Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab): Does my right hon. Friend agree that any massacre, big or small, by whomever, of Jews during world war two was a crime against humanity? To whitewash such a massacre and to try to make it relative is intolerable, unacceptable politics, and those who associate with those politicians shame this House and our nation.
David Miliband: My right hon. Friend has done fantastic work with colleagues across every party on anti-Semitism and the need to combat it. There is no room for hair-splitting when it comes to the massacre of 300 or 400 people in a Polish village in 1941, and I would have thought that every single Member of this House would be able to condemn that atrocity without any hesitation.
So that's the new politics is it? For a senior Labour Cabinet Minister to imply that Conservative MPs secretly rather agree with massacring 400 Jews? What a disgrace. What he and his lapdog MacShane are trying to do is nothing short of political vandalism. They see the Kaminski issue as the one thing they have got to beat the Tory Party with and they will go to any lengths to do so. MacShane actually emailed this exchange round to every journalist he knows this morning. Hopefully most of them will have the good sense to see what he is up to and won't fall for it.
In FCO questions in the Commons virtually every answer from Miliband and Bryant carried some kind of reference to Kaminski. And of course Kaminski himself has also condemned the massacre. This is what he told me in the interview I did with him...
MK: What I was saying from the beginning was that it was a terrible crime and I am ashamed that the Polish people were involved in this crime.
ID: If you're ashamed of that, why can't you agree that there should be an apology?
MK: Because my point is, I don't want to put this single crime - however shameful - on the same level as the Nazi policy towards the Jews. You see the difference? We had our underground state, we were occupied by Germans, and what those bandits did at Jedwabne was totally against Polish law, Polish customs and Polish culture. What the Nazis did was according to the state policies of the Nazi government. Do you understand the difference? Because there is a difference. Let's say that you can feel ashamed of British hooligans, but no one will require an apology from the whole British nation for the actions of a few hooligans.
ID: I'm not sure that's true - I feel ashamed about British football hooligans when they go abroad and I do apologise for my country.
MK: But the difference is that it's not about judging the crime. It was a position shared by many politicians in Poland: we condemned the crime but we didn't want to be put on the same side as the Nazis.
ID: Even though what you're saying has a certain logic to it, logic doesn't really matter in these sorts of subjects! I think you need to understand the other point of view.
MK: From the very beginning, when I was confronted with this accusation, I said that I fully understand the feelings of the Jewish people, and that I understand that after such allegations, they can ask me the questions and scrutinise me, because anti-Semitism is really bad. But what makes me angry is that the people who are using this anti-Semitic argument are in the political debate not to fight anti-Semitism, but just as a tool to fight opponents. They are actually undermining the global fight against anti-Semitism, because if you are making false allegations, people will think, oh, this is just politics as usual, whereas actually, this is something really important for me and everyone on this planet. I will repeat: I was in Israel, and I was actually attacked by the Polish anti-Semites. I was an enemy of the far right in Poland. I made a statement about anti-Semitism in Poland as a member of the European Parliament, and I have been attacked for this statement by the Polish far right. But it's a political game, unfortunately practiced by some journalists, which I regret.
I thought David Miliband was better than this, but it appears I was wrong. To think, he once had ambitions of leading the Labour Party.
UPDATE: Have replaced Infer with Imply!!!
107 comments:
On the other hand.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/20/holocaust-michal-kaminski
Oh, Iain, it is "imply" not "infer". It doesn't help make a convincing argument when someone so prominent uses the language so badly. Please would you tweak it at each occurrence?
But this shows why Miliband would be suited to be New Labour leader - after all the current one had the McBride Downing Street Smear Unit.
It is time that the Tories started hitting back by drawing attention to some of the people in the European Socialists Group. "Tory Bear" listed some of them the other day and I find it appalling that the Labour Party should associate with such people. Indeed, such people merely add to the reasons for getting out of the EU
To quote a former Labour MP - they are lower than vermin !
Not after that picture with the banana he won't!
There's something weird about the Milliband brothers in any case.
"But what makes me angry is that the people who are using this anti-Semitic argument are in the political debate not to fight anti-Semitism, but just as a tool to fight opponents." deserves a highlight.
I think you mean "imply", not "infer".
And anyway, he's asserting that every MP will be able to condemn the massacre of 300 or 400 Jews in Poland in 1941 - in other words, he's implying that Tory MPs do not approve of Jew-killing - and I'm sure he's right.
Surely Miliband is 'implying', you are 'inferring'.
He doesn't infer. He implies. You're old enough that you have no excuse for not knowing the difference, Dale.
