The current Australian Government is moving towards the implementation of a national curriculum for all government-supported schools.

Under Australia’s federal system, education has traditionally been a State responsibility. The new national curriculum is being introduced through co-operative arrangements between the Commonwealth and States. According to a report in late December 2010, progress is slow. Only the Australian Capital Territory is expected to teach the new curriculum in 2011. Nationwide implementation is not anticipated before 2013.

Delay may be no bad thing. It provides time for more public debate. I think we need it.

A national education curriculum is quite possibly a good idea. Australian States and Territories have set their own curricula until now. Why should bureaucrats in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney or Hobart be better placed to make wise decisions about curricula than a single, better-resourced group of national advisers? On the other hand, the consequence of unwise choices made for the nation as a whole are more serious than a poor curriculum at the level of a single State.

Whoever does design school curricula – and at whatever geographical level they operate  – what really matters is the quality of choices they make. I presume there will be extensive consultation with the community as a whole and in particular with academia, the teaching profession, parents etc as the curriculum is finalized – but that’s likely to bring in a wide diversity of opinions. Hard decisions will have to be made; selection is inevitable. Those entrusted with setting a national curriculum have a heavy responsibility to choose wisely.

______________________________________

As in other countries such as Britain, Australia’s organized Jewish/Zionist Lobby has been pushing hard for compulsory ‘Holocaust education’ for some considerable time. It’s efforts seem to be reaching a crescendo. The Lobby wasn’t happy with Education Minister Simon Crean’s apparent refusal to make an unequivocal commitment last July. By August it seemed slightly more reassured it would get its way.

EJAC President Robert Goot; 'gratified'

In mid-December 2010, J-wire reported success: “The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has welcomed the mandatory inclusion of the Holocaust as a topic of study in the latest version of the National Education Curriculum for Year 10 history.” The Jerusalem Post picked up the story on December 19th, claiming: “The Holocaust has been included in the national education curriculum in Australia for the first time.” Those most recent reports may be accurate, although they seem to have been barely mentioned by the mainstream Australian media. Perhaps Israelis are better informed about changes to Australian educational policy than most Australians? (Most, but not quite all).

In any event, a press release issue in February 2011 quoted the Tasmanian Education Minister, Liz Thorp, as follows: “The Holocaust and studies of World Wars 1 and II are now part of the mandated curriculum for History under the new Australian Curriculum to be implemented in 2013″.

Any lobby group, of course, is entitled to promote legal objectives. But the rest of us are equally entitled to resist partisan proposals if they impinge negatively on the community as a whole. I believe this is one such case.  Inclusion of mandatory, dogmatic, one-sided ‘Holocaust education’ in the curriculum would be a very poor quality decision for reasons I hope to explain. Australians have a popular word for something of poor quality. We call it ‘bodgy‘.

My objection to compulsory ‘Holocaust education’ in the national curriculum is different in kind from complaints I’ve noticed by other commentators. Kevin Donnelly’s article in the Australian Conservative – The Rudd/Gillard education revolution: an evaluation -  is a case in point. Dr Donnelly writes:

Every subject in the national curriculum has to be taught through a PC prism involving Aboriginal, environmental and Asian perspectives. As a consequence, the history curriculum ignores Australia’s Western heritage and the significance of the nation’s Judeo-Christian values and beliefs.

Much of the new curriculum, not surprisingly given the march of postmodernism and deconstruction through the Academy, also embraces the view that there are no truths or absolutes as how individuals perceive the world is subjective and knowledge is a cultural artefact.

In the 29 pages of the first draft of the kindergarten to year 10 history document, Christendom is mentioned once and Christian also once, but only in the context of studying other religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Judaism and Islam.

In the science draft teachers are told that Western scientific concepts are on the same footing as indigenous views about science. The geography curriculum adopts a similar relativistic approach to knowledge when it argues that students should be taught that indigenous concepts of the land are just as valid as Western concepts, on the basis that,

“By understanding Indigenous conceptions of their interrelationship with nature, all students can learn that there are other ways of thinking about and interacting with the environment and its resources that those informed by a Western capitalist tradition”.

Writing from a traditionalist, right-wing perspective, the author makes points that certainly merit consideration, although I suspect he’s engaged in some hyperbole. I share some of his concerns, but not others. I don’t propose to debate them here. But I have little doubt the considerations he raises shall feature in the mix of considerations as the curriculum is finalized and reviewed – notwithstanding his grumbles about the dominance of postmodernist relativism. There’s no de facto cultural taboo in Australia that prohibits raising the concerns he expresses and pressing them in public debate.

Debate about the inclusion of ‘Holocaust education’ is an entirely different matter, Indeed, debate about the ‘Holocaust’ in contemporary Australian mainstream culture is so far removed from real debate it’s not really appropriate to use the word at all in this context. There are debates – around the margins – but the essential historical paradigm of ‘The Holocaust’ is typically asserted to be quite unquestionable.

Yet claims by many mainstream commentators that there is no debate about ‘The Holocaust’ are factually untrue. Like it or not, some of the most basic facts of what’s called ‘The Holocaust’ are in dispute. I mean, in this instance, simply that the facts are disputed. It’s a plain matter of fact. Whether they should be disputed is a different issue. That’s a matter of opinion.

________________________________

On historical matters in general, the western intellectual tradition holds that dispute IS legitimate and that no historical queries should be disallowed. History is an academic discipline which actually makes progress through debate. In a broad sense, history may be regarded as a science, albeit different in focus from ‘hard sciences’ such as physics. Historians apply (or should apply) the same basic scientific approach to their subject matter; they should gather data relevant to a given line of inquiry, formulate hypotheses and subject these – along with the data on which they’re based – to open, rational debate, cross-checking, testing and potential falsification. Furthermore, the goal of historical research is fundamentally akin to that of other sciences: all seek to add to the common store of human knowledge by establishing more of the truth.

‘The Holocaust’ is treated quite in a quite different way by the Jewish/Zionist Lobby – and because of the strong political influence of this Lobby, it has come to be treated quite differently by western societies as a whole. It’s now the norm for the mass media to treat ‘The Holocaust’ not a historical topic appropriate for open discussion, but as a set of verities that shouldn’t be subject to critical examination except by approved insiders.

If that’s truly the case, ‘The Holocaust’ cannot reasonably be taught in schools as part of modern history. The subject may still havc a place in the curriculum within religious studies (in which ‘The Holocaust’ would be studied as a form of modern religious movement) or in sociological studies (viewing it as a cultural and political phenomenon). But if the veracity of the historical subject matter is not open to debate, it’s not history. No debate, no history. Simple as that.

