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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (9310)	12/22/2006 10:41:06 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224749

and you are to blind (or dumb) to see the NY Times liberal propaganda.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (9310)	12/22/2006 10:55:01 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 224749

The Iranian ?Scholars?: Times Bends Backwards for Holocaust Deniers By Ron Rosenbaum Holocaust denial is a particularly insidious evil. It was almost painful to read The Times’ earnest struggle to report on the Iranian Holocaust-deniers’ conference in anticipation of its opening on Dec. 11. It will be fascinating to see how the rest of the media reports on this conference of “scholars” whose distinguished keynote speaker is David Duke, whose previous scholarly career has included a stint as a Ku Klux Klan leader. And yet “scholars” is the word used in the Times headline for its Dec. 6 story, datelined Tehran and bylined Nazila Fathi. The headline reads: Iran Invites Scholars to Assess Holocaust as History or Fiction. One is tempted to say (or to wish) that there was a note of satire in the hed, one that conjured up an alternative Onion-like hed: Iran Invites Scholars to Assess Whether World Is Round or Flat. But the Times story takes things much more seriously, and at least in certain respects, this is a wise decision: This conference deserves serious attention. It is, alas, not a joke, this convocation of evil clowns summoned by a genocidally-minded regime whose policy it is to perpetrate a Holocaust while attempting to deny that one has already happened. Serious attention, yes—but what kind of serious attention? Is it the serious attention implied by the headline’s use of the word “Scholars” (significantly, a second story on the conference, published by The Times on Dec. 12, used the phrase “discredited scholars” and remedied some, but not all, defects of the first story) and the verb “Assess” (implying a judicious deliberative dialogue between Holocaust flat-earthers and “the other side”). Is this what being “fair and balanced” means? Equal time for truth and lies? Does the language and tone of the hed impute a legitimacy to this parliament of fools? Holocaust denial is particularly insidious because one doesn’t want to be in the position of privileging one historical truth or tragedy over another. And yet Holocaust denial is almost always connected with an anti-Semitic, Hitler-friendly agenda. To deny or ignore the existence of this while reporting on “scholars” engaged in “assess[ing]” the matter is to deny the whole truth of something like the Iranian “conference.” The initial Times story exposes the problems for reporters and editors that both Holocaust denial and Iranian genocidal rhetoric pose to media covering it. The problem it poses to the notion of “objectivity” when covering a malevolent pseudo-discipline like Holocaust denial, especially when it’s sponsored by a state that makes exterminationist threats. Are you familiar with the Iranian conference of Holocaust “scholars”? The intention to hold one had been announced earlier this year in the wake of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s genocidal threats against the State of Israel and publicly expressed doubts about the reality of Hitler’s mass murder. The phrase “adding insult to injury” doesn’t really do justice to the murderous obscenity of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Here is how the Times story, datelined “TEHRAN, Dec. 5” and run on p. A5, introduced the Iranian announcement: “The Iranian authorities, who have frequently accused the Jews of distorting history to legitimize Israel, announced plans on Tuesday for an international conference on the Holocaust. “They said the conference, to be held in Tehran next Monday and Tuesday, would include more than 60 scholars from 30 countries and would examine a range of issues, including whether the gas chambers were actually used.” You didn’t realize that was a serious open question, whether gas chambers were used? Nor do serious scientists or historians (a quick, comprehensive account of the abundant evidence for the use of Zyklon-B poison gas for mass murder in the Holocaust can be found online in “The Chemistry of Auschwitz,” by Richard J. Green, www.holocaust-history.org/ auschwitz/chemistry/). CONTINUED 1 2 3 >? You may reach Ron Rosenbaum via email at: rrosenbaum@observer.com . This column ran on page 3 in the 12/18/2006 edition of The New York Observer.