European Politics Thread.

[denoir 0]

It's hardly a weakening of civil rights. They still need a warrant to look at the records.

And your point is...?

Nice little crawlers can examine the records and mark "suspicious" networks of people phoning/emailing/smsing each other...

No, that would be illegal. The only time that they would be allowed to look at a record is if they had a court order.

This law only states that the phone companies must keep the records, it does not mean that law enforcement gets full access to them. That's why this isn't a privacy or civil liberties problem. It doesn't infringe on your right to privacy in any way.

[EiZei 0]

It's hardly a weakening of civil rights. They still need a warrant to look at the records.

And your point is...?

Nice little crawlers can examine the records and mark "suspicious" networks of people phoning/emailing/smsing each other...

No, that would be illegal. The only time that they would be allowed to look at a record is if they had a court order.

This law only states that the phone companies must keep the records, it does not mean that law enforcement gets full access to them. That's why this isn't a privacy or civil liberties problem. It doesn't infringe on your right to privacy in any way.

The fact that those records are kept violates our civil rights. I dont trust our goverment(s) with that kind of data.

[der bastler 0]

No, that would be illegal. The only time that they would be allowed to look at a record is if they had a court order.

denoir, is that you? I thought you were a little bit more sceptic...

Look at the post-9-11 era... what do you think, how fast can they get court order in the name of "war on terrorism". And afterwards they say sorry...

[Necromancer- 0]

The fact that those records are kept violates our civil rights. I dont trust our goverment(s) with that kind of data.

Law or no law...

The government would have kept that data either way..

[EiZei 0]

The fact that those records are kept violates our civil rights. I dont trust our goverment(s) with that kind of data.

Law or no law...

The government would have kept that data either way..

I doubt it. Getting all that info without getting caught on that scale is damn near impossible.

[denoir 0]

The fact that those records are kept violates our civil rights. I dont trust our goverment(s) with that kind of data.

Neither do I, but the government doesn't get the data. It's the phone companies that have it. The only way that the government can legally get it is by obtaining a court order for each individual case. And the rules for obtaining an order are generally constitutionally regulated - i.e. there has to a justifiable suspicion of a crime - just like when obtaining a search warrant.

bastler:

Quote[/b] ]denoir, is that you? I thought you were a little bit more sceptic...

Look at the post-9-11 era... what do you think, how fast can they get court order in the name of "war on terrorism". And afterwards they say sorry...

I'm not saying that I'm happy about it, but I don't think it is anywhere enough to start manning the barricades. First of all, it's not much difference between this and other data that is stored. If they have a search warrant, there is very little you can keep private. They can take your phone, your computer etc That's how they obtain evidence and it has been that way long before the current terrorism hysteria.

Second, I do have a certain degree of trust in privacy matters when it comes to the European Parliament. They've had a pretty good record so far. For instance they blocked the transfer of flight passenger information to the Americans because there was too little regulation on how that data would be used.

Last but not least, since the phone companies are the ones holding the records, the potential abusers of the law are far more at risk than the average citizen.

Besides, there are far worse things going on. The UK 2005 Terrorism Bill for instance, combined with the European Arrest Warrant is disastrous. Right now in the UK, they can lock anybody up for 14 days, without charging them with a crime or telling them what they are suspected of. They are as we speak trying to extend that to 90 days.

The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) requires unconditional extradition of suspects between member states. The only requirement is that the suspected crime could give a sentence of at least 12 months.

As you can imagine, the combination isn't very nice. They could pick any European citizen and lock him up without charging him with a crime.

The UK anti terror laws will probably relatively soon be declared as a violation of EU human rights laws and there are some serious questions about the constitutionality of the EAW in several member states. But still, these are the laws that are in force now and in comparison with this, the phone record law seems pretty harmless.

[EiZei 0]

The fact that those records are kept violates our civil rights. I dont trust our goverment(s) with that kind of data.

Neither do I, but the government doesn't get the data. It's the phone companies that have it. The only way that the government can legally get it is by obtaining a court order for each individual case. And the rules for obtaining an order are generally constitutionally regulated - i.e. there has to a justifiable suspicion of a crime - just like when obtaining a search warrant.