Miliband, like Harman, is trying to carve out an increasingly aggressive niche for themselves that will rally the core Labour vote in time for their own 2010leadership election.
Harman is going for the female vote, Miliband is going for the religious and LGBT lobby. Shameless stuff, but wholly predictable.
As a Jew myself, I am absolutely fed up with the way my people's history is used as political football (by all and any political parties). To use any historical tragedy for the purposes of political point-scoring is contemptible, and must be a major turn-off for any human who is not a politician themselves.
I think you mean imply. Unless you are suggesting that such an inference can be drawn from Tory statements.
I thought David Miliband was better than this
If this remark really reflects your beliefs, rather than being a rhetorical commonplace, you cannot have been paying attention to Miliband's behaviour while in office.
Miliband is one of the worst and most contemptible of the ZanuLab smearmongers and liars. He's been a greasy, slimy, little bitch since he was in short trousers and we can only be glad that he is a very stupid man and the cunning, subtle political creature he fondly imagines himself to be.
Miliband aspires to be Mandelson. In fact, he is Brown.
'Imply', NOT 'infer'. Grrrr. (You imply, I infer)
He implies, you infer. Sorry for being a pedant but if no one points it out then you'll never know you've made a mistake.
It doesn't detract from the point you're making though.
imply, for pity's sake. They imply, you infer.
I agree that this kind of reckless charge of anti-Semitism against political opponents who are clearly not anti-Semitic is a very bad idea.
OTOH, I think you need to look up that important infer/imply distinction again.
It's what Miliband is *implying* that is the problem.
Macshane is never wrong on anything even when he is wrong. He shares this endearing trait with any number of Labour politicians but particularly the Great Leader. Mind you he got roughed up nicely last night by Paxo and lady from I think it was the 'English Collective of Prostitutes'. Most Conservatives would have paid good money for that sort of treatment, but lucky Macshane got it for free.
Crikey, Iain, if you think that is bad, wait until you read Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian...
Denis MacShane is a disgrace to British public life with his dissembling, spinning and lies.
See him on last night's Newsnight in an interview with Paxo and the rather nice lady from the prostitute's union. He was wasted by Paxo and shown up for the lying blusterer that he is. A slow motion car crash.
I think you've lost the plot on this one Ian. I don't think Milliband was inferring anything of the sort.
Over sensitive politics is entirely unproductive!
FJ
Is this the same Denic McShane who was utterly humiliated on Newsnight last night for making wild and inaccurate claims in Parliament?
Iain, this is wrong. Please, please wake up. What logic is there in refusing to apologise for the slaughter of 300 jews. Why can't you and other sensible Conservatives understand that if you go to bed in a flea pit you will wake up with fleas.
The Tories’ unpleasant new pals in the European Parliament indicate they couldn’t give a damn - at the very least.
don't wish to be pernickety, Iain, but do you mean 'imply' rather than 'infer'?
As to the content of the post, I think this shows how dirty the fight is going to be for the next few months. Rats in a corner, and all that. They know they are going to be defeated, and are prepared to go to any lengths - not to win, but to muddy the waters and spoil the debate. I started off by being a Labour supporter, long ago. Then I came to disagree with them, then dislike them. Now I loathe them. I seriously would be glad if this election bankrupted the party and destroyed the movement totally. The working classes deserve better than this poisonous shower.
Wheellie bin Milliband ?
He could not even get that right ,enough said ?
He's incompetwent like all Labour ministers.
sorry but milipede really is the toxic pits. an inept stain on a great office of state - in short trousers. remember clarkson's delicious 'introduire la bouche' encounter with piers morgan? sorry but that's what milimetre deserves.
This slur will be trotted out at every opportunity from now until the election. The Labour party have nothing to lose by smearing by association and so they will keep doing it.
There's really horrible stuff too in the Guardian today trying to link Cameron and Hague via Kaminski to Holocaust revision. Team Milliband are obviously trying to smear the Tories as anti-Semites.
Response:
1. David Cameron and William Hague have never done or said anything personally to suggest they do not feel the deepest revulsion at acts of genocide and war crime. They have repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism in all its forms throughout their careers in public service.
2. The Conservative party is a pro-Jewish party. It had its first Jewish leader in the Commons in 1852 and has had many prominent Jewish MPs and ministers since Disraeli. The Conservative Friends of Israeli is a large sub-group of the party.
3. Kaminski has repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism, including in his Total Politics interview in 1941. He can't be blamed for what happened in Poland in 1941.
4. The Labour government since 1997has made some friends in Central Europe with dubious pasts to say the least. For example Tony Blair in 1998 welcomed to Downing Street Gyula Horn, then Prime Minister of Hungary. I can't remember Blair quizzing Horn on his role in 1956-7 as a member "pufajkás" brigades who tortured and executed civilians involved in the 1956 uprising against Soviet Communism.
