One of the results of the recent discussions of the Israel/Palestine diaries has been to embolden those who want to rid the site of those they see as pro-Palestinian. I am such a target and I await an email from Hunter informing me I have been banned. I think it is useful to examine what got their ire and I will do so over the flip.
In case those who avoid I/P discussions are unclear, let me make this clear. The purpose of this is to close down dissemination of facts inconvenient to those whose uncritical support of any and all Israeli government action goes far beyond most Israelis. The irony is that they are attempting to close down the sorts of debates that freely circulate within Israel. For Americans, Israel must only be seen the Nelson's eye of AIPAC. There have been various attempts at this, culminating it seems with such disruption on the site that the FPs will refuse to allow the topic at all. This was apparently after the failure of a threat that the exposition of a neutral or pro-Palestinian view would endanger Democratic candidates being elected.
I would argue the contrary. This tactic is getting Daily Kos a reputation for censorship which will ultimately damage its influence.
My sin apparently was to point out the sloppy reporting in an article quoted by a diarist and advising that his analysis was too optimistic if he thought that it would provide a definitive number of those killed by the Nazis.
This is the article refered to:http://www.cbsnews.com/...
And this is my response which has been weighed in on and presumably now appears in the hidden comments as this was suggested as one way of alerting the FPs for my banning.
The CBS report has some very stupid turns of phrase, including one you quote of "Hitler's secret archive". That suggests that it was assembled within the Nazi regime and for Adolf himself. Yet from what we do know of the highest levels surrounding him, there was a sort of "plausible deniability" constructed by means of euphamisms and delegation. (Another case in the CBS report is the "Hitler's birthday present" killing described but without giving evidence that his was a motive of the numbers.)
Only by delving deeper do we get to the real nature of the archive and it is quickly passed over. The first is how the archive was assembled in the first place:
This Holocaust history was discovered by the Allies in dozens of concentration camps, as Germany fell in the spring of 1945.
and the second, much later in the report, is the indication of what happened to this paperwork after the war::
And those records make up the largest Holocaust archive anywhere. Run by the Red Cross, the International Tracing Service was set up after the war to trace lost family members. Survivors could write for information, but there was a backlog of 400,000 unanswered letters. And neither survivors nor scholars got past the lobby.
So it seems, though it is not stated, that the documents were given to the ICRC by the powers that occupied Germany. We do not however know from the report whether this included any documents captured by the Russians (or the extent of their disclose) as they had their own reasons for not wanting the exact truth about all the deaths in, for example, Poland, to be made public.
Neither of course do we know the extent of the material which did not reach the archives purely because if was burned by the retreating Nazis. 50 million documents may seem a lot but we do not know the nature of them either. If they are complete lists of all the executions, then your optimism may be justified but the report would tend to indicate that they also contain numbers of documents relating to just one individual or to a small group like the signing in sheets.
I would suggest that all these factors will mean that still only a broad spread of estimated deaths will be possible. The archive may limit the range but there will never be a definitive number. (Look at the problems of getting one for those killed in New York on 9/11.) Only popcorn journalists and motivated historians will give an unqualified figure. Anything that does not contain a phrase like "estimates vary between x and y" or "anything up to z million" should be examined for the agenda it is promoting.
From subsequent posts it would appear that the report has an anchronistic and therefore misleading use of "Allies" by excluding the USSR. They nor Russia are not on the list of controllers of the archive so presumably those records they confiscated are not in this.
The records do not include apparently data on killings outside camps - by the mobile squads dispatched to the East for example - mean only that the estimates for those camps and periods the records cover can be firmed up. They will not be able to do other than reduce the range argued over as either too high or too low an estimate. I later point to a site which lists the numbers killed in the death camps. That has a range of the total killed from 4,778,677 to 6,017,760. The apparently rather accurate numbers are due to those from Norway being with the addition and pretty accurate numbers were known there (Range 677-760). All other countries' numbers are to the nearest 100,000. The source that the site quotes is the Nizkor Project as "statistics derived from Yad Vashem and Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution."
Unfortunately those who appear to be undertaking the AIPAC witch hunt took my reservations about the scope of the data as prima face evidence of "Holocaust denial" as they had already placed me on their hit list of "anti-semites". I was even accused of introducing Israel/Palestine into the diary when they were the ones who had done so. Unfortunately I cannot reproduce all my comments as they are now hidden and the attack has removed my TU status.
Once the Witchfinders have had their way, no doubt I can look forward to other topics whose discussion on here will offend some voters into not voting for the Democratic Party. Next they will come for those who advocate Gay Rights, then it will be those who campaign for Freedom of Choice. What next - women's equality? Race?