TresSugar

German Faces Five Years in Prison For Holocaust Denial

LibertySugar — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:00:00 -0700

The trial of a 72-year-old former left-wing terrorist group founder, and current neo-Nazi, began today in Germany. Horst Mahler is accused of posting documents online denying the Holocaust. Mahler likes trouble, as he received an 11-month sentence last year for delivering the Nazi salute at his prison booking for a previous conviction. And in 2003, he had to pay thousands of euros in fines for saying the Sept. 11 attacks were justified.

Mahler could spend five years in prison, if convicted of Holocaust denial. German law specifically prohibits anyone from claiming that the genocide of the Jews did not occur. A total of 13 countries forbid denial, including: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland.

Outlawing neo-Nazism is an obvious choice, but what about criminalizing Holocaust denial- is that a reasonable limit on speech, crucial to making sure the atrocities are never forgotten and never happen again? Should the prohibition include the Internet?

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Berlin Opens Memorial to Nazis' Gay Victims

LibertySugar — Wed, 28 May 2008 03:00:53 -0700

Germany's memorial to the homosexual victims of the Nazi era opened yesterday in Berlin. The simple yet powerful memorial is made up of a large stone with a small window. Inside, a video image of two men kissing plays.

The fate of Germany's homosexuals under the Nazis, who considered them a threat to German society, has long been ignored. The new display is meant to address the past and the present. Berlin's openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit, spoke at the ceremony.

This memorial is important from two points of view - to commemorate the victims, but also to make clear that even today, after we have achieved so much in terms of equal treatment, discrimination still exists daily.

Gay citizens living in Germany still faced hard times after the Nazis. According to the AP, the antihomosexual law used by the Nazis remained on the books in West Germany until 1969 and resulted in 50,000 postwar convictions.

The new memorial is located near the expansive memorial for the Nazis' Jewish victims. A third one is on its way, as the 220,000 to 500,000 Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) victims will be honored next. Check out the pictures of the inauguration ceremony. Will this memorial appropriately honor past victims and improve the lives of Germany's modern homosexual population? Are monuments to the past effective in reminding the present generation, as well as those that will come next, of the importance of tolerance and human rights?

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US To Deport 88-Year-Old Nazi Death Camp Guard

LibertySugar — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:00:49 -0700

An 88-year-old ex-Nazi may have nowhere to go. The US Supreme Court just rejected the deportation appeal of John Demjanjuk, who worked as a guard at a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust. Demjanjuk came to the US in the 1950s, only to be extradited to Israel and sentenced to death for war crimes. After his conviction was overturned, he came back to the US, lying about his Nazi past.

In 1993, Demjanjuk successfully proved he was not the notorious Nazi "Ivan the Terrible" after almost three decades of accusations. But, in 2002, an immigration judge ruled that there was enough evidence of a Nazi past to strip the guard-turned-Ohio car worker of his American citizenship. Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld that decisions without comment.

Now that the highest court says he has to leave, it's not clear where he will be welcomed. He claims that he will be tortured in his native Ukraine. It is also uncertain whether Germany will accept him.

Should America make this senior citizen leave his family in America? Are some crimes so atrocious that more than six decades do not let us forget? Does America have an interest in stripping a former Nazi death camp worker, responsible for thousands of deaths, of his citizenship lest it offer his actions even the most passive approval?

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German Neo-Nazis Hold Hitler Youth Camp, French Sell T-shirts

LibertySugar — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:00:05 -0700

Hitler may have died 63 years ago, but his anti-Semitic propaganda did not go with him to the grave. Last week police in northern Germany raided a neo-Nazi camp attended by children. At the camp, which was modeled after Hitler Youth Summer camps, 39 teenage campers wore uniforms of white T-shirts and black shorts, and studied racist Nazi materials. Following the police raid, the head of the German equivalent to the FBI warned that the German neo-Nazi movement has become increasingly ambitious and violent, marking a change in strategy.

Next door to Germany, French prosecutors have begun investigating Parisian clothing shops accused of selling anti-Semitic T-shirts. Covered in Polish or German, the shirts display slogans used by the Nazis, such as "Jews forbidden from entering the park." Sales people at the stores say they did not understand the inscriptions, but also that the shirts have been very popular with some customers. Let's hope widespread anti-Semitism never goes back in style in Europe.

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Fate of Germany's Most Wanted Nazi Found in Egypt

CitizenSugar — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:00:53 -0800

The hunt for Germany's most wanted Nazi, Aribert Heim (aka Dr. Death for his "medical" procedures) began in 1962 after he barely escaped capture. It only ended recently when a briefcase containing the details of his post-Nazi life and death was found in a hotel where he lived in Cairo.

The New York Times and the German television station ZDF obtained the briefcase and found the following:

An article about his own manhunt and trial in absentia (underlined and annotated)
His medical and financial records
Drawings by the children he left behind in Germany
An application for Egyptian residency under the name Tarek Hussein Farid, who had the same birth date and place of birth as Heim.