Dogma padlock

Have I overstated the dogmatism of ‘Holocaust enforcers’? I think not. In 2011, the open expression of opinions contrary to the official ‘Holocaust’ narrative is punishable by law in more than ten jurisdictions worldwide. A significant number of Europeans languish in jail at this moment for no other reason alone than their stated skepticism about the official ‘Holocaust’ narrative. Australia, to date, has no direct equivalent to such legislation, although in one extraordinary series of court cases a few years ago the Human Rights Commission successfully prosecuted Dr Frederick Toben, founder of the Adelaide Institute, for publishing a website of political and historical opinion, following a formal complaint from Jeremy Jones on behalf of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

Anyone challenging the official ‘Holocaust’ narrative has zero access to the mass media. There’s a similar black hole in academia – and the publishing industry plays its part in censoring  dissident views on this sensitive topic. When I last visited a major Australian city I checked inside a few major bookshops to see if any of the many books critical of the official Holocaust narrative were available on the shelves. They were none.Clearly, we don’t have open debate on this topic in this country. In truth, it’s the exact opposite! The Jewish/Zionist Lobby has long been trying to stifle debate about ‘The Holocaust’ and has worked hard – and continues to work hard – to destroy the very possibility of fair and open debate.

___________________________________

In English-speaking countries, the expression commonly used to label and excoriate critics of the official narrative is ‘Holocaust Denial’. This is typically portrayed in public discourse, not as a set of debatable opinions, but as a malignant pathology.This quotation from Holocaust ‘expert’ Professor Deborah Lipstadt, whose best-selling book Denying the Holocaust may soon feature prominently in the mandatory teachers’ materials, if not  on Year 10′s reading list, shows how this quasi-medical branding is applied:

“In the 1930′s Nazi rats spread a virulent form of antisemitism that resulted in the destruction of millions. Today the bacillus carried by these rats threatens to ‘kill’ those who already died at the hands of the Nazis for a second time by destroying the world’s memory of them…”

The malignancy of ‘Holocaust denial’ is thus associated with other, equally vacuous terms of abuse such as ‘anti-Semitism’. A recent trend has been branding skepticism about ‘The Holocaust’ with the unpleasant label ‘Hate Speech‘.

Readers may notice I insert ‘The Holocaust’ and ‘Holocaust Denial’ in inverted commas. There’s a reason for that. In my opinion, they’re inappropriate terms, designed to mislead. I can’t stop others using these labels – but do avoid using them myself in normal circumstances. If the expressions themselves are the topic of discussion, I wrap them in inverted commas as a reminder I consider them artificial constructs that do more to obfuscate than clarify the underlying issues.

No one suggests ‘The Holocaust’ is a signifier that represents a single event. It signifies a multiplicity of events that allegedly occurred over several years in a variety of locations – and the specifics of some these allegations has changed over time. Consequently ‘The Holocaust’ is not amenable to a simplistic acceptance v denial analysis. It’s not a black and white matter of rejecting or accepting 100% of the officially-endorsed narrative of the day. There’s clearly room for many shades of gray. The Jewish / Israel Lobby has managed to obscure this rather obvious reality.

More than that, ‘denial’ is surely an inappropriate term when referring to any kind of skepticism about historical events – even relatively discrete and unique occurrences.

Jewish-Roman conflict during the Roman Empire; were the casualties exaggerated?

A largely forgotten and somewhat less sensitive historical example may make the point. The Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote that during the brutal Kitos Wars of the early second century AD, Jews in Cyprus massacred 240,000 non-Jewish Cypriots. This figure has been repeated by some historians – but others doubted the accuracy of the figure. I rather doubt it myself. Should I be branded ‘Kitos Wars denier’ or a ‘Cyprus massacre denier’? Clearly if every historical difference of opinion was to be reduced to a simplistic belief/denial false dichotomy, the study of history would descend into complete farce.

Significantly, the terms ‘Holocaust’ and ‘Holocaust Denial’ are quite recent in origin.For schoolchildren in the 1960s in English-speaking countries, the label ‘Holocaust Denial’ didn’t exist. It’s true the word holocaust was widely used – but it was almost invariably uncapitalized and applied most frequently to the much-feared prospect of a nuclear holocaust. Jon Petrie’s carefully documented paper The secular word HOLOCAUST: scholarly myths, history, and 20th century meanings, published in 2000, provides a useful retrospective account of how usage of the term holocaust evolved. He notes: “In the USA of the early 1960s, about 15 years before the word had become closely linked to Hitler’s Judeocide, the word’s principal referent was nuclear catastrophe.” (See also a 2006 version of Petrie’s article)

As someone born in the 1950s and educated in an English-speaking country, I received no ‘Holocaust Education’ as such in school. As far as I can recall, no-one of my age-group did. But I was required to attend history lessons. I recall on more than one occasion being regaled with stories of horrifying Nazi atrocities during World War Two. My favourite history teacher, who’d lived through the Second World War, discussed them in some detail. What’s more, these stories were a staple of TV and radio, newspapers, magazines – even boys’ comics.We learned, for instance, that the bodies of Jewish inmates were processed into soap and lampshades. We were informed of mass gassings of unfortunate Jews in concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald in Germany.

When, a few years later, the term ‘Holocaust’ (capitalized and used to mean specifically the fate of Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Europe) came into widespread usage, it subsumed the horrifying content we’d already been taught. Like most of my contemporaries, I barely noticed the changes in terminology which took place incrementally over several decades. By 2011, most English-speaking people of my age or older have probably forgotten that the term holocaust was rarely capitalized four decades ago – and usually signified other phenomena than the fate of Jews and other minorities in Nazi-occupied Europe. I’d guess even fewer young people are aware of that.

I chose with some care the three examples of specific stories I was taught in school (lampshades made out of Jewish skin, soap made out of Jewish body-fat, gassings in concentration camps within Germany) – because all three claims have since been largely abandoned by ‘reputable’ academic authorities on ‘The Holocaust’.

Establishment ‘Holocaust’ scholars no longer claim mass gassings occurred in any concentration camps on German soil. They no longer allege lampshades or soap were manufactured from the bodies of internees.  It is now almost universally recognized those particular stories were allied wartime propaganda for which no hard evidence has subsequently emerged. The continuing insistence of some survivors that they did take place is something of an embarrassment to the ‘Holocaust establishment’.

The first Auschwitz Plaque

Post-1990 Auschwitz Plaque

Moreover, the ‘Holocaust’ narrative continued to metamorphose after the term ‘Holocaust’ came into being. The classic example is the replacement, around 1990, of a plaque at Auschwitz commemorating the murder of more than four million inmates by the Nazis, with a new plaque commemorating a total of victims just over one million. Despite this huge downward adjustment in estimated deaths, the ‘Holocaust establishment’ continues to insist six million Jews were murdered during ‘The Holocaust’. Some things don’t change!

