First stop, the Reuters' article:

The US has condemned the conference:

The governments of Europe such as the United Kingdom and Germany have issued similar condemnations. Member governments of the EU are also pushing for a resolution.

The conference will include such academic luminaries as Dr. Fredrick Toben - a long-time Holocaust denier:

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In the progress of this discussion I shall endeavor to give a satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made their appearance, that may seem to have any claim to your attention.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1

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I have to censor myself on that topic.
Otherwise a ban would be unavoidable...

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916
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I'd note that not one of the people hung for their part in the killiongs used the defence "It never happened." If it was all a made up lie, then why didn't at least one defendant in the Nurenburg trials rely on that defence? Why did they all say they were only following orders?

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

just can't believe people try to deny this.

I wouldn't object to the conference if I thought it would accomplish anything. No one currently unswayed by the evidence for the Holocaust is going to change their mind over a few chats.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Wow.

Proof that conspiracy theories can be a powerful thing, if let to fester long enough.

I mean, think of the implication here. This is a political meaning, arranged by a President of Iran, purely and solely centered around a conspiracy theory, involving a scenario in which there is an incredible amount of evidence for (WWII-era was not lax on records and documents and locations).

Is anyone else scared of the implications here?

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There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

Is anyone else scared of the implications here?

Not really, it's a merely political stun being played out by a rabid anti-Israel politician.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I'd go into detail about how I'm more scared of this starting to become a popular thing (what with the seeming wide-spreadedness of conspiracy theories, and individuals I have talked to that seem to have no problem of holding their own "truths" without any reason to justify them), to the point where more and more political bodies start to "revise" history...

...but then I have to seriously ask myself what would make today any different than a couple centuries ago. THere have always been people that try to "revise" the "truth" to suit themselves...

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There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

The danger is he will use this as part of his basket of reasoning to give nuclear weapons to a terrorist group. It is commonly believed in the ME that the holocaust was made up to give the Zionists a reason to take Arab land. Getting "western scholars" to back this up will lead to Israeli beeing deemed (well it already is deemed that) illegimate and can be destroyed with justification.

We are seeing a conspiracy theory having world wide effect

An excellent point, PW. I wonder what an HD's (Holocaust Denier's) answer would be?

Perhaps they'd claim that the Nuremburg defendants weren't allowed to use that defense. The Zionist court gagged them and suppressed the truth, allowing only weak defenses that conformed to the Holocaust hoax.

There's always a rationalization, no matter how bizarre.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

You can almost see the backwards reasoning:

"The jooos are taking our land unlawfully"
since
"They only call it lawful due to the Holocaust"
and
"The Holocaust never happened"

It's a classic case of the conclusion preceding the premises.

But anyway, isn't this whole thread awfully political for this board?

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"We do not require reality to conform to the expectations of the ignorant"

Really? I'd consider the argument a bit differently...

1) The Jews took our land.
2) The only thing that made this lawful was the Holocaust.
3) The Holocaust never happened.
Conclusion) The Jews took our land unlawfully.

Not quite the conclusion preceding the premises, just that the premises are a little whacked. However, in this case, if the premises are true, then the conclusion seems to be true from my POV. However, the possibility of the premises being true is about the same as that paper dog catching that asbestos cat in hell (assuming that we aren't going through Dante's Inferno, which actually isn't that hot...)

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There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

Great - David Duke's speaking at the conference as well.

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In the progress of this discussion I shall endeavor to give a satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made their appearance, that may seem to have any claim to your attention.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1

Debra Lipshadt (hope I got the spelling right) explained the rational behind the No-Holocaust CT pretty thoroughly in "Denying the Holocaust."

The basic idea is: National Socialism is dead, with the Holocaust as a stake through it's heart. There can be no hope of reviving Nazism in the public forum without first removing that stake. So they lie. No big surprise, the "big lie" is a tenet of Nazi policy. The hope is that 50 or 100 years in the future, when all the eyewitnesses are long dead, and all history of it is just accounts in books, (& I guess now on the net) they will have an alternative account in the history books.

So, since I believe that the return of Nazism in any real, powerful form would be a very bad thing, I would have to agree that this particular CT is much more frightening than the average, and not all harmless. The stakes are much higher.