The goverment created the requirement in the first place. They sure as hell can lift it at whim seeing how little real resistance this law generated.

If one wants to see how willing ISPs are to help goverments commit human rights violation just look at China.. now imagine when their home countries starts demanding same things.

[EiZei 0]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/article334686.ece

Quote[/b] ]

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey

From 2006 Britain will be the first country where every journey by every car will be monitored

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Published: 22 December 2005

Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts.

By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate "reads" per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites.

Is it just me but why is britain always the first country to do this sort of stuff?

[harley 3 1185 0]

Because we haven't had a good government in nearly one hundred years now?

[IsthatyouJohnWayne 0]

Hah, no its more like because we have had decent governments for more than a hundred years that people are very complacent about civil liberty issues. Instead of saying 'My god, think where this could lead' or similar, people say 'My, my, technology today eh? Cup of tea anyone?'

Like that.

For 'decent' read 'not openly fascist, communist, genocidal or highly repressive of its own people'.

Besides which id hardly call the late victorians more 'decent' (well ok, not the racist, white supremacist, war mongerers among them or those who allowed the poor to starve in the gutters anyhow).

[harley 3 1185 0]

Hmm, everyone working, everyone with the exception of women voting, important progress being made in welfare and education, everyone proud and happy.  Excluding women, welfare and education we haven't really got very far have we?

And by "decent" I mean a government without a single major blot on its record.  You simply won't find a Liberal, Conservative or a Labour premiership which hasn't cocked up in an unspeakable way since 1900.  hell, I'm a Conservative and very nearly I'd choose Atlee's government as the best ever for Britain for all the measures introduced for the benefit of the british people, yet by accelerating independence for India hundreds of thousands of people there died.  On the one hand brilliant leaps forward, on the other, inexcusable actions.  A pattern emerges...

I will agree that the British people have become very complacent on the issue of civil liberties or rights.  There's no appreciation of one's Bill of Rights as is found in the United States for example, no deep-seated pride in the Republic as

in France.  Nothing at all.

It is however, to the credit of some people in Parliament (only some however) and the Press that the ludicrous Terrorism Bill was watered down to prevent a further uneccesary erosion of our liberties. I have to admit I was surprised that our elected officials found some bloody spine for once.

As for the Victorians, compared to the Genocide in the Congo, United States and other places, the filthy repression practised by the Boer Republics and countless other injustices, Victorian Britain didn't fare so badly.  Certainly the governments of Gladstone and Disraeli and others didn't lower the standards of living in Britain and the colonies or even go to war for such duplicitous reasons as recently.  The only major cock-ups which come to mind are the second Zulu War and the Afghan campaigns.

[denoir 0]

Excluding women, welfare and education we haven't really got very far have we?

Aren't you forgetting something, my European brother - European integration?  

No, but seriously, the EU is a big change from the historically  tribal approach to government in Europe. So the reduction of volatile, on occasion dangerous nationalism has been achieved. War is far more difficult now. To add a few more items to the list - the common market, labour protection, environmental protection, social security (not just welfare, but public health care, child care etc).

I'd say there has been quite a bit of progress.

[harley 3 1185 0]

In my eyes, what progress there has been (and I agree, it's inconceivable that there will be war in Europe again, although that's partially to the fact we have the almighty U.S.A. watching over us, as well as due to the E.U. and greater mutual understanding and cooperation) is to a certain extent totally undone by what can only be called the cavalier maner in which the Iraq War was conceived and executed; for Britain at least, this was an enormous step backward - with British world power at stake, Eden backed down over his joint invasion of Egypt in 1956.  The operation to seize Suez was at least justifiable on many incontrovertible levels.  Blair invades Iraq in a joint (lapdog) operation in 2003 with significantly less on the line, and as the July the Seventh attacks show, we are in substantially more peril than we were before the invasion.

[denoir 0]

Oh dear, are they going to have a field day with this in the middle east.

Holocaust denier Irving is jailed [bBC]

Quote[/b] ]British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison.

He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and interview he gave in Austria in 1989.

"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," he told the court in the Austrian capital.