These revisions to the official ‘Holocaust’ narrative typically came about under pressure from scholarly critics of the official narrative. One might say the story has now been pruned back to hypotheses that can less easily be falsified. But that’s not how ‘The Holocaust’ is presented to the public. Quite the reverse! The set of stories we’re now told comprise ‘The Holocaust’, on the authority of the most prestigious ‘Holocaust’ scholars of this era, are typically asserted as long-established fact, supported by superabundant evidence and queried only by very nasty, diseased people with perverse motivations. Here’s one example (emphasis added):

The existence of the Holocaust is not a matter of debate. The Nuremberg trials and the news reports and newsreel covering the liberation of the German concentration camps established the fact of the Holocaust. Despite such documentation, there are those who deny the very existence of this horrific scar on world history. Indeed, denial activity has increased in scope and intensity since the mid-1970s. Given the reality that the Holocaust soon will no longer be a “living history,” such an increase in its denial is frightening. The Allies liberated the concentration camps almost sixty years ago; eyewitnesses of the Holocaust—victims as well as victimizers—are now elderly. Their first-hand, personal accounts of what happened in the concentration camps soon will cease to exist. To prevent a monstrosity like the Holocaust from occurring again, these accounts must be kept alive.

It was not only school-kids in the 1950s and 1960s who were told stories about alleged Nazi atrocities some of which are now accepted by establishment ‘Holocaust’ scholars as untrue. The Nuremberg Trials, held shortly after the end of World War Two, heard the same tales. They were adduced as part of the evidence at Nuremberg, on the basis of which many of the accused were convicted and executed.

The irony of France’s Gayssot Act of 1990 could not be greater. It provides for a prison sentence of up to a year as well as a maximum fine of €45,000 (and payment of damages to the Jewish community) “for anyone who publicly disputes the reality of one or more ‘crimes against humanity’ as defined and ruled on, essentially, by the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg in 1945-1946.” During the Nuremberg Trials, making soap and lampshades out of Jewish corpses was presumably regarded as a ‘crime against humanity’ – so it seems this very peculiar legislation is an attempt to enforce belief in historical opinions no longer held even by guardians of ‘Holocaust’ orthodoxy! French intellectuals have always had a reputation for subtlety of thought, but that contortion is surely impossible to fathom. Even so, the law was upheld on appeal.
________________________________

I concede that IF skeptical background material and critical perspectives are also introduced to students in ‘Holocaust studies’, inclusion of ‘Holocaust studies’ in the history curriculum might well be useful. ‘The Holocaust’ receives huge attention in contemporary Australian media and culture, so scrutiny and better understanding of this part of history would be a useful part of anyone’s education. But there are no indications that’s what’s intended.

Ideological schizophrenia in western civilization

On past experience, skeptical views are likely to be rigorously excluded. I doubt any ‘platform’ will be granted to the revisionist school of historians – critics of the official ‘Holocaust narrative’. Indeed, compulsory ‘Holocaust’ education may well lead to increased demands on Government to censor the Internet and enact yet more restrictive prohibitions on so-called ‘hate speech’ and ‘racial vilification’ – so students are shielded from dissenting views.

It all amounts to an attack on the fundamentals of the Socratic tradition. Compulsory one-sided ‘Holocaust education’ is a Trojan Horse in modern western culture. It’s a back-door way to re-introduce religion masquerading as history and impose it on future generations.

Australia’s Jewish/Zionist Lobby would be well-advised to quit while it’s ahead. Its preferred ‘Holocaust’ narrative already dominates our airwaves, screens, magazines and bookshelves. That’s what I’d call ‘ahead’.

By pushing for compulsion within the national education system, this powerful Lobby risks a severe public backlash.

The backlash probably won’t be led by teachers or academics, most of whom are too timid, conformist and mortgage-conscious to jeopardize their careers standing up for intellectual freedom.

Resistance will come from the kids.

Doubtless their school Internet connections can be monitored for evidence of ‘thought crime’ – but that just makes resistance to tyranny more of a challenge! Youngsters are experts at getting round silly and irrational restrictions imposed by compromised, shifty adults.

In a contest between youthful curiosity on the one hand and censorious adults on the other, bet on youth.

Kids can spot bodgy dogmatism and have a marvelous talent for pricking adult pomposity and mystification.

Thank goodness for that!

Foreword

It’s been popular to give wars brand names for at least a century.

Graveyard at The Somme; memorial to some of the hapless dupes who fought in "The War to End All Wars"

The First World War was sold to Americans as the ‘War to End Wars’. Rather like the preacher who predicts an apocalypse, that’s a trick that can only really be pulled once, but since then we’ve had wars for all sorts of other excellent reasons including Democracy and Freedom (Humanitarian wars to ‘Protect Civilians’ are currently much in vogue). We’ve also had wars against lots of dreadful things: Oppression, Tyranny, Dictatorship and Extremism. There’s even been a trend towards using the war brand for endeavors that aren’t really wars at all, such as the 1970s+ War on Drugs, wars on malaria, poverty and so forth.

In turn, opponents of wars have assigned their own brand names, claiming for instance that a war said to be against ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ was really a ‘War for Oil’. Other wars have been named wars of conquest, imperialist wars or wars for a partisan cause such as Israel.

The essay that follows is therefore just part of a long tradition of branding wars with simple descriptors. It’s about war over the last century and attempts to argue two rather controversial propositions:

1. World War One was a War Against Socialism
2. World War Two was a War Against Peace

Combined together, these propositions may enrage people across the political spectrum, from far right to far left along with liberals in the middle.

If so, it would help make my point. The great mass of humanity has been duped.

Intelligent feedback and criticism welcome.

__________________________________________________________

The rout of Socialism

Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

– Leonard Cohen

Pyramid of the Capitalism System; a popular poster before the century of war

Just over a century ago, at the dawn of the 20th century, the level of economic inequality between and within nations was high.

It was possible to speak of an ‘elite’ although the boundaries of any such category are not exact. Marxists would use the term ‘ruling class’ but whatever expression is used, it refers to a social construct more than a distinct, clearly-definable subset of humanity.

This very wealthy elite was predominantly – although not exclusively – European and North American. By any objective standard they were an elite that enjoyed wealth and opportunity unprecedented in human history.

But they were haunted by a specter. The specter was socialism.

