Iran president denies holocaust

[Occhidiangela]

calgary herald link
telegraph link
Hi,

I don't know if you knew what this man said (and thinks), but I guess everyone should know. In Germany (and in some other countries), such assertions would be illegal and actionable. There's no doubt about the holocaust.

Jesus - I don't sympathise with him. Anyone here who does? Or any Iranian lurkers in here? I guess not, right? Would be interesting.
Greetings, Fragbait
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Fragbait: per our Pinter discussion, this is a political leader of a nation playing to his constituents. As with any number of other political leaders, he is not interested in facts or history, is he? :lol: He's blowing a bit of smoke. (In his defense, the other remarks quoted are a common view held in the Muslim world, and among not a few liberals and ultra conservatives in the West.) All in all, he sounds off with a bit of hyperbole and misinformation. So what? That's standard rhetoric in the Ring of Fire. Maybe I should say that to some of us, This Is Not News, but merely an acknowledgement of what quite a few Muslims feel in their hearts. Stories and symbols matter. Where you sit determines what you see.

I read one of his remarks a few days ago about "Europe needing to bring the Jews/Israelis back into Europe and out of The Holy Land." I had a small chuckling fit at the premise, given the fundamental indifference, or outright hostility, to Jews that is both Europe's historical heritage, and part of the motivation for the Zionist movement out of Europe and into a Jewish nation state. If he was to be internally consistent, he'd insist that Bosnian Muslims be moved to Isarel, and the Israelis to Bosnia, so each people would be in its "proper home land" based on his world view.

Whoops, guess he's like most pols, not consistent. :rolleyes:

Note: Are you familiar with the "population transfers" between Greece and Turkey after World War I? A precedent, though not a brilliant one.

So, Germans go out of their way to enforce truth in speech, or perhaps slander laws, by force of attack lawyers. I wonder if they understand something about free speech needing to be founded in truth that we don't. ;) Such laws would put most advertisers out of work. :lol:

The Brits have similarly stringent libel / slander laws.

What I had heard is that the German laws confine this zealous pursuit of "truth" to falsehood about the Holocaust? Bah: inconsistent and hypocritical, if that is the case. The statute of limitations on victim status has been reached. The Chinese holocaust during Mao's reign dwarfs what happened in Europe, which staggers my brain considering the Holocaust's scale and scope. Joe Stalin's bloody path to modernity was likewise immensely more bloody in terms of body count.

Frag, I suspect I do not correctly understand the laws you refer to. Can you explain them to me, in the interest of providing me a better clue?

Occhi