Off subject; but about Mcshameless. Last night on newsnight he was interviewed about his statement in Parliament when he claimed 25,000 sex slaves in the UK. He claimed these were Home Office figures turned out it was a fallacious article in the Labour rag the Mirror.
The Truth and McShameless are not easy partners.
Pete-s
Iain
Come off it! There is no way that you can make theis charge against the Foreign Secretary - he infered nothing of the sort.
As well as being vile mendacity, it may well be self defeating. Most people expect vile lies from politicians and will simply shrug. A few naive or paranoid Jewish voters might be swayed into avoiding the Tories I suppose, but the Jewish vote is small and unhelpfully geographically concentrated. Meanwhile New Labour has spent a lot of time cultivating and flattering various anti-Semitic friends among dodgy community leaders and the anti-Zionist left in more electorally important places. It is a worrying thought, but drawing the attention of some bits of their own machine to the fact that 'Labour disapproves of pogroms' might lose more votes than it gains. Or are they going to disavow any actual morality at all here when speaking to their own people?
"I thought David Miliband was better than this, but it appears I was wrong. To think, he once had ambitions of leading the Labour Party."
How can you lead a tribalist party without demonstrating your support for tribalism. Labour does not require facts, it merely requires subservience to the party line regardless of facts, truth, decency or logic.
Socialism is a religion, not a political philosophy.
Campbell's latest blog rant is trying to whip up the US Jewish lobby to believe the lie that the Conservative Party is anti-Semitic. The Labour smear machine is alive and active.
You mean imply, not infer...otherwise what else to you expect from banana boy?
Surely 'implies'?
Did you see MacShane on Newsnight last night? He didn't exactly shine.
Miliband is a national embarrassment bordering on a sick joke. To put it politely.
Incidentally, there was an article in the Telegraph about a week ago suggesting that if Blair doesn't get the so-called presidency, Miliband could be handed the 'EU Foreign Minister' post. Now THAT would be a sick joke.
Iain
You mean imply, not infer. You are the one doing the inferring from what the foreign secretary is saying.
"I thought David Miliband was better than this"
Why on earth would anyone think that?
What you are seeing is D Miliband panicking that Labour have messed things up so much that he may well be out of office for the next 10+ years.
Conceivably, his personal political achievements may already have peaked at Foreign Secretary, and a pretty unimpressive one at that.
As has been widely commented, it is even possible that Labour will never win power again.
If he would only put as much energy into slamming the racist far-left parties on our own shores (BNP etc) they might not cause as much trouble as they currently do.
Now I learn that Labour has been smearing members of the ECR to Hillary Clinton. Demonstrating that these smears are not merely pathetic, they're dangerous. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/20/tories-eu-allies-us-pressure
No he implied, you inferred.
Iain,
Thank you for highlighting the disgraceful behaviour of the Labour Party once more. However, it always amazes me when it turns out you assumed that one of their number was decent or truthful. I know you want to play fair but surely, surely you have realised by now that the whole "project" has been based on lies and shameless propaganda from the very start.
Ah, well. They'll be gone soon.
And Milliband's ancestry on the Russian side against the Poles? Any mention of that?
David Miliband is a vile person. He is standing on the corpses of millions of Jews in order to make himself seem just a little bit taller, politically.
Miliband! You have Jewish ancestors. Some of your family could well have died in concentration camps. Have you no shame, sir? No sence of human decency? No sense of honour?
Iain, I think you mean implies not infers.
To infer means to draw conclusions. To imply means to suggest them.
There seems to be an inherent nastiness to NuLabor politics, right from when that very devious Tony Wots His Name achieved the leadership, now in their dying days they have taken on the appearance of the Brown Shirts of the political Centre Left.
Even Saint Frank of Birkenhead seems to have been contaminated by NuLaborism to the extent he too has a wonky moral compass now.
Let us hope the next general election brings about a cleansing of the Augeas Stables Parliament has become.
Labour have no sense of decency, honesty or shame.
They are the morally bankrupt party.
I think the Poles suffered enough under both the Nazis and the Soviets for this to be small beer(but not condonable) in the big scheme of things.
A lot of the attitudes of countries that were occupied by the Soviets were, and still are, driven by their experience of life under Stalin.
For many, they initially viewed the murderous NKVD as a bigger threat to their lives than the Nazis, and embraced the 'liberating' Germans as saviours. Time showed that their judgment was misplaced.