One hundred years ago, socialists were in a situation somewhat akin to the position of ‘green’ politics in our contemporary era. They could reasonably argue that ‘socialism’ in a modern form had never been really tried anywhere on earth. It meant they had no working examples to point to; there were no functioning, national-scale working models of socialist societies. On the other hand, there were no discouraging instances of failed socialism.

Attracting growing support from the intelligentsia as well as the working classes, socialism was a political tradition and ideological aspiration which seemed to many intellectuals to have a most promising future.

Of course, there were really many ‘socialisms’ co-existing at the time – different tendencies and ideological stands from anarchism to democratically-oriented reformist socialism, communalism to Lenin-style vanguardism. A century ago, there was no obvious prospect of a single, unifying ‘revolution’ was likely any time soon – and absent broad socialist unity, the privileged elite had plenty of cards to play. Even so, the growing popularity of a political ideology asserting that all humans have equal rights to economic security and prosperity was widely viewed as a significant threat to the established social and political order.

'Destroy this mad brute!" a US WWI anti-German propaganda poster that offers peace - as long as the monster is killed first

In retrospect, if there was one, single, ‘game-changing’ event that stalled the seemingly inexorable rise of socialism, it was the gigantic human-created cataclysm we now call the First World War. This is a somewhat contrarian statement, because the First World War is often portrayed as an event that benefited the advance of socialism. I think that’s an inversion of the truth.

As a consequence of The Great War, one huge nation covering a sixth of the earth’s land mass (Russia along with much of its pre-war Empire), became ‘socialist’ under a particularly repressive, authoritarian and dictatorial form of socialism. There’s no denying ‘Leninist’ tendencies had been present in the socialist movement prior to 1914.  But in most if not all countries – including Russia – they were a minority within the socialist movement as a whole. Until war came…

The enormous prestige of gaining such vast terrain for ‘socialism’ indubitably biased the world socialist movement towards Russian-style Communism in the period following World War One. After the USSR’s expansionist victory in the Second World War and the subsequent success of Communists in China, the Leninist tendency within socialism seemed even more on the ascendant. Western Europe never embraced authoritarian Marxism to the same extent. The dominant form of socialism in the west remained democratic socialism, which in turn came in many flavors. Yet worldwide, the influence of the Communist USSR – and to a lesser extent Communist China – was hugely significant. Most observers of the socialist movement at the beginning of the 20th century would probably have been quite surprised that a relatively small tendency within the socialist movement as a whole would soon become so influential and remain so for more than 50 years.

It took several decades, but the general appeal of the USSR’s model of socialism gradually waned as the 20th century rolled by. In the second half of the 20th century, idealistic socialists outside the USSR found it increasingly hard to defend the internal and external policies of the Soviet regime. The USSR’s lack of free speech, abuses of judicial process, economic inefficiencies and the rigid authoritarianism and militarism of the Soviet leadership and its military interventions in rebellious satellites such as Hungary became too hard to rationalize and explain away – notwithstanding quite genuine achievements by Soviet society that were adduced by true believers as countervailing considerations.

Eventually, the USSR ‘fell’. Some three generations after the turmoil and revolutionary zeal of the October Revolution, the Russian nation decolonized and went through an economic catharsis no less tumultuous than the 1920s, leading after one chaotic decade to the bruised but recovering Russian society of today. Post-Leninist Russia is back within the capitalist fold – although for reasons explicable only by apologists for western militarism, it remains a notional military adversary of the USA and NATO.

One could go so far as to say that from the vantage point of a century later, the First War was a War Against Socialism. And although it wasn’t apparent at the time, it was successful. A consequence of the First World War was that prospects for consensual world socialism were set back by several generations.

Whether or not this result was achieved by deliberate prior planning is an interesting question, but I don’t propose to examine at this time. By plan or by accident, in the long-term socialist ideology was a victim of the war. The Western European and North American elite have enjoyed a century of continuous privilege ever since. Elites in both the USA and the UK have enjoyed robust continuity, without a single rupture caused by revolution or military defeat. The Anglo-Saxon elite – more successfully than any other – has kept socialism at bay.

Peace Pledge Union poster of the 1930s

The bloodbath of World War One had another rather obvious consequence. It gave rise to unprecedented revulsion with war – especially in the countries of western Europe and North America. Pacifism became popular to a quite novel extent, especially in Britain. For idealistic young men and women in the 1930s, the cry “Never Again!” was a self-evident reference to war. Nor was the popularity of anti-war sentiment confined to the political left or the right. For a while it had very broad appeal. In the USA it was especially strong on the political right.

Growing grass-roots determination to avoid another war that flowered in the generation following World War One represented a potent threat to some very powerful vested interests in the western world. It was, of course, of no real consequence to many capitalists, businesses and family fortunes. But it did jeopardize the plans of specific vested interests – based mainly in the USA and UK. These were the forces that collaborated to launch World War Two. They managed to do so by enlisting one brand of socialists (most of the left in the western world) to join them in going to war against another brand of socialists (National Socialists in Germany) who in turn became embroiled with a third, supposedly more extreme variant of socialism (the Marxist USSR). The latter ended up, somewhat remarkably, in war-time alliance with the major capitalist powers.

Having made the bold claim that World War One was the western plutocracy’s answer to socialism, I’ll go further and assert that World War Two was its deadly response to the peace movement. The Second World War was arguably even more effective in achieving its objective than the First. After promising peaks in the mid-1930s, the European and North American peace movement was eventually shattered by World War Two. I believe it has yet to fully recover.

Meanwhile, with no breaks in continuity and a succession of wars to boost its budgets, the military, ‘security’ and ‘intelligence’ functions of the British and American states have grown from strength to strength.

To illustrate this point, I use the more extreme example: the USA. Back in the 1930s, it was a nation with a general consensus supporting continental isolationism and an aversion to European wars. The USA didn’t even have a foreign intelligence agency. Public opinion was overwhelmingly anti-war. Yet within a few years America was transformed into a military colossus, eventually sporting hundreds of overseas military bases and the largest so-called ‘intelligence community’ in history. By the end of the 20th century, the USA’s military spend came to equal the combined military budgets of all other nations on earth. America had become the new Rome..

___________________

How peace got lost

I find it astonishing how so many ‘socialists’, once war broke out in the northern autumn of 1914, became almost immediate converts to rampant nationalism and militarism. Something similar was true of other progressive social movements. For instance, suffragette split on the issue of war, but the majority seemed to support militant nationalists such as Christabel Pankhurst.