Personally, I just find it scary that CTs are becoming not only common, but even reaching into politics in general. But then I had to do a reality check and realize that CTs have been around since the beginning of Man, it seems... every culture has made up lies about enemy cultures in some way, shape, or form; propaganda isn't really new.

This particular CT is only devastating of a lot of people really do buy into it. Good luck getting *anyone* from Europe to buy into it... or at least, anyone that matters.

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

I agree with the others, this is the single most important fact. If it didn't then the people being tried for this crime would have shouted at the tops of thier lungs "Conspiracy!" However, most of the shouting I heard and read about in the Nurenburg trials were the hardcore nazis not only admitting it, but defending it and wishing they had won so they could carry out thier plans.

I too would love to hear someone's ability to ignore that simple fact.

Nazism never died here in the States, if anyone in Europe is interested.

But since the other topics are covered, I also find the implications of being sent to prison for denying the Holocaust frightening. Of course it's disgusting and reprehensible - that goes without saying. But I also think it's only better by degrees making that particular political and historical opinion illegal. I find it ultimately ironic that Iran grants a freedom of speech denied in Western Europe.

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

You have a point there, Serenitude

To give another example: no journalist seems to have troubles with denying the Holocaust being forbidden overhere, even though there is freedom of speech.

When a judge holds that same journalists because they refuse to give the sources where they got capital information for important criminal investigations, they suddenly are on their hind legs going on about freedom of speech and freedom of journalism.

To me, it's far more logical that a journalist must help criminal investigation when he can do so (as should for example a doctor), than that he is not allowed to express opinions on the reality of the Holocaust.

That said, I can't understand that anyone can deny the holocaust as a whole. Sure you can argue whether it was 1 or 6 million, things like that, but how can anyone deny the evidence that huge numbers of people got deported, and died away from the frontline and home?

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Yeah, it is rephrehensible and defys logic. But if people can deny we went to the moon, or think nuclear bombs brought down the twin towers, holocaust denial is just a stone's throw away.

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

It never died here either and anti-semitism hasn't been this strong since the war. Some say it's due to the Israeli - Palestinian conflict but in my view that's just a convenient excuse. I've heard otherwise completely sane and reasonable people say things like "Hitler didn't finish the job." The fact that someone would even think he could say that out loud speaks volumes. Also the "have your say"- section on BBC's website frequently provides some jaw dropping comments.

As for this ridicilous conference; the "best" part here is that this Ahmadinejad character says one of the purposes of this charade is to test the limits of freedom of speech in the west. How is a conference in Iran going to test the freedom of speech in the west?

If Western media does not endorse the views of the conference, it stands to reason (by them) that there is no freedom of speech in the West. If there were, the media would agree with their views.

Circles=harmony

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

If he is speaking of being people jailed for believing the holocaust took place, he is 100% right in that the conference, as absurd as it is, is a commentary on free speech. I'm not sure the media has anything to do with it.

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

A leading mullah recently issued a fatwa at an Azeri writer. They're in no position to do any sort of commentary about the freedom of speech.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6158195.stm

It does since this is a direct response to the publishing of the mohammed cartoons earlier in the year. What the Iranians and the muslim world failed to realize however is that they were published by independent media which are not in government control. Ahmadinejad already arranged for an exhibition of Holocaust cartoons. He should have left it at that.

Interesting: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6171503.stm

Apparently, some Unorthodox Jews are getting in on the action. o.O


...LOL!

Oh man, this group is screwed up.

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

Hoo boy. That's like the mice going up to the cats and saying, "Yeah, it's a good idea you want to get rid of those holes in the walls. It'll be a lot better when we both live out in the kitchen in peace!"

Without venturing too far into politics or religion, these guys seem extremely naive. Assuming that Iran is a good ally for them, just because they both want Israel to be dissolved, seems poorly thought-out.

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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

Avatar courtesy of Bunny.

Please try to avoid politics and religion except where they directly pertain to astronomy or spaceflight. This thread *is* about a well known conspiracy theory, but it is very difficult to keep it from being political or about some religious group or another.

I am locking this thread, and posting a thread about it in the moderator area. It is possible but not certain that the thread will get unlocked later depending on discussion with the admins and other mods.

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Forming opinions as we speak