came straight out of the arab narrative. They love to claim genocide, holocaust, war crimes, and so forth. In the process, they denigrate those terms, the real victims of those actions, and impede progress at a resolution. This also presumes the objective truth of the arab narrative, which, history has not been kind to. It appears that numerous fictions were invented purely to continue and prolong this conflict. One of those fictions are the `palestinian' people. They were invented in the 1964 time line. Not in 1948.
What happened in 1948 was the founding of one country and the immediate launching of a war to eradicate said country by angry arabs that didn't get their way. The arabs were given over 80% of the region that was supposed be divided, Jordan or Trans-Jordan was part of what the Balfour declaration had provided as part of the Jewish national homeland. Churchill wanted to provide a place for his hashemite buddies to hole up after being kicked out of the arabian peninsula by the wahabbis, who we know as the `modern' house of Saud. So Churchill sliced off everything west of the Jordan river and created Jordan. The Jews were supposed to live with the rest. All during this time, from 1900 onwards, well, 1880 if you read other histories, the arabs behaved there about the same as they behave today. Killings, bombings, kidnappings, property destruction. You should note that in 1948 a new arab state was proposed, along side of, and slightly larger than Israel. Israelis accepted this. The arabs didn't. The arabs had demanded that arabs in Israel leave right before the 48 war started, this is well documented, and only revisionists for whom this is an inconvenient reality complain otherwise. After Israel was founded and survived, jews in the arab states were expelled forcefully, without possessions, compensation, usually at the point of a gun. A population transfer, not unlike the pakistan india transfer occurred. But the arabs could never accept this. So the UNRWA was formed to perpetuate the crisis (this is what they have done, they have solved nothing). Compare this to *every* other conflict mediated by the UN where the high commissioner for refugees handles this. The other conflicts get settled within about a decade. UNRWA has been perpetuating this conflict for about 6 decades.
Most of what existed prior to 1967 was a construction entirely of the arabs own making. Jordan annexed the west bank, and no one apart from the UK acknowledged and accepted this. Egypt annexed Gaza. Both Jordan and Egypt avoided all out war, but largely failed to comply with terms of the armistice. In 67, with Pan-Arabist Nassar in charge in Egypt, things were brought to a head again. Straights of Tiran and other cassus belli against Israel. Left it with no choice. After the smoke cleared, Israel had gaza and the west bank.
Notice how there are no execution camps in this story. None existed in Israel.
There has not been a genocide against the arabs. The arabs have launched or at least tried to launch genocides against the jews, many times. In Hebron in 1929, every jew who lived there (several thousand, with a multi-thousand year history there) was killed by arab mobs after friday prayers. Now why would that be? There were no "occupied territories"? In 1936-1939 the arabs rioted thoughout the area, killing jews left and right. Again why was this? In WWII the arabs mufti in Israel was directly and overtly allied with Hitler (yeah, invoke Godwin's law).
The jews did not line up the arabs against walls and machine gun them. They did not gas them. They did not spear them, experiment on th
Re:Denying holocaust? (Score:5, Informative)
I found a rebuttal [mostmerciful.com] of that theory in one of the first google links for "allah moon god"
Last paragraph
The God is the same as you can find in the Islam [wikipedia.org] article
Reality vs opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, not their own reality. You get to to have your own ideas about what facts mean but you don't get your own facts. 2+2=4 no matter how hard you believe otherwise.
Reality is that which doesn't change no matter how hard you wish it otherwise. The Holocost is objective reality. The fact the whole Middle East was on the Axis side is also objective reality. The fact they LOST WWII is objective reality. And in the end that last fact is the heart of the matter. Because if all three of the facts I just stated are reality their own worldview can't exist, so they collectively went into denial. Because it all comes down to their objection of the Western powers setting up Israel. Here in Reality winning WWII gave the victors the right to remake the defeated enemies territories including, granting Israel to the surviving Jews, splitting up Germany, tearing apart Japanese society and remaking it in our own image, etc.
The difference is we didn't occupy the Middle East and force their backwards asses into the 20th Century, mostly because before oil was discovered nobody cared enough. That was a mistake, but hindsight is always better than foresight. What is happening now with appeasing the crazies is obviously stupid to anyone outside government and the far left. If we won't stand up and defend the teaching of objective REALITY how is the West supposed to muster the courage to defend it's BELIEFS?
Re:UK Schools?!!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Zionist Propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
The mass murder of the large bulk of European Jewry, which happened during the lifetime of many people still living, is of tantamount importance if you take the teaching of history to be an exercise in educating us as to deeds done and how they can be avoided.
For instance, blaming everything on Zionists was precisely the kind of monstrous ideology that allowed the Nazis to kill so many Jews. By recreating a group of individuals into some sort of dark shadow cult out to take over the world, the Nazis were able to more easily demonize Jews. It's sad that there are still evil little monsters like yourself so happy to ape the discredited notions of Nazi anti-semitism. You do, through your hate, make it clear that teaching about the Holocaust is still of the utmost importance.
Re:Zionist Propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
There are legitimate complaints about the very concept of Zionism (the argument that Jews should immigrate to the Middle East to form a homeland, even if it means displacing the locals).
There is a legitimate argument to be made that Zionism has, quite contrary to its intent, encouraged a new round of antisemitism and made the world less safe for the Jewish people, not more safe.
There are legitimate complaints to be made about how the Israeli government is currently running its foreign policy.
By treating anyone who has any problem with the concept of Zionism or the policies of the state of Israel as being inherently anti-semitic, you're part of the problem, just like those who deny the Holocaust are part of the problem from the other side.
Re:Zionist Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
A new round of antisemitism? What fucking planet do you live on? Would you care to point out a gap between the "old" antisemitism and the "new" antisemitism? Antizionism is, much of the time, merely antisemitism attempting to be respectable. The "antizionist" propaganda coming from the left wingers is identical to that of the skinheads and neo-nazis, and pretty much looks exactly the same as what was produced by Goebbels.
Re:Zionist Propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference being the people involved. The old antisemitics largely had no evidence other than racism. Antizionists on the other hand have friends and family, or themselves, who have been kicked out of their homes and regulated to ghetto life in the West Bank, Golan Heights, or the Gaza Strip. Some of them aren't even Muslims, but Christians- it's amazing the zionist racism that has gone on in Bethleham of all places.
Re:Zionist Propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
You see the opposite thing in the Middle East. Some of the world's oldest Jewish populations exist in the Middle East, where they, while being a minority and occasionally suffered for it, but only rarely got the same sort of persecution that middle ages, European Jews had to suffer. It remained this way largely up until the 1930s, when the influx of foreign Jews into Palestine and the spawning of Jewish terror groups and militias, culminating in al-Nakhba, led to a violent level of antisemitism in the Middle East. This, in turn, led to most Arab countries likewise pressuring their Jewish populations out, turning a slow Zionist trickle into a major exodus. Many of these Jews migrated to Israel, which increased the strains with Israel's neighbors, and so forth.
I can go into more detail with more modern history if you'd like, but you're probably well aware of the world (outside America)'s increasing dissatisfaction with Israel's foreign policy.
Re:Zionist Propaganda (Score:4, Interesting)
What world have you been living in? Palestinian deaths tend to go almost completely unreported unless there are dozens at once. My favorite New-Speak-ish phrase is "A period of relative calm", meaning "only Palestinians are dying" [fair.org].
Of course, thank you for keeping the level of discourse up by your spelling of "Palestinian".