Miliband might be reminded that it was Conservative Churchill who did not want to compromise with Hitler. Indeed it it were not for Churchill's determination (unlike some of his faint hearted collegues)to beat the Nazis, many who are around today would not be alive.
Miliband does himself no service by these attacks as it questions his partiality in the matter of Palestine and War Crimes in Gaza.
Iain - if you want to see MacShane beaten up by the Collective of Prostitutes - watch Newsnight - it was hilarious.
She'd be a much more compelling MP
"UPDATE: Have replaced Infer with Imply!!!"
But only in the headline. Don't you know how to use CTL/F? :-)
How interesting! Comments on the Grauniad article are not allowed.
October 21, 2009 10:02 AM
I think your fairly unpleasant person as well,take a look in a mirror once in a while.
These are just some of the massacres in Poland. 6 million civillians died in Poland. The deaths of a few hundred is being used as a political football by Labour politicians but unless you are aware of the true extent of the horror in Poland you will understand why a politician can't apologise for the actions of this particular massacre.
ATROCITIES IN POLAND (Polish Revenge)
Unable to stem the onrush of German forces during the invasion of their country, Polish soldiers and civilians started fleeing eastwards. It was during this flight to the east that the ethnic German civilians, resident in Poland for many years, received the full impact of the spite and hate stored up in the hearts of the fleeing Polish soldiers and their civilian followers. Between September 4 and September 8, 1939, in the communities of Eichdorf, Hopfengarten and Narzheim nearBromberg the polish soldiers began an orgy of murder and rape that is beyond belief. German houses were entered and the occupants arrested and then murdered. Not all were shot, many were brutally put to death by all sorts of tools and their bodies severely mutilated. As the soldiers left to search for more German houses, their civilian helpers were left behind to plunder and steal and in most cases, to set the house on fire. Many of the German women were raped before being shot. During this retreat from the west, the Polish soldiers, together with the communist civilian irregulars, were responsible for the deaths of many thousands of German residents. At a later investigation, the testimonies of 593 witnesses established the fact that at least 3,841 named ethnic Germans were murdered by the Poles prior to the full German occupation. These revenge murders were carried out as early as April, 1939 in the Polish Corridor. In September, 1939 these Volksdeutsche formed themselves into Self-Protection units known as Selbschutz and came under the control of the SS and later under the Ordungspolizei (Order Police). The infamous reputation that it earned caused it to be disbanded on 30th of November, 1939. These massacres were one of the causes that gave Hitler the excuse to invade.
PACIFICATION
After the German takeover of Poland in 1939, so called 'pacification' raids on towns and villages were started. The SS method of 'pacifying' a district and subdue the local population was to shoot a few hundred of its inhabitants. Picked at random, they were marched to the place of execution and forced to undress and to lie face down in previously dug pits. They were then shot and their corpses covered with a layer of quick-lime. A second batch of victims were then ordered to lie down on top and after they were killed another layer of quick lime was thrown on top. This procedure was repeated till the pit was full. It was then trampled down until the surface was level and on which trees or grass was planted. Executions such as this were committed daily by the Nazi death squads as they marched victoriously through Poland, and later the Soviet Union. In the village of Szalas, all male inhabitants over the age of fifteen, some 300 in all, were rounded up and many machined-gunned to death, the others were locked in the local school which was then set on fire. An order issued by Hitler stated that "No German soldier could be brought to trial for any act committed against Polish or Russian citizens".
Between 1939 and 1945, Poland suffered 6,028,000 non-military deaths. Around three million were Jews and about 300,000 were Gypsies. The fate of the Gypsies is often neglected by most authors in their writings, yet they were subjected to the same mode of extermination as were the Jews.
Your boys have brought this on yourself I'm afraid. And it's not just the Foreign Secretary who is so rightly appalled.
See these articles from today's Guardian - here and here, plus this from the Times.
Let me reprint a few excert's from one of today's Guardian reports:-
Influential Jewish groups in the US urged Clinton to raise with Hague the Conservatives' decision to enter a European parliament coalition with a Latvian party, some of whose members participate in an annual service commemorating Latvian units of Hitler's Waffen-SS, and a Polish politician who has questioned the need to apologise for an anti-Jewish pogrom during the second world war.
"I think Churchill would turn in his grave. It is an insult to the tradition of this great party," said George Schwab, president of the New York-based National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a Holocaust survivor from Latvia.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, the leading US organisation dedicated to fighting anti-semitism and one of American Jewry's most influential voices, said those outside Europe had the "right to raise moral questions", chiefly because the new grouping in Europe "legitimises extremism, bigotry, Holocaust denial and Holocaust revisionism".