Irving appeared stunned by the sentence, and told reporters: "I'm very shocked and I'm going to appeal."

An unidentified onlooker told him: "Stay strong!"

Irving's lawyer said he considered the verdict "a little too stringent".

"I would say it's a bit of a message trial," said Elmar Kresbach.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the UK's Holocaust Educational Trust welcomed the verdict. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitism dressed up as intellectual debate. It should be regarded as such and treated as such," Ms Pollock told the BBC News website. But the author and academic Deborah Lipstadt, who Irving unsuccessfully sued for libel in the UK in 2000 over claims that he was a Holocaust denier, said she was dismayed.

"I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship... The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth," she told the BBC News website.

Fears that the court case would provoke right-wing demonstrations and counter-protests did not materialise, the BBC's Ben Brown at the court in Vienna said. Irving arrived in the court room handcuffed, wearing a blue suit, and carrying a copy of Hitler's War, one of many books he has written on the Nazis, and which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

Irving was arrested in Austria in November, on a warrant dating back to 1989, when he gave a speech and interview denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. He was stopped by police on a motorway in southern Austria, where he was visiting to give a lecture to a far-right student fraternity. He has been held in custody since then.

'I've changed'

During the one-day trial, he was questioned by the prosecutor and chief judge, and answered questions in fluent German.

He admitted that in 1989 he had denied that Nazi Germany had killed millions of Jews. He said this is what he believed, until he later saw the personal files of Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the Holocaust.

"I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now," Irving told the court.

"The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."

In the past, he had claimed that Adolf Hitler knew little, if anything, about the Holocaust, and that the gas chambers were a hoax.

The judge in his 2000 libel trial declared him "an active Holocaust denier... anti-Semitic and racist".

On Monday, before the trial began, he told reporters: "I'm not a Holocaust denier. Obviously, I've changed my views.

"History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989."

Asked how many Jews were killed by Nazis, he replied: "I don't know the figures. I'm not an expert on the Holocaust."

Of his guilty plea, he told reporters: "I have no choice."

He said it was "ridiculous" that he was being tried for expressing an opinion.

"Of course it's a question of freedom of speech... I think within 12 months this law will have vanished from the Austrian statute book," he said.

This is dead wrong. And I think it's quite the blatant violation of the European convention on human rights. I really hope it will be overturned by the European Court of Justice as this sets a terrible precedent. There is something very wrong with the system when you start jailing people for what they say, no matter how stupid things they are saying. In the shadow of the Mohamed cartoon controversy this is outright hypocritical.

[HotShot 0]

But if they didn't punish him in some way then they would be hypocrtical after having a go at the Iranian president for denying it. I agree though that 3 years in prison was abit steep, what ever he was denying, particuly as he said this over 16 years ago, and has since retracted what he said (although i must say i dont think he actually meant it when he retracted).

[Balschoiw 0]

I´m sorry Denoir but have you ever read something of that guy ?

He´s a facist, a racist a deniar of history and a liar.

There are laws againnst the defamination of the dead here and he willently broke those numerous times over the last 3 decades. He has been thrown out of a number of countries but still never hesitated to difamine the Jews and to deny Ausschwitz at all.

If it comes to me they could jail him for even 3 years more.

This has nothing to do with human rights.

Some quotes:

Quote[/b] ]I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney. It's a legend. Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died elsewhere in the war, why believe the rest of the baloney? I say quite tastelessly in fact that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. Oh, you think that's tasteless. How about this. There are so many Auschwitz survivors going around, in fact the number increases as the years go past which is biologically very odd to say the least, because I am going to form an Association of Auschwitz survivors, survivors of the Holocaust and other liars for the A-S-S-H-O-L-S.

Quote[/b] ] "Sink the Battleship Auschwitz!"

You may want to Google up the infamous Leuchter Report he was trying to sell to his audience as proof that there were never gaschambers in Ausschwitz but only regular showers. He claimed that the gas-stuff was made up after the war...

I´m sorry but I´d say give him even extra 3 years.

No big loss.