Australian WW1 anti-conscription poster: not everyone was fooled by Great War propaganda. Australians were less fooled than most

Had the majority of socialists united with determination in solidarity against the war, the conflict’s outcome would likely have been very different. The war would probably not have lasted beyond a year or so – and might well have led to quite dramatic advances for democratic socialism and international co-operation between the most economically advanced nations on earth. On the other hand, the imperial elites, who’d presided over the outbreak of war  would quite likely have been out on their ears – from St Petersburg to London. In class terms, the stakes in the First World War were extremely high. It wasn’t just a war between nations. The imperial contestants were recklessly gambling all – including the possibility that their own prosperity would vanish in chaos and revolution.

The First World War bled white the youth of a generation, but did leave most of Europe relatively unscathed. It was mainly a military conflict between military machines. Civilian casualties remained a small proportion of the total. Since then, technology and ideology have combined to bring war much more directly to civilian populations. Civilian casualties were a considerably higher proportion in World War Two and it’s been a continuing trend since (Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan for example).

"Save free speech, buy war bonds!"

Although technology helped drive the “civilianization” of war casualties, the role of ideology and government policy should not be understated. When new technologies with obvious military potential were invented, most notably the ‘conquest of air’, many people were aware of the danger and pressed for controls by international agreement. There were, for instance, proposals to ban aerial bombing floated in the 1930s by at least one major European nation. Unfortunately, they did not win common agreement.

When World War Two did break out there was a swift descent into hideous mutual terror. Yet some ‘rules of warfare’ were observed, whether or not they’d previously been formalized by treaty. That’s to say, there was some holding back from utterly unspeakable, worst-case cruelty. One clear example was that, despite holding huge reserves of lethal sarin gas, the German leadership eschewed its use on battlefields and against civilian populations. Unlike World War One, no broad-scale military usage was made of poison gas by any of the protagonists.

Even so, World War Two did entail mass terror of a ferocity the world had never seen before. Entire cities with large populations were incinerated from the air. The worst offenders, sad to say, were the USA and Britain, who used World War Two to turn destruction of cities into an art-form. By war’s end, the USA had even perfected a completely new technology that would enable its President to order obliteration of tens of thousands of people via a single ordinance drop. In the event, Truman chose to try out the USA’s nuclear bombs twice on Japanese cities, without warning and certainly with no subsequent apology. It was an unspeakably murderous act.

Not only were Britain and the USA the most notorious civilian mass murderers during World War Two. They were also, I believe, the instigators of the war. It was British and American diplomacy first and foremost that brought about a conflict the Axis powers were clearly most anxious to avoid. Once war broke out (that is, following their declarations of war), it was the western powers that refused proposals for a negotiated end to hostilities. Unconditional surrender was the consistent Allied demand until they achieved their goal.

WW2 propaganda poster which came in several versions to help Anglo-Saxons identify friends

After five bloody years of war, the ‘Allied powers’ did prevail. Crucial to their success was the wartime alliance they forged with the USSR – a partnership that saw a crusty imperial power link arms with a brash nouveau riche capitalist republic and a brutal and authoritarian communist dictatorship. The latter, despite devastating losses, was eventually a beneficiary of the war in geostrategic terms.

After their military victory, those within the elites of the two English-speaking allies who’d been instrumental in fomenting war had tidying up to do, in cahoots with their temporary Soviet allies.

They had to cover their tracks. The war had caused the most terrible suffering for hundreds of millions of people, so the perpetrators had the strongest of incentives to obscure their own responsibility for the war. They also wished to camouflage and rationalize their horrendous brutality during the war. Arguably both English-speaking nations had committed the greatest war-crimes of all time – atrocities without precedent. It was a reputation they were naturally keen to avoid.

Denying that Dresden, Hamburg and Berlin, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been blown to smithereens by their bombs wasn’t really an option. The evidence could scarcely be denied. The solution was to ‘out-do’ those atrocities in the public mind – while falsely pinning the blame for starting the war on the defeated nations.

It was really just a matter of infusing new life into wartime propaganda that had already served US and UK national interests well during the war, when it had been used to whip up their own populations into a fury of righteous indignation. The post-war task was to emphasize suitable aspects of that propaganda and endow them with the status of ‘indisputable fact’. The landmark event used to ‘sell’ this false history to the world was the Nuremberg Trials. They are generally spoken of today as representing some kind of historical benchmark in international jurisprudence. In fact, the list of people who consider the Nuremberg trials were a disgraceful travesty of justice is impressive indeed, although their comments are rarely mentioned.

The enemy. Better off without him, even on the UN Security Council in 2011?

By the 1950s, the essential framework of our contemporary world was in place. It’s a world fashioned out of a combination of legal, political and economic arrangements between nations, world-transforming technologies and generally accepted ideological understandings. Of course, it’s a world that continues to evolve. Some major changes have occurred during the last 60 years, such as the remarkable collapse of the USSR. Yet overall, continuity has been greater than difference. We still live in a world of nation-states, operating under the rubric of the UN, World Bank, IMF and other key post-1945 institutions. Technology has evolved to be sure, but our societies are still largely reliant on fossil fuels. We remain under the threat of nuclear weapons – the most lethal devices for deliberate mass murder ever invented.

Crucially, we also still live under the “ideological understandings” that were in place six decades ago, based on historical beliefs that are largely distorted myths.

In the English-speaking countries (including Australia, whose view of world history is largely derived from Anglo-American sources) these myths still dominate our lives. They colour how we view the world. They define what we think is acceptable and what is not.

As I write, the two most populous English-speaking countries, this time in cahoots with France, are bombing Libya from the air. Since World War Two, this form of warfare has been preferred by the Anglo-American war machines for rather obvious reasons.

On what basis do these bomb-happy nations justify their action? Why – it’s all about human rights of course. We bomb… because we care.

Taken for granted, again & again & again...

But what gives us that right? How dare the USA and UK arrogate to themselves the right to kill by long-distance action in remote locations?

There are two answers – the ‘legal’ answer, and the more deeply entrenched ideological answer.

In terms of legality, the UK and USA managed to fix a vote in the UN Security Council at a crucial time that ceded them the authority to impose a ‘No Fly Zone’. They made no serious attempt to establish global consensus. The type of diplomacy they exercised had nothing to do with consensus. It was concerned only with achieving the goal which the war-promoting countries had already set: they wanted war. A UN Security Council resolution was a necessary fig leaf to give an appearance of legality to their direct involvement in the war. They got their fig leaf, even though UN Security Council Resolution 1973 provides a self-evidently incoherent policy  framework that could perpetuate Libyan civil war indefinitely – the very worst imaginable outcome from a genuine humanitarian perspective!

These serial war-mongering rogue states – most notably the USA and UK  - have made a travesty of the aspiration of finding genuine international agreement. They play the UN as a game – a game to get their way using fair means or foul.