Cosying up to the likes of Kaminski and Zile is in-f***ing-defensible and you know it; it goes against everything a mainstream party should stand for.
BROMBERG MASSACRES (September, 1939)
In the area around Bydogszcz (Bromberg) about 10,000 non-Jewish Polish civilians were murdered in the first four months of the Nazi occupation. This, the largest town in Pomerania had a population of around 140,000. Its priests, lawyers, teachers and industry leaders were arrested and executed in the town's square by machine-gun fire. About 100 twelve to sixteen year old boy scouts were rounded up and machine-gunned to death on the steps of the Jesuit Church. For every German soldier shot, a group of between 50 and 100 Polish civilians were randomly selected and executed. Participating in the shooting of hostages on September 10th, 1939, were members of the Police Battalion 6 (Berlin). Head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, had said 'All Poles will disappear from the world'. In the provinces of Lodz and Warsaw, the SS conducted a total of 714 executions which took the lives of 16,376 Polish civilians, mostly the leading intelligentsia and aristocracy, civil and political leaders. In mental hospitals around Bromberg around 3,700 mental patients were shot. The most victimized class of Polish society was the clergy. In Pomerania, only 20 of its 650 priests were allowed to remain, the rest were either shot or sent to concentration camps. In Wroclaw, 49% of its priests were killed. In Chelmno, 48%, Lodz, 37% and Poznan, 31%. In Warsaw 212 priests died at the hands of the invaders. The last transport of Jews from Bydogszcz arrived at the Warsaw Ghetto on March 10, 1941. In September, 1939, Poland had a Jewish population of 3,351,000. Only 369,000 were alive at the war's end. In the post-war period the city of Bromberg was surrounded by a network of Soviet concentration camps the inmates of which were ethnic German nationals and residents of the region arrested between 1944 and 1950.
(On November 29, 1939, the USSR forced Soviet citizenship on all residents of Polish territory under their control)
MASSACRE AT JÓZEFÓW
On June 20, 1942, Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg, consisting of eleven officers, five administrators and 486 men set out by truck for Poland. A few days later they arrived at the town of Bilgoraj, south of Lublin. Here for the first time they were told the purpose of their mission: to drive the Jews out of the nearby town of Józefów. Next morning, each man was issued with an ox-hide whip to be used to drive the victims out of their homes. Anyone who resisted was to be shot on the spot. The first 'action' was the rounding up of Jews from the ghetto of Jósefów. This was done with the utmost brutality, Jewish corpses lay strewn throughout the ghetto. All Jews, lying sick in the hospitals were simply shot where they lay, wounded Russian soldiers were completely ignored. Those alive were assembled in the town's market place and then marched in groups to the woods on the town's outskirts. Divided into killing squads of eight to ten men, each man from Battalion 101 would select a victim, a man, a woman or child and then walk in parallel single file to the killing site. There the victims were ordered to lie, face down, in a row on the ground to await the inevitable bullet in the back of the head. This procedure was repeated over and over again throughout the day at the end of which, the uniforms of the killers were splattered with blood, brain matter and bone splinters. The thirty men of Lieutenant Kurt Drucker's platoon of Second Company, shot between two and three hundred Jews within a four hour period. That day, over 1,200 Jews were disposed of, the bodies left for Jósefów's Polish mayor to arrange burial. Not all members of Police Battalion 101 approved of the task they were asked to perform, and after the first few killings, asked to be excused. Surprisingly, many such requests were granted as there were always enough volunteers to take their place. At the war crimes trials after the war, 21 members of Police Battalion 101 were convicted, 14 were sentenced to death by hanging.
SLAUGHTER AT LOMAZY (August 19, 1942)
In the town of Lomazy (Lomza) in eastern Poland, the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg, led by Major Wilhelm Trapp, started the round up of all Jewish inhabitants. About 1,650 persons were arrested and marched to the playing field of the local school. Made to squat under a scorching sun and without anything to drink many fainted from the heat. A group of men were then selected and taken to a wooded area to dig a trench 30 yards wide and 50 yards long. While the trench was being dug, back in the playing fields the men of Battalion 101 were having a bit of ‘fun’. An empty bottle was thrown into the crowd of squatting victims and whoever was hit was then dragged out in front of the crowd and shot. When the digging was finished, the executions began. After shedding their clothes the naked victims were forced to run a gauntlet of policemen wielding clubs and rifle butts before reaching the trench, bloodied and half dead. As the pit began to fill with water the victims were made to lie down in the water before receiving a bullet in the back of the head. The next victims had to lie on top of the corpses while their killers stood knee-deep in the bloodied water and fired the fatal shots. As the murderers (including many Ukrainian collaborators - Hiwis) got more and more drunk they were then relieved by another squad. Finally, when most of the 1,650 Jews were executed the remainder were spared to fill in the trench after which they too were shot. The town of Lomazy was now declared ‘Jew-free’. Major Trapp survived the war but in July, 1948, he was arrested and extradited to Poland for trial. He was condemned to death and the sentence carried out at Siedlce on the 18th of December, 1948.
