John Simkin

The historian Gerhard Flehinger died this week. He was the author of "Hitler and the Final Solution". He spent over 30 years working with Nazi documents. He was attempting to find irrefutable evidence that the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe was Hitler’s decision. Flehinger admitted that his research was politically motivated. He wanted to make sure that those on the right of the political spectrum would not be able to dilute the immense criminality of Hitler’s policies. Flehinger discovered that Hitler’s administration devoted major resources and immense cunning to attempting to conceal or destroy evidence for the responsibility for the final solution. That the authorities had systematically falsified documentation in such a way as to lay false trials relating to all aspects of the Nazis’ treatment of European Jewry. They did this so well that Fleinger could find no documentation that definitely proved that there was a direct link between the Holocaust and the Nazi high command. It is this lack of physical evidence that historians like David Irving use to defend their absurd views. However, what Flehinger was able to do was to assemble such an overwhelming weight of circumstantial material as to make his case incontestable.

The historian Gerhard Flehinger died this week. He was the author of "Hitler and the Final Solution". He spent over 30 years working with Nazi documents. He was attempting to find irrefutable evidence that the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe was Hitler’s decision. Flehinger admitted that his research was politically motivated. He wanted to make sure that those on the right of the political spectrum would not be able to dilute the immense criminality of Hitler’s policies. Flehinger discovered that Hitler’s administration devoted major resources and immense cunning to attempting to conceal or destroy evidence for the responsibility for the final solution. That the authorities had systematically falsified documentation in such a way as to lay false trials relating to all aspects of the Nazis’ treatment of European Jewry. They did this so well that Fleinger could find no documentation that definitely proved that there was a direct link between the Holocaust and the Nazi high command. It is this lack of physical evidence that historians like David Irving use to defend their absurd views. However, what Flehinger was able to do was to assemble such an overwhelming weight of circumstantial material as to make his case incontestable. We face a similar problem when investigating the JFK assassination. What documentary evidence that existed has been classified or destroyed. We will never be able to prove the case with evidence alone. What we can do is accumulate the circumstantial material to make the case incontestable.

It is interesting who reads this Forum. I have just had an email from a football journalist who has been commissioned to write a report for the PFA on the impact of foreign players on the British game. The report will be very critical of Arsenal. He also pointed out how Wengler successful got the debate ended when he called Pardew a "racist". It is a tactic that is always used by those who cannot intellectually argue their case.

How much did it cost to "turn" Gary Mack? The same question could be asked of Gus Russo.

Scotland Yard confirmed yesterday that the Conservatives are also to be investigated over the " loans for lordships" scandal. Nearly half of the benefactors who gave loans to the Tories have already emerged. The biggest known loan so far is £3.5m from Lord Ashcroft, the party's chairman. Others include Michael Hintze (£2.5m), Robert Edmiston (£2m), Henri Angest (£2m) and Johan Eliasch (£1m). Most of these are foreigners who are not legally allowed to give donations to British political parties. It raises the question, why would foreign businessmen be keen to give secret loans to British political parties? The important issue is whether Scotland Yard will widen its investigation into the arena of corruption such as the granting of government contracts in exchange for gifts and loans. Deputy assistant commissioner John Yates met the Commons public administration committee this week to ask MPs to postpone their hearings on the loans furore to avoid prejudicing possible police action. One fear is this is a tactic to stop MPs being questioned in public. That the real role of the police investigation by Yates is to enable a cover-up to take place. One thing is clear, John Yates will not get the top job in Scotland Yard unless he goes along with the cover-up. Nor will he get a peerage.

History teachers are aware that one of the best ways of getting the attention of young people is to tell gory stories about the past. Youngsters particularly like stories about public executions. In fact, I used to run a local history course entitled “Public Execution in East Grinstead”. Recently I came across some stories concerning public executions that people might be able to use in the classroom. It is estimated that a person takes between seven and twenty seconds to lose consciousness when the blood supply is cut off from the brain. This raises the question, when a person is guillotined, do they continue to see after they have lost their heads? The great scientist, Antoine Lavoisier (1743-94), was sentenced to death by guillotine during the French Revolution. He decided to carry out one last experiment. He would blink his eyes once every second following his decapitation for as long as he could manage and instructed his manservant to hold his head, observe his eyes, and count the number of blinks. He counted 15 blinks. In Saudi Arabia police officers have reported that they have received bites if they pick up the head of a decapitated man too quickly. My favourite story concerns the man who was executed in China. The executioner was so skilled that the head remained on the neck after his swift stroke and the prisoner said: “Why haven’t you cut my head off?” The executioner replied: “Just nod your head.”