[JdB 151]

You may want to Google up the infamous Leuchter Report he was trying to sell to his audience as proof that there were never gaschambers in Ausschwitz but only regular showers. He claimed that the gas-stuff was made up after the war...

I´m sorry but I´d say give him even extra 3 years.

No big loss.

I'd say we fire up one of the remaining gas chambers and let him have a hands on experience. Whatever length of prisontime you give such people, it will never be enough.

[Donnervogel 0]

Is he an idiot that deserves serious beating? Yes. Is it right to jail him for expressing his retarded opinions? No. Infact I'd go so far and say that when we start jailing people for expressing idiotic and false opinions we're right on the track of the nazis. Only because it doesn't please us what he says and might even offend most of us (like the mohamemd cartoons did with the muslims) we must still respect his freedom to express his opinion. As denoir said, what has happened is hypocrite in the wake of out reaction towards the mohammed cartoon violence. Giving freedoms to people has the effect that some retards will show up and use the freedoms in a way we do not like. But if we restrain people from using their freedoms because we don't like what they do with it we have infact abolished the freedom.

[shinRaiden 0]

Yes and no is the rule of course.

The defense attorney has a theoretically valid legal challenge in place, ie due to the current cartoon situation the prosecution and sentancing was not isolated to the case at hand, but was biased and excessive due to the present political implications.

Now playing devil's advocate here, that's a very rational arguement, and not one that the prosecution could easily demand a summary dismissal of the appeal solely on the ample evidence convicting the defendent. If you're going to play games, then seeing as how there's thousands of organized foreign nationals willfully attacking embassies and agents of the respective governments, and using seditiously theocratic arguements for their justification, there should be some sort of obscure gitmo loophole to fast-track the process as the defendent is giving aid and comfort to armed enemies of the state. Of course if you start down that road there's all the pesky human rights and transparency issues and cultural nigglies.

Now take for example the case against the Aryan Nations a few years back. A woman and her son - rather n00bish - were off on a holiday drive in the boonies. Their car broke down right in front of the Aryan Nations compound in Northern Idaho, so they went up to the guard shack to ask for some help. The thugs there jumped them and beat the crap out of them. Standard criminal charges were filed against those involved.

Where the real legal problems started was when the minority rights groups hooked up with them to trump up a civil court complaint. The Southern Poverty Law Center said that their intent and purpose was to bankrupt AN under the guise of compensatory and punative damages to the two people. Now of course Aryan Nations is a bunch of evil idiots. But neither being evil or an idiot is democratic justification for legal subversion.

So the case proceeded with two claims : a relatively small amount of compensatory damages for the victims's medical costs, and a silly amount of punative damages for who Aryan Nations is, not what they the organization, or a few of their members had done. The massive punative jackpot award resulted in AN's bankruptcy and asset liquidation.

Now granted, the Holocaust is a unique event, in which nations that claimed to be civilized practiced or deliberately ignored systematic targeted dehumanization and genocide. The fact that the reactionary laws have had to become so draconian shows the extent to which the underlying moral decay leading to such perversions has continued to ridiculed and ignored.

Now supposing I play Jinn's Advocate for a second, here you have a case of someone being tossed into jail for a good long while for nothing more than exercising a restricted freedom of speech. Why aren't the Jydllan's Post cartoonists his cellmates is the question that will never die. In a strictly rational tin-foil hat world, you can argue that every which way you please.

But the difficulty here is that democratic theory is oriented towards the libertization and enablement of the society at large. The problems come in when you have deliberately malignant individuals who exploit the system for their perverse designs. I'm sure you could take this guy to Auschwitz and he'd swear up and down to his dying breath that there was nobody there other than the Roswell Greys, and your attempts to reform and enlighten him would be futile. Or you could toss him into solitary for the rest of his life, but that sets a scaled precedent for the ignorant offenders that is argueablely unjust.

Now the really easy out is to outsource your really cranky people to Gitmo et al, and pay some one else to do your dirty work and not tell you about it. And finishing up my rambling, one of the core problems is due to the naive or insidiously subversive philosophical notion in western thought that mercy requires an absence of justice.

[EiZei 0]

But if they didn't punish him in some way then they would be hypocrtical after having a go at the Iranian president for denying it.