It is disgusting – but it would never be accepted if it were not for the ideological arrogance of the Anglo-Saxon nations – a grandiose self-image which they’ve managed to market to the rest of the world to a quite remarkable extent.

A significant proportion of the British and American public seriously believe they – as a people – are better placed to make decisions about what’s appropriate for people living elsewhere (such as Libya) than the ‘other peoples’ concerned (eg the Libyans). And why not, given their history? They are, after all, the same people who saved the world from the greatest threat it had ever faced – the Great Evil One himself, Adolf Hitler. If some people have to make more decisions than others, who better than the Anglo-Saxon nations, bastions of democracy and human rights?

The rise and rise of militarism in the USA

Most westerners seriously imagine that world peace, since 1945, has been preserved by their own nations’ military dominance. Yet the truth is mainly the opposite. From 1939 onwards world peace has been foiled by collusion between the key allied powers of World War Two. It’s true Anglo-American military strength seemed to make sense during the ‘Cold War’ era, supported by the narrative that the west had defeated Nazi Germany only to witness the rise of another ‘Evil Empire’. But post-1990 that excuse for militarism had to be dropped. It should now be apparent to objective observers of international affairs that far from keeping the peace, the US/UK effectively serve as guarantors of continuing, controlled and highly contrived war.

From an Anglo-American perspective, what has changed most of all about warfare is its externalization. Notwithstanding occasional false-flag operations such as 9-11 or the 7/7 London bombings, war no longer happens at home. It’s entirely exported to regions of the world that the war planners deem ‘peripheral’. The cost of war in terms of human life is now quite small for the aggressor nations and their military are all professional employees (accompanied by increasing numbers of private contractors).  But of course, the impact of war is devastating to the recipients of western military aggression.

Would the great-great grandfathers of this generation of Anglo-American warmongers have approved? Maybe they would.

Like magicians, the canny Anglo-American warmongers misdirect the attention of observers. They adorn themselves in the regalia of peace, human rights, justice and freedom. Beneath the splendid ideological garments, reality is not so flattering.

By flash-freezing long-discredited war propaganda back in the 1940s – and keeping it rigid and impenetrable ever since – the ‘Allies’ obscured their role in fomenting the bloodiest war of all time, obscured their role in making it the bloodiest war of all time – and re-sanctified the very notion of war itself.

They achieved this last task by creating the myth that World War Two ‘ was both ‘necessary’ and ‘just’ – the ultimate response to the peace movement.

To this day, World War Two is referred to as the quintessential ‘necessary’ war. Take, for example, this recent article by the veteran Israeli peacenik Uri Averny. It contains a perfect example of what I mean. Here’s the relevant extract:

THE VERY term “war crimes” is problematic. War itself is a crime, never to be justified unless it is the only way to prevent a bigger crime – as with the war against Adolf Hitler, and now – on an incomparably smaller scale – against Muammar Qaddafi.

So there we have it – from someone who defines himself as a supporter of the peace movement, no less.

World War Two propaganda, eerily relevant today although Klu Klux Klan symbolism is obsolete. (Poster used during German occupation of Holland)

Averny is correct to suggest that war itself is a crime. But his analysis is downhill from there. He explains that sometimes war is essential. The greatest of such instances was World War Two – the ultimate “justified war”. But other, lesser cases reflect in the glory of that iconic necessary war, so they can be considered a bit necessary too – even though war itself really is a crime when you think about it. Oh and by the way… if you’re wondering who gets to decide which wars are necessary… it’s the good guys do, of course! The victors of World War Two! US! The same heroic people who vanquished Adolf and the Nazis.

Confused? Yes, we are confused. Very confused, Our dominant historical narrative has been distorted by lies, absurdities and dis-proven myths. It’s not surprising we’re confused…

Uri Averny is a grand old man of the Israeli peace movement. I could instead have chosen examples of ‘World War Two worship’ by much more bombastic pro-war commentators. In the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, barely a day went by without one talking-head or other warning about ‘appeasement’. Hoary old myths and distortions from the Nazi era perform excellent pro-war service to this day.

The myths of World War Two are ubiquitous and by no means confined to open advocates for militarism, as the example of Uri Averny indicates. They are shared by right, left and center. They unite east and west. It is no exaggeration to say they form a crucial part of our commonly accepted intellectual landscape. And of course, they are incessantly re-iterated by the western media, refreshed by Hollywood and reaffirmed by the mainstream publishing industry.

Uri and his adopted nation have a somewhat different interest in the frozen history of World War Two. The State of Israel was also born out of that war. The Zionist State acquired ‘moral legitimacy’ and vast wealth as a consequence of general acceptance of the notion that Nazi mass murders of European Jews were carried out on such a gigantic scale that they represented the greatest war crime of all time.

Most of the heated debate about World War Two surrounds this Jewish/Zionist narrative of events. Although interwoven with what I’ll call the Anglo-Saxon myths – it’s essentially a separate topic. In this essay I shall merely pause to note the ongoing usage and efficacy of that related mythology, which makes the fate of Jews during the war the central and most significant event of the war.  It is, of course, a historical perspective enforced by law in several jurisdictions, including Israel itself.

Did he have the guts to be a war resister?

As someone of Anglo-Saxon ethnic origins, I want nothing but the truth about history. Insofar as I was taught lies in the past about my culture and its history, I’d like those lies corrected so posterity is not equally misled. For me, the call to universal truth is fundamental. I’m fond of many aspects of the culture I acquired through an accident of birth, but I want it to become better by shedding dross. My primary loyalty is to humanity as a whole – not to a national, ethnic or religious sub-set.

I have no doubt the future belongs to people of similar conviction. Tribalism is a dead-end. War is species suicide.

As for Socialism, so badly derailed by a century of war and confusion, I believe in the broadest sense it’s a necessary – but far from sufficient – prerequisite for collective human well-being . Socialism need not and should not be at the expense of free speech, individual initiative and private enterprise. And it may be the word carries too much historical baggage to be useful in the future. But whether we call it socialism or something else, modern civilization needs a civilizing, equalizing integument around the raw energy of what may be called the realm of enterprise to prevent the latter usurping the common good. In the 21st century, Socialism itself also requires a ‘outer integument’ – the vital constraining influence of ecologically sustainable management of human activity.

Seen as complimentary, with blue constrained by red and red by green, these three great movements are best regarded not as competitors but as complimentary forces. Appropriately co-related, they can sustain life that’s worth living for us all.

War, on the other hand, is the absolute antithesis of sustainability, justice and freedom. War – and the malevolent ideologies that glorify and promote it – remains humanity’s greatest common enemy.

Hajnal Black (nee Ban) is a young, avowedly right-wing, female Councillor in local Government in South East Queensland. Both Hajnal and her husband are on Logan City Council.