They were all recruited by George Graham (either bought from the lower leagues or were part of the academy system). They served Wengler well but he eventually replaced them with foreigners. The idea that British players are too expensive when compared to foreigners is nonsense. How is it that teams like West Ham and Spurs can raise the money to buy British players? Take the example of Michael Carrick. Wengler considered buying him but changed his mind and he went to Spurs. For some time Arsenal have had a problem at centre-back. Even so they sold Matthew Upton who has done a great job at Birmingham until his injury. A series of foreigners have proved inadequate in this role for Arsenal. Yet at the end of last season Spurs and West Ham solved their central-back problem by buying British players. These players were available to Arsenal. Yet they were ignored.

That might be true of Blogs but not websites. My website gets 6m page impressions a month. In this way I can compete with all the major media outlets concerning the interpretation of past events. One of the major reasons for this is second-generation search engines like Google. Your ranking depends on the number of links your website obtains. It is also based on the idea of providing free material. Once you start charging for your material, search-engines stop indexing your work (spider software cannot cope with passwords). The desire to make money (capitalism) restricts your ability to communicate. I am not alone in this. Investigative journalists whose work mainstream newspapers won't touch publish their stories via the net. The web has truly revolutionized the process of communication.

I have just had an email from Dawn Meredith pointing out that my page on Bernardo De Torres comes up blank on her computer. I checked it out. My page is still ranked No 1 at Google but like Dawn I got a blank page. When I checked I discovered the page had been deleted from my server. However, I still had a copy on my computer and I have now replaced the blank page. Bernardo De Torres clearly has some important friends. First he gets it deleted from Goggle's database. Then he gets in deleted from my server.

I don’t dislike any club. I always find the hostility towards other clubs, for example, the hatred that Liverpool fans have towards Everton, juvenile and pathetic. I always support British clubs when they play in Europe. I have to admit that I am fairly passionate about West Ham. That goes very deep and the roots go back to childhood. My feelings towards other clubs is largely based on my assessment of their manager. There is a lot to like about Wenger. I fully approved of the way he got rid of the drinking culture at Arsenal. He also revolutionized the eating habits of his players. This approach has spread to other teams. I also like the way he manages players. However, I do think his anti-British attitudes (not uncommon in the French) has been damaging to the health of English football. That is why I approve of the job been done at Spurs. Jol, like Pardew, has bought the best British players he can afford. Both men have also given opportunities to members of their academies. That is the reason that I hope Spurs finish higher than Arsenal this season. I would think that Wenger will try to change his policy over the next few months. He might well find that he does not have a full stadium when he moves from Highbury. It is said he wants to imitate the success of Manchester United. However, Ferguson, despite his anti-English feelings (he once admitted he would turn the England job down because he would not want them to win even if he was manager), he has always relied heavily on British players from the Manchester academy. That is important to local fans. It might even become important to Arsenal fans if Spurs end up higher than them in the league this season.

Email message from Gary Mack: "A&E owns the History Channel. Since The Guilty Men is fiction, they don't show it anymore."

The third one was called Smoking Guns and did feature a section on John Liggett. It was a fascinating story that needs to obtain more publicity. The section on Doug Weldon's research into the presidential car was also very good. The witness from Fords (George Whittaker) was very impressive.

I watched "The Guilty Men" again last night on DVD. It is probably the best in Nigel Turner's series of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy". I noticed that Turner wrote, produced and directed the programme and the copyright was held by A & E Networks. How then were the History Channel able to make it "unavailable" to the general public? Email me if you are interested in obtaining all 9 episodes on DVD.

It is interesting to compare the treatment of "The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy" with "The Guilty Men" which was shown just once before being banned. I watched "The Guilty Men" again last night on DVD. It is probably the best in Nigel Turner's series of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy". I noticed that Turner wrote, produced and directed the programme and the copyright was held by A & E Networks. How then were the History Channel able to make it "unavailable" to the general public?