I don't think we are demanding the iranian president to be tried in the ICC for his comments.

[Ares1978 0]

This is dead wrong.  And I think it's quite the blatant violation of the European convention on human rights.  I really hope it will be overturned by the European Court of Justice as this sets a terrible precedent.  There is something very wrong with the system when you start jailing people for what they say, no matter how stupid things they are saying.  In the shadow of the Mohamed cartoon controversy this is outright hypocritical.

I agree 100%.

The fine tradition of jailing dissidents is still alive and kicking, I see. I bet both Hitler and Stalin would feel right at home in the 21st century.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ] Yes. Is it right to jail him for expressing his retarded opinions? No.

If it was only that...

He sided with German Neonazi leaders and held speeches infront of Neonazi assemblies where he sold his "truth" about Ausschwitz, Dachau and his fact that Adolf Hitler was a big friend to the Jews in germany and actually protected them from beeing killed.

We have something called "Volksverhetzung" here. It means people who stir up other people with untrue and made up history or other nazi stuff can be packed to jail as they actively support non-lawfull actions and people who are likely to commit crimes.

We have that for a reason as after WW2 a lot of people tried to twist the facts about what happened and wanted to gain momentum from such events. It´s simply illegal. I don´t know about Austria but I guess they have a set of laws that are comparable to ours when it comes to Nazis and extremists in general. If you don´t have such laws, fine. But WW2 was started here and all that bad stuff that came along with it was also started here. I guess it´s somewhat a good idea that those events have their reflection in current law. That´s what everyone expects from nations that are responsible for the deaths of millions.

If he is stupid enough to reenter Austria although he was prohibited to do so and carry on with his public siding to Nazi organizations and denying the facts of Ausschwitz, he deserves no better than getting a jail term.

We have our own laws that do come from the things that happened during and before WW2. I´m glad we have that laws.

They ensure that idiots like that don´t have a public stage here. The only stage he will have for the next years is the jail-stage.

Irving jailed for denying Holocaust

Quote[/b] ]David Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was last night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Irving, who appeared in court confidently yesterday morning carrying his book Hitler's War and a PG Wodehouse paperback, immediately vowed to appeal against the sentence. "I'm very shocked," he said as he was led from Vienna's biggest courtroom back to the cells where he has been held for the past three months.

Irving jailed for denying Holocaust

Three years for British historian who described Auschwitz as a fairytale

Ian Traynor in Vienna

Tuesday February 21, 2006

The Guardian

David Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was last night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Irving, who appeared in court confidently yesterday morning carrying his book Hitler's War and a PG Wodehouse paperback, immediately vowed to appeal against the sentence. "I'm very shocked," he said as he was led from Vienna's biggest courtroom back to the cells where he has been held for the past three months.

Article continues

"Stay strong David, best of luck to you," an English supporter shouted after the sentence was read.

Irving, 67, had started the day affecting the image of an English gent arraigned before a foreign court. "Frankly, questions about the Holocaust bore me," he said. He clutched a copy of Hitler's War - "my flagship, 35 years of work" - and from his blazer pocket he fetched the Wodehouse book Eggs, Beans and Crumpets. He called the trial "ridiculous" and claimed that the Austrian law under which he was being tried would be scrapped within a year.

Austria has Europe's toughest law criminalising denial of the Holocaust. Irving went on trial for two speeches he delivered in the country almost 17 years ago. He was arrested in November last year after returning to Austria to deliver more speeches despite an arrest warrant against him and being barred from the country.

In the two 1989 speeches he termed the Auschwitz gas chambers a "fairytale" and insisted Adolf Hitler had protected the Jews of Europe. He referred to surviving death camp witnesses as "psychiatric cases", and asserted that there were no extermination camps in the Third Reich.

State prosecutor Michael Klackl said: "He's not a historian, he's a falsifier of history." Arguments over freedom of speech were entirely misplaced, he added: "This is about abuse of freedom of speech."

Irving's defence lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, appealed to the jury for mercy for an ageing man with a 12-year-old daughter and an ill young wife. Even if he did voice views which were "horrible" or "repellent", he was no danger to Austria.