There are thousands of local Councillors around Australia, but Hajnal is more colourful than most. She has attempted – so far unsuccessfully – to win higher elective office. She maintains a blog. Hajnal has also been involved in some interesting controversies outside politics in recent years. As this blog does not go out of its way to peddle scuttlebutt, I’ll leave interested readers to do their own googling.

Hajnal Black: Australia's answer to Tzipi Livni?

A week or so ago, Australia was abuzz with debate about the term ‘climate change denial’, which supporters of action on climate change have been using with increasing frequency despite my unheeded entreaties.

The issue erupted in Federal Parliament when Liberal front-bencher Christopher Pyne claimed to take deep offense at the Opposition being branded ‘climate change deniers’ by the Government. His reason? He argued it was an attempt to smear the Opposition by comparing them with ‘Holocaust deniers’.

Soon the great and the good of the Australian Commentariat took up the debate – a fatuous debate, in my view, because no-one I noticed (except yours truly) posed the question whether the concept of ‘denial’ is EVER an appropriate label to use in relation to ANY debate about history or current affairs, including the event of World War Two. In my opinion, it isn’t.

Within a few days Hajnal Black weighed into the debate. She posted an Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Australia on her blog. As it’s an ‘open letter’, I trust there’s no harm reproducing it here in full:

Dear Prime Minister

My grandfather was a holocaust survivor, the English emancipated his camp and rescued him from certain death in the closing hours of World War II. If it were not for that fact that Grandad survived the holocaust, I would not be here, and as such I regard myself as a holocaust survivor. The affects of the holocaust are still being felt in our family today, Grandad’s first wife and two babies were gassed by the NAZI’s and the pain he felt affected his relationship with other family members until his death.

As a family we came to Australia to escape the ravages of communist Eastern Europe. Freedom of speech was extinguished, and no one prospered for the hard work they undertook every day of their lives.

Since I have been a city Councillor I have worked hard to highlight the plight of local families, indeed the Carbon Tax will burden local families and hurt small business. It is my right to stand up for families and question the science behind human induced ‘climate change’. A prosperous Australia is something I will always fight for, it’s the reason our family came to Australia.

You and your Ministers’ use of the word ‘climate change denier’ to describe me and others who agree with the fact that human induced climate change ‘science’ is questionable and the fact that a Carbon Tax will do zilch to lower Earth’s temperature is offensive. It is clear that your clever use of the English language is designed to paint people with opposing views to you as similar to holocaust deniers; fringe extremists who can’t grapple with reality.

I would like to formally make you aware of the fact that I regard your comments as racial vilification, as they link me to a group of people who I hold with such anathema, such distaste, that it hurts our family’s sensitivities surrounding the holocaust.

I won’t bother writing a letter of concern to the Greens who also part take in this despicable word game, as the Greens are a fringe group. However your antics and the hysteria that you whip up against people opposed to your increase in taxes is most certainly painting you as a Green-sympathising extremist.

Regards,

Hajnal Black (nee Ban)

I imagine in the Prime Minister’s office Ms Black is regarded as an annoying pest – insofar as they think about her at all. The PM may well ignore the letter. I’ve yet to receive a reply to an open letter from a senior politician, but Hajnal may have more luck.

Any such reply, however, would doubtless treat Ms Black’s family narrative with reverence. After all, she says she is a ‘Holocaust survivor’ herself of sorts, that her grandfather was a first generation ‘Holocaust survivor’ – and that members of her family were gassed by the Nazis. They are not the kind of claims to be be treated dismissively in this culture.

Ms Black’s letter makes a couple of specific factual claims about her family’s World War Two experience:

1. Her grandfather was in a concentration camp liberated by British troops in the closing hours of the World War.
2. His first wife and two babies were gassed by the Nazis

What I found puzzling about her account is the combination of the two.

According to mainstream ‘Holocaust scholars’ such as Deborah Lipstadt, there were no homicidal gas chambers on German soil. Claims of that nature were made in the decades following 1945 – and were used to convict at the post-war Nuremberg trials – but the current ‘official’ Holocaust scholarly view, as far as I can establish, is that homicidal gas chambers existed but were confined to camps located in Poland, most notably Auschwitz (see for instance page 82 of Lipstadt’s well-known book ‘Denying the Holocaust‘ or this less sympathetic discussion of the topic from the Institute of Historical Review journal).

On the other hand, it seems quite clear from the historical record that British troops did not liberate concentration camps in Poland. That task fell to the Soviets. British troops were, however, first on the scene in some of the northern German concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen, around the time the war in Europe was coming to its bloody conclusion.

Hajnal Black is on Twitter, so I sent here a tweet as follows:

@HajnalBlack Sad to read about your grandmother & aunt. Which concentration camp were they in? How long after did the British liberate it?

Tweet from Hajnal Black

She replied shortly afterwards:

@SydWalker It was g/d’s first wife and children. approx 9 months. Mum says Auschwitz Dad says Bergen-Belsen. So it may not have been British

Now, I’ll admit that I approached Hajnal with some skepticism. Hence my quite precise questions. Nevertheless, my expression of sympathy was genuine. If she remains upset about the events of that period, I’ve no wish to add to her angst.

However, an open letter to the Prime Minister published on the internet by an aspiring politician is… a very public document. Surely it can be discussed by the public? If it contains apparent factual discrepancies, surely that can be discussed too? I think so – and it’s on that basis I continue with this brief analysis. This is NOT an attempt to vilify Hajnal, her ethnicity, her family history or anything else. It is an attempt to ask reasonable questions of a public figure regarding the veracity of her public claims.

If I was puzzled by Hajnal initial open letter, her tweet simply added to the confusion.

Now it appears she’s not actually sure which concentration camp her relatives were in. It seems her mum says one thing; her dad another. The former says Auschwitz (where orthodox Holocaust scholars continue to claim homicidal gas chambers were utilized – although not in the last months of the war). But Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets, not the British. The latter says Bergen-Belsen, which was liberated by the British – but where it is now generally accepted by all interested historians that no homicidal gas chambers were ever used.

Perhaps there’s an explanation for this apparent discrepancy. Hajnal’s grandfather might have been separated from his wife and children in different camps? We may not have been told the whole story.

On one key fact, however, I doubt Hajnal will change her narrative: the claim that her relatives were gassed.

Any expression of skepticism on my part regarding that might well be construed as ‘racial vilification’ or ‘religious persecution’ – or some other such damn nonsense that’s increasingly being seeded into our culture to help ring-fence certain contentious (but socially and politically important) topics from open public debate.