THE BIALYSTOK SLAUGHTER
One of the first major slaughter of Jews took place in the Polish city of Bialystok. The city had been captured without a fight as had many others in eastern Poland. On June 27, 1941, German Police Battalion 309, commanded by Major Ernst Weis, entered the city and began a roundup of all male Jews. Shooting blindly into windows and doors, the anti-Semitic hordes forced their way into houses and dragged the Jewish inhabitants out on to the streets where they were made to do an impromptu jig before their leering captors. If the dance was not brisk enough their beards were set on fire or completely cut off. In the hospitals all Jewish patients were shot as they lay in their beds. The captured Jews were then herded into the city's main synagogue, the largest in Poland at that time. Around 700 people were packed into the Jewish house of worship. Sensing that something untoward was about to happen, the victims started chanting and praying loudly. The chanting and praying soon turned to screams of agony as petrol was poured in and the building set alight. Surrounding the synagogue were over 100 men of the Police Battalion, posted there to prevent any escapes. At least six escapees were shot as they ran outside with their clothes aflame. That day in Bialystok, between 2,000 and 2,200 Jewish men, women and children were wantonly killed. The members of Police Battalions 309 and 101 were ordinary Germans, not fanatical SS, SD or Gestapo, but ordinary lower middle class citizens who had opted for police duties (Ordnungspolizei) as a means of avoiding military service. The average age of this cross section of the population was 36.5 years, 153 of whom were older than 40 and 179 were members of the Nazi Party. Only four were SS members. They were given a uniform, a few weeks training and then sent to the eastern front where they were given a free rein to vent their pent-up hatred on innocent defenseless Jews.
WARSAW GHETTO MASSACRE (April 19 to May 16, 1943)
The most outstanding act of Jewish resistance was during these four weeks when SS and Gestapo units killed a total of 56,065 Jews during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. The operation was commanded by SS Brigadier-General Stroop, who, in his report to Hitler, wrote "The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw no longer exists". On March 22, 1947, Stroop was sentenced to death by an American court at Dachau and on September 8, 1951, he was hanged at the scene of his crime in Warsaw. The Warsaw Ghetto was enclosed by a 10-foot high wall inside of which were herded between 400,000-410,000 Jews. Guards in German uniform and Jewish policemen maintained a rigid check on everyone entering or leaving. Many Jews turned against their own people and worked for the Nazis only to stay alive. The majority of Jews in the Ghetto hated these collaborators more than they hated the Nazis. Every Jewish child was taught, and this saved the lives of some of them: "if you enter a square from which there are three exits, one guarded by a German SS man, one by an Ukrainian and one by a Jewish policeman, then you should first try to pass the German, then maybe the Ukrainian, but never the Jew". The Warsaw Uprising cost the German forces 17 dead and 93 wounded.
In 1939 there were some 3,474,000 Jews living in Poland. (359,827 in Warsaw). After the war, 55,509 registered as survivors, a loss of 98% of Poland's Jews.
MAJDANEK MASSACRE (November 3, 1943)
Eighteen thousand men, women and children were shot in a single day in what the SS called the 'Harvest Festival'. The slaughter started at 7am in the morning when a never-ending line of naked Jews were force-marched into a huge trench dug within the Krempecki Forest near the precincts of the notorious Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. They were ordered to lie down flat, layer upon layer, to be machine-gunned to death. At six o'clock that evening, petrol was poured over the bodies and set alight. Within the next few weeks a further 34,000 perished. The camp, only four kilometres from the town centre of Lubin, was built in 1941 and consisted of 144 barrack type huts each holding 300 prisoners. Used mainly for the killing of Polish Jews, and Russian prisoners-of-war, it is estimated that around 235,000 people died here including civilian political prisoners, partisan and resistance group members. Two of the camps commandants, Karl Otto Koch and Hermann Florstedt were both executed by the SS for stealing from the camps warehouses. In the days before the arrival of the Soviet troops, 15,000 prisoners had been evacuated to other camps further west. Today, a gigantic circular Mausoleum stands at the entrance to the camp. On the frieze of the Dome is the inscription "Let our fate be a warning to you" (English translation). A huge urn, shaped like a saucer and built under the dome, contains some ashes of the victims of Majdanek. When the Red Army liberated the camp they found in a huge barn like bulding hundreds of thousands pairs of shoes.