Investigators now know Heim fled to Egypt, converted to Islam, and died in 1992 as Tarek Hussein Farid. The Middle East has been an oft overlooked hideout for exiled Nazis, but countries like Egypt actually welcomed them for their military technology knowledge after World War II.

Until the briefcase discovery, Heim was believed to be alive in South America. In fact the Simon Wiesenthal Center - a Jewish human rights organization - had searched for him in Chile last year and was about to raise the reward for information leading to his arrest from $400,000 to $1.3 million.

Below, check out where Dr. Death lived until his own death.

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Does Freedom of Religion Exclude Scientology?

LibertySugar — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:03:05 -0700

Recently, Munich, Germany shut down a Kindergarten because the "well-being of the children in the establishment was under threat because the education process was based on the principles of Scientology." This event highlights the fact that in parts of Europe, freedom of religion does not extend to Scientology, which is not recognized as a religion - some countries even call it a "sect."

The choice of famous Scientologist Tom Cruise to play a well-known Nazi resistance leader, upset many Germans, who compared his infamous Scientology video to Nazi propaganda. Last month, a German court ruled that the government may continue spying on Scientology because the group "seeks to establish a social order that runs counter to the constitution." To get a handle on the sect designation, read more.

In Germany, as in France and other countries, the Church of Scientology has been accused of abusing civil liberties, misleading the public, and fraud. Scientology is considered a "sect" because it allegedly exploits its members financially.

Is it possible to differentiate between a religion and a sect? The question illuminates the difficulty in allowing behavior in the name of religious freedom. When people can justify any activity by claiming religious motivations, societal attempts to regulate behavior are perpetually undermined. Yet dominant religions, like Christianity, may be arbitrarily favored. How do we draw the line between religious persecution and legitimate government goals?

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A Generation of Male Commitmentphobes?

TresSugar — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:30:00 -0800

A recent Marie Claire trend piece takes on a certain species of man: the commitment-phobe. Lest you think this is but one unavoidable type of man, the writer suggests that there's a whole generation of 30-something men having early midlife crises:

These guys are part of a cause-less generation. They didn't grow up burning their draft cards or fighting the Nazis. They weren't part of the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Movement, or any other movement. They were spoiled as kids and now they want to spoil themselves as adults. The old cliché was that a man would wake up one morning and realize that he wanted his youth back. The new version is that he never reached adulthood in the first place.

This type tends to be drawn to Type-A women who can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let him forget he's a man . . . but the writer wonders if part of what the male commitmentphobe is thinking is that this type of woman doesn't need him at all. (Hmmm. So it's her fault?)

I don't think many would argue for a return to old-school gender roles and the suffocation that went with them, but do you think there's a whole generation of young-ish men who don't know how to commit?

Front Page: Accused Nazi Prison Guard in German Prison

TresSugar — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:05:14 -0700

Demjanjuk in German prison accused of being a a Nazi prison guard. - Breitbart
American sergeant charged in murder of five soldiers at stress clinic in Baghdad. - Washington Post
Obama talks to business leaders about cutting health costs. - Boston.com
Taliban storm Afghan city. - CNN
Former Catholic bishop of Milwaukee says he's gay. - Huffington Post
Change in estate tax suggested to pay for health care. - New York Times
World cocaine market in retreat. - BBC

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Jury: Prof. Who Compared 9/11 Victims to Nazi Wrongly Fired

CitizenSugar — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:01:42 -0700

A jury ruled yesterday that Ward Churchill, a formerly tenured professor at the University of Colorado, was wrongly fired after he compared victims of Sept. 11 to Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann. The jury granted him just $1 in damages, and a judge will rule soon whether he should get his job back.

Following Sept. 11, Churchill wrote of those in the World Trade Center:

Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire.

Once the essay came to light in 2005, Churchill came under fire. He eventually lost his job. The jury decided that the University of Colorado couldn't prove it would have fired him were it not for his political views. Officials had sited plagiarism and falsified research as reasons for the dismissal.

Do you think professors should be free to say such things and still keep their jobs?

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Front Page: Blast Hits Pakistan as Hillary Clinton Arrives

TresSugar — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:00:48 -0700

Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan today where a bomb killed at least 86 people in a crowded marketplace. - AP
Five are arrested for the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Richmond, CA, on school grounds during a homecoming dance. It's alleged at least 20 people witnessed the hours-long sexual assault and did nothing. - CNN
US Internet networks might crash if too many people end up working from home due to the swine flu. - Washington Post
Family members of a British couple feared kidnapped by Somali pirates are fearing the worst and hoping for the best. - AFP
Former Nazis are on trial in Germany. - BBC News
After Andre Agassi admitted that he used crystal meth during his career, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency is asking for more information. - USA Today