So I’ll re-iterate my earlier expression of sympathy to Hajnal. I regret she feels pain about events that took place so long ago. My own family and network of friends was not entirely unscathed by that hideous war; hundreds of millions of families were blighted by the war. So I do know where she’s coming from. These days, I increasingly see World War Two as an unnecessary or ‘forced’ war, contrary to the view I was taught in school. But that’s another subject…

I simply don’t know how on earth anyone can be certain her relatives were killed in a specific way if she doesn’t know for sure where they were at the time. Maybe she isn’t certain they were gassed? If that’s the case, perhaps Hajnal Black could acknowledge it? The public respects honesty in politicians.

One other quibble…

Hajnal’s Open Letter says”As a family we came to Australia to escape the ravages of communist Eastern Europe. Freedom of speech was extinguished, and no one prospered for the hard work they undertook every day of their lives.”

Yet according to Wikipedia, her place of birth was Afula, Israel. Does she consider Israel to be located in Eastern Europe? What were the freedom of speech problems her family experienced in the Zionist State?

Happily Hajnal can relax now. This is Australia, where we do enjoy free speech – and where the population is determined to retain it!

I became aware a few years ago of a phenomenon I call ‘fake scepticism’ (some prefer the spelling skepticism).

By ‘fake sceptics’, I mean people who purport to be sceptics – but their scepticism is highly selective. Perhaps ‘selective sceptics’ is a better term?

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic Magazine, is a prime example. A well-known equivalent down-under with a parallel agenda is Phillip Adams, an ABC radio presenter and founding Patron of the Australian Sceptics.

These guys are such ‘sceptics’ they portray topics such as 9-11 – or the fate of Jewish people inside wartime Nazi-occupied Europe – as matters so thoroughly understood already that scepticism in such cases is a tiresome nuisance at best.

By combining haughty dogmatism on some issues with real scepticism on others, they confuse and ultimately subvert the meaning of the term ‘sceptic’.

Michael Shermer: sceptical about many things, extraordinarily dogmatic about others

A genuine ‘sceptical’ approach in relation to 9-11, the events of World War Two, the Port Arthur massacre – or any other factual topic under consideration starts with an open mind.

All significant available evidence should be acknowledged and all theories tested against the evidence. The quest is for hypotheses – theories about the truth – that can’t be falsified.

Open debate, rigorous logic and careful documentation are crucial throughout.

In other words, a genuine sceptic applies rational principles and the scientific method without fear or favour, following the evidence wherever it leads.

If, at the outset of an investigation, investigators are confronted with a range of competing theories, a true sceptic accepts this and gives fair consideration to them all. Theories are rejected when hard evidence disproves them, not on a priori grounds. This same principle applies as much to theories enjoying ‘official’ status as it does to any other theory.

Fake sceptics, on the other hand, imply we already know the basic facts about a select list of subjects such as 9-11 – and argue as though there’s little to be gained – and only offense to be given – by querying the ‘official narratives’. When it comes to phenomena such as UFOs, crop circles, ghosts and ESP, the same people typically subject every last detail of proponents’ claims to the most critical scrutiny. So they should! That’s what true sceptics do – ask the hard questions! But try expressing doubts or asking hard questions about topics such as 9-11 and these fake sceptics become dismissive, evasive, patronising, intimidatory, downright rude or any combination of the above.

Prominent fake sceptics typically enjoy easy access to mainstream media and use it to present one-sided hatchet jobs on their opponents. These are often extraordinary exercises in perfoming logical contortions, in which they always shy away from mentioning damning evidence that undermine the official verities. Michael Shermer’s recent Scientific American article about 9-11 – The Conspiracy Theory Detector – is a classic in the genre (see also Kevin Barrett’s succinct debunking here).

Fake sceptics rarely engage genuine sceptics in open debate on ‘sensitive’ topics such as 9-11.

In fairness to Mr Shermer, he has at least did engage in a handful of public debates on these issues in the last two decades. (To my knowledge, Phillip Adams never has deigned to do this).

But even the risk-taking Shermer has a low appetite for such debates. He got his fingers burned years ago. I doubt, for example, he’ll want to debate ’The Holocaust’ again in public after some experiences in the 1990s , notably his fascinating debate with Holocaust sceptics on Phil Donaghue’s TV show: (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 are on YouTube; Shermer makes his first appearance during segment 2). Much safer to stick to one-sided hit-pieces in friendly media!

Senator Joe Lieberman - faux Democrat who has demanded a 'kill switch' for the internet. His ability to deny obvious facts is unparalleled.

I presume combining part-time scepticism with part-time dogmatic conformism has its rewards. Certainly it must be a tortuous intellectual challenge – and only very nimble minds could make a fist of it. That’s the special skill of professional ‘faux sceptics’.

Grumpy congressional war-horses like Joe Lieberman, by contrast, aren’t up to that kind of slippery sophistry. When put on the spot, Senator Lieberman’s ‘scepticism’ is necessarily more blunt.

Faced with a question about the mysterious collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 and the need for a genuine new inquiry into the 9-11 atrocities, Old Joe simply declared that nothing had happened at all!

Watch him say it – just over a minute into the video below!

If anyone had residual doubts that liars are in key power positions in America, irrefutable evidence is here….

Of course, Lieberman’s reply could be explained away as ignorance. For me, that’s too much of a stretch; he is, after all, Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Certainly, if Lieberman hasn’t heard of the collapse of the Salomon Brothers Building (aka WTC-7) before – a 47-storey skyscraper which has been entirely rebuilt since 2001 – America is truly run by imbeciles.

The BBC's Jane Standley: her world-famous precognitive powers are apparently of no interest to 'sceptics' Michael Shermer and Phillip Adams

Joe Lieberman could swap notes with BBC reporter Jane Standley.

Ms Standly, a BBC journalist who discussed the collapse of WTC-7 (aka Building What?) live on-air during the afternoon of that fateful day, was so on abreast of the story she reported it half an hour before it happened!

________________

To ordinary peace-loving people as they wake up to these shenanigans, it’s all WAY beyond a joke.

• Where’s the outrage from journalists paid to report and analyse our news?
• Where’s mass media follow-up on the story of Joe Lieberman’s absurd and blatantly inaccurate statement?
• What happened to the media’s responsibility to report truthfully and advocate for due process?

By allowing prominent politicians to get away with lies as blatant as this, mainstream western journalists shred their own credibility.

It’s already in tatters.

Honest journalists and commentators need to club together for mutual protection so they can report the crucial issue of 9-11 accurately. Have they never heard of unions?

Those who continue to report on the 9-11 issue with all the truthfulness and finesse of Joe Lieberman will permanently tarnish their reputations. Like Joe, they should be reviled as liars.