Last night Irving's partner Bente Hogh said he had brought his imprisonment on himself by going to Austria despite the ban. She said: "He was not jailed just for his views but because he's banned from Austria and still went. David doesn't take advice from anyone. He thought it was a bit of fun, to provoke a little bit."

Irving pleaded guilty but under Austrian law the trial went ahead. Judge Peter Liebtreu called Irving "a racist, an anti-Semite, and a liar", citing the verdict delivered by Justice Charles Gray at the high court in London in 2000 when the historian lost a libel case against an American writer and academic and was bankrupted.

Irving said that defeat had cost him $13m, but supporters were sending donations to help him fight yesterday's case.

The judge repeatedly asked Irving if he still subscribed to the views articulated in the 1989 speeches. "I made a mistake saying there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz," he conceded. He claimed the Holocaust figure of six million murdered Jews was "a symbolic number" and said his figures totalled 2.7 million.

He said he was not sure how many died at Auschwitz, but he mentioned a figure of 300,000, a fraction of the accepted total. And he still believed Hitler protected the Jews and tried to put off the Final Solution - the systematic killing of all European Jews - at least until after the second world war.

Now saying that this is against the freedom of speech is bull.

We have the laws for a reason and if he comes here although he has been banned from the country it´s his own fault. We send people to jail for such reasons regularely. They are all hardcore nazis and the best place for them is jail.

It´s like going to Singapore with a kilo of cocain and then wondering why you get executed.

[Ares1978 0]

We have that for a reason as after WW2 a lot of people tried to twist the facts about what happened and wanted to gain momentum from such events. It´s simply illegal. I don´t know about Austria but I guess they have a set of laws that are comparable to ours when it comes to Nazis and extremists in general. If you don´t have such laws, fine. But WW2 was started here and all that bad stuff that came along with it was also started here. I guess it´s somewhat a good idea that those events have their reflection in current law. That´s what everyone expects from nations that are responsible for the deaths of millions.

And you don't find it the least bit problematic that it's illegal to question the official truth? It's simply not a rational law, and while it may have served some purpose in the past, it sure as hell isn't justified anymore.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]And you don't find it the least bit problematic that it's illegal to question the official truth?

There is a difference between questioning something and actively supporting Neonazis. There have indeed been serious investigations on the complete matter of the Jew case in germany. I guess it´s one of the best researched section of latest german history as there is/was a tremendous public interest in this worldwide. If he just kept on "researching" they way he did over the years noone would have had a problem, but he actively sided with Neonazis who used his "findings" to aquire new members and reignite the antisemitic fire. He´s no victim of justice, he´s guilty of active "Volksverhetzung".

Quote[/b] ]It's simply not a rational law, and while it may have served some purpose in the past, it sure as hell isn't justified anymore.

You don´t know how many Nazis-in-mind are still around here. If there is a message to be sent to them it has to be:

You will never have a place in public life again. Period.

There are countries who are quite liberal to Nazis.

We are not and god forbid we will ever be.

[Ares1978 0]

There is a difference between questioning something and actively supporting Neonazis. There have indeed been serious investigations on the complete matter of the Jew case in germany. I guess it´s one of the best researched section of latest german history as there is/was a tremendous public interest in this worldwide. If he just kept on "researching" they way he did over the years noone would have had a problem, but he actively sided with Neonazis who used his "findings" to aquire new members and reignite the antisemitic fire. He´s no victim of justice, he´s guilty of active "Volksverhetzung".

So what if he's siding with the nazis? So what if they recruit more lowlives? It's still punishing people for what they believe in and what they say. And I bet cases like this do more for the anti-semites' case than anybody else's.

And trust me, I don't like nazis any more than you do. But I also have a problem with thinkpol of all types, since the line between the two is practically nonexistent.

Quote[/b] ]

You don´t know how many Nazis-in-mind are still around here. If there is a message to be sent to them it has to be:

You will never have a place in public life again. Period.

There are countries who are quite liberal to Nazis.

We are not and god forbid we will ever be.

It's not like there's a shortage of them here either, but you are never going to beat them by forbidding them from speaking their mind and questioning the popular truths.