I will keep details in future. It was much better yesterday and only had trouble posting on the Ron Pataky thread at 10.55: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6437 and Thomas Webb thread at 11.17: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6436 You also mentioned that sometimes posts are not recorded in "recent postings". That happened yesterday when Pat Speer posted on this thread at 7.34: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5856

In the early 1980s I was involved in designing computer simulations for teaching history. For example, we tried to show what would have happened if Sir Douglas Haig had used different tactics at the Battle of the Somme. We were criticized by some people for these simulations. The main argument against them was that students had a deep trust in the “truth” of technology and they automatically believed what they saw on the screen. That they were unable to see that this was a construct based on the interpretations of human beings. This was probably the response of most people who watched this documentary. For example, the normally sensible TV reviewer in the Guardian newspaper said the following day that Meyers’ computer animation proved that JFK had been killed by a lone gunman. In my view, this ABC film was the most important disinformation campaign since the publication on the Warren Commission.

Thank you for your kind comments. I am surprised it has not been done before. I suppose Peter Dale Scott’s “Deep Politics” is the closest example to this approach. I am currently researching into the way the assassinations of MLK and RFK fits into this pattern. (Should be ready in the next couple of days.) My approach is based on the idea that history is really a study of the present. I believe that we can only understand the relationship between Bush, Halliburton and the Iraq War by looking closely at the long-term relationship between politicians, corporations and the intelligence agencies.

The claim that it leads to “laziness” is a common criticism of the welfare state. I suspect a large percentage of people in the UK share this view. There is no doubt that the younger generation view the welfare state differently to those who remember society before the introduction of the system. My mother was in her 30s when it was introduced. She was one of those who voted Labour in 1945 in order to get a welfare state. She had experienced the Great Depression in the 1930s. Her mother told her about how the government had not kept its promise to create a “land fit for heroes” after the First World War. It was felt that people could not trust the Conservative and Liberal parties to deliver this promise (they had formed a coalition government after the First World War). My mother and grandmother were always reluctant to claim the benefits of the welfare state (my mother still holds this view). My mother’s generation thought the welfare state was only for those in great need (the unemployed, the disabled, etc.). I was brought up with this attitude (I was born days after the election of the Labour government in 1945). I have for example never been out of work since I left school at 15. I have therefore never claimed unemployment benefit. The important thing is that I knew it was there if I needed it. That is the important point about the welfare state being a “security net”. My mother’s generation is often critical of young peoples’ attitude towards the welfare state. They all know of examples of people who claim unemployment benefit without appearing to be very interested in finding work. This is especially true of people who can only get unskilled work. With things like housing benefit, they are clearly better off than those receiving low wages. However, this is only true of a small minority. The vast majority want to be in work. In my view, this is more a problem of low wages rather than too generous benefits. I believe a much larger problem is the unwillingness of those with money to pay a reasonable amount of taxation to fund the welfare state. Taxes on the rich are far too low to adequately fund the welfare state.

It has happened a lot in the JFK section. However, that might be because it is busier than other sections.

It is significant that the BBC gave the impression that it had produced this film. At the time, Gavin Esler, was the main presenter of Newsnight, a well-respected news programme. Esler appeared on camera at the beginning of the film as well as providing a commentary. I, like most viewers, assumed it was a BBC film. This gave the film a validity it did not deserve. Can you imagine the fuss if the same thing had been done with a documentary on another controversial subject?

I have never said that. Although I do think British clubs should include one or two British players. I do not consider it healthy that we have a manager of a top English club who is clearly anti-British.

Review of the new independent film by John Hankey in the Los Angeles Times: "The Assassination of JFK Jr. — Murder by Manchurian Candidate," provocateur John Hankey's follow-up to "JFK II: The Bush Connection," attempts to link the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in a 1999 airplane crash off Martha's Vineyard to President George W. Bush's sudden rise to power. Hankey intriguingly argues that Kennedy was a political threat to the military-industrial complex and that there is convincing evidence that foul play and a governmental cover-up were involved in what was ruled an accident. http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-wk-s...movies-features

Picture of Henry Marshall (taken from The Guilty Men, the banned episode of The Men Who Killed Kennedy)

Two of our three foreigners are from Israel. The people of the East End have a long tradition of fighting racism. Wenger called Pardew a racist when he pointed out that Arsenal did not have any British born players in his team. Yet is Wenger who has gone on record as saying he does not trust young British players. On the radio this morning an Arsenal spokesman said that they have great difficulty persuading talented British youngsters to join their academy. Maybe it has something to do with the way that Wenger has treated the young British players he has had under his control. Arsenal clearly out-fought Jurventus last night. They find that easier to do in Europe. No so easy in the Premiership.