Dear Pedants
Could it not be that Millibrain inferred Tory approval of Jewish massacre from their choice of European allies, thus making Iain's headline correct?
ATROCITY AT THE MARIE CURIE INSTITUTE
At 10.30am on August 5, 1944, one hundred armed troops in German uniform barged into the Maria Curie-Sklodowska Radium Institute on Wawelska Street in Warsaw. Shouting in loud voices they began searching and looting the entire building. The majority of the soldiers were drunk and were shooting at anyone who barred their way. In the Institute were 80 staff members and about 90 patients. All were robbed of their jewellery, money and personal items. The staff members were taken to a camp at Zieleniak a few kilometres away and for four days and nights were kept in the open without food or water. During this time many of the nurses were dragged out and raped by the drunken mob. At the end of the four days they were transported to Germany for slave labour. Back at the Institute the hospital patients remained in bed while the plundering and destruction of the hospital buildings proceeded. Stores and cupboards were broken open and everything thrown about while some of the female patients were dragged from their beds, assaulted and raped. Around 15 of the seriously sick patients were shot in their beds and their mattresses set on fire. Petrol was poured over the floors of the wards and set alight. Patients still alive (about 70) were then shot, their bodies piled in a heap and doused with petrol and ignited. This atrocity at the Radium Institute took the lives of all patients being treated there. The perpetrators of this horrible crime were mostly soldiers of the Kaminsky Brigade allied with The Dirlewanger Brigade. General Vlassov was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942 and later commanded an army of Russian prisoners of war who volunteered to fight on the German side rather than starve to death in German prison camps
STUTTHOF MASSACRE
The concentration camp of Stutthof was situated about twenty miles east of the Polish town of Danzig. Reputed to have the highest death rate from disease and hunger of any of the Nazi camps. A few weeks before liberation by the Red Army, the SS herded together the 35,000 prisoners in the camp and began a forced march towards the west. Without food, and little water, they dropped dead like flies. A large group of prisoners, estimated at around four thousand, were driven to the cliffs overlooking the sea and there mercilessly machine-gunned. Another group, mostly women prisoners from Lithuania and Hungary were locked up in a vacant factory in Palmnicken after a 25 mile march from Konispsberg. There, they were machined-gunned to death. Only a few thousand of the thirty-five thousand reached the west alive.
ATROCITY AT GRUBEN
German women living in the Polish town of Gruben were subjected to one of the worst atrocities ever committed on Polish soil. During the occupation the SS had murdered around 500 Polish prisoners and buried them in a meadow near Lamsdorf (now Lambinowice). In an act of revenge, the deputy mayor (Czeslaw) who was Jewish, ordered all the German women of nearby Gruben to dig the bodies up. This the women were forced to do but started to suffer sickness and nausea as the badly decomposed bodies were brought up. Laid out in rows, the women were ordered to 'Lie down beside them!' 'Hug them!' 'Kiss them!' and with their weapons the perpetrators forced the backs of the women's heads deep into the slime of the dead Polish faces. Spitting, retching and vomiting, and smelling like nothing on earth, the poor women were marched back to Lamsdorf. As most of the corpses had typhus, sixty-four of the Gruben women soon died. In the interment camp at Lamsdorf a total of 8,064 German civilians were being held there prior to being transported back to Germany. Of the 8,064 internees, 6,488 (including 628 children) died of physical maltreatment, typhus and other diseases. As one German survivor said "the methods used by the Nazis at Auschwitz were horrible, but the methods of the Poles were even more horrible".
THE RADZILOW MASSACRE (July 7, 1941)
In 1941, in the impoverished village of Radzilow in eastern Poland, lived some 800 Jews, about half the towns population. When the German army occupied the village the non-Jewish citizens welcomed them with open arms and displaying a large sign which read 'Long live the German army which liberated us from the horrible grip of the Jewish community'. When the soldiers moved on, persecution of the Jews of Radzilow immediately followed. Ordered to bring out all holy books and Torahs from the synagogue, the Jews could do nothing else but obey. Once the pile of books was high enough, kerosene was poured over them and set alight. While the pile was burning, the defenceless Jews were forced to sing and dance around it while being jeered, taunted, stabbed with pointed stakes and beaten mercilessly until they fell bloodied and unconscious. Those still alive, some twenty families including children and grandparents, were herded into a barn in Piekno Street and burned or shot to death. Their houses and businesses were then plundered by the angry mob. There were only eight surviving Jews of this massacre. Catholic Polish citizens of Radzilow were the main tormentors in this bestial atrocity.
THE JEDWABNE MASSACRE (July 10, 1941)
The 200 year old farming village in the Bialystock region of north-eastern Poland, nine miles south of Radzilow, was the scene of one of the most horrendous massacre of Jews just days after the Nazi troops supplanted the previous Soviet occupiers. Over 1,000 Jewish residents were herded into the town's square where they were forced to pluck the grass from between the paving stones. They were stoned, beaten and mutilated with clubs and axes. Those left alive were then marched outside the village to a large barn belonging to farmer Bronislaw Sleszynski where they were locked up and the barn set alight burning to death all those inside. Only seven of Jedwabne's Jews survived, saved by a Polish family. A stone monument erected by communist officials in the village has a plaque which reads '' Site of a massacre of Jews. Gestapo and Nazi soldiers burned 1,600 people''. The wording on the plaque belies the awful truth, the Jews were murdered not by the Nazis, but by around forty of their fellow Poles from Jedwabne and surrounding villages. The non-Jewish citizens of Jedwabne turned on their Jewish neighbours in a fit of anger over their collaboration with the Soviet occupiers during 1939 and 1941. After the killings the victims homes were looted. (In 1989, a new plaque was placed on the monument, it now reads "In memory of the Jews of Jedwabne and surrounding areas, men, women and children, fellow-dwellers of this land, murdered and burned alive at this site on 10 July, 1941). Strangely, no mention is made of the perpetrators!
Similar revenge killings took place in many other parts of Poland at this time. In the town of Vasosz, 1,185 Jews were put to death. In Stawiski, the same brutality was meted out to its Jews by their non-Jewish neighbours.
MASSACRE IN NALIBOKI (May 8-9, 1943)
The town of Naliboki in the Nowogrodek province of Poland was situated near the Naliboki Forest in which partisan units of the Stalin Brigade had set up their base. To survive, much of their time was spent on scavenging for food and clothing in the surrounding villages and towns. Angered by the widespread plundering, the men of Naliboki decided to fight back and partisan units attacked the town on the night of 8/9, May. All houses were plundered, food and valuables removed, the church and local sawmill burned down as were several houses. The perpetrators in this attack were mostly Jewish communist members of the Stalin Brigade some of whom were former residents of Naliboki. and who had earlier escaped from the ghettoes. In the three hour battle with the defence units of Naliboki, 129 men, women and children were killed.
Three months later, in August, inhabitants of the surrounding villages, suspected of supporting the partisans, were rounded up by German troops and deported to Germany as slave labour. (After the war there were 359 empty villages in Poland all the inhabitants of which had been exterminated or expelled)
MASSACRE IN KONIUCHY (28-29 January, 1944)
The village of Koniuchy was located at the edge of the Rudniki Forest in eastern Poland. In this forest Soviet partisan groups had set up their bases from which to attack the German occupation forces. To survive in the forest, raids were made on surrounding villages to plunder food, footwear and clothing. In an attempt to prevent these raids occurring the men of Koniuchy formed themselves into a local defence force and a few skirmishes with the partisans did occur. On the night of 28/29th January about 120 members of the partisan groups and including the Lithuanian Brigade, a Jewish partisan unit of the Red Army, attacked and completely destroyed the village. About forty of those who tried to escape were simply shot down on the spot. Around 300 men, women and children were killed in the 60 households destroyed. There were no survivors.
ATROCITY AT KIELCE (July 4, 1946)
In the later part of 1945, tens of thousands of Jewish concentration camp survivors made their way back to their homeland, Poland. Many found their former homes destroyed or inhabited by Polish or German families who had moved in after the previous owners were arrested. Their possessions were either sold, confiscated or lost. These survivors were shocked by the anti-Jewish violence perpetrated against them by their former neighbours. In their first year of freedom over 1,000 survivors had been murdered. Incidents of anti-semitism in Poland was common in the months after the war ended. In Kielce, an industrial city where during the war 27,000 Jews were deported to the Treblinka death camp and murdered, a group of 150 returned Jews were living in the Jewish Community building at No 7 Planty Street. On July 4, 1946, they were ordered to leave the building by armed Polish police and then set upon by a local mob of onlookers and 41 of them were killed, 39 Jews and 2 Gentiles. (the strong Soviet garrison in the area wasn't involved in any way) As a result of these killings over 5,000 survivors made their way back to the Displaced Persons camps in the Allied occupation zones of Germany. There, stateless and penniless, they waited for the opportunity to emigrate. Their dream of a Jewish state in Palestine prompted thousands to sail in obsolete sailing vessels toward the land of their dreams, only to be confronted by British patrol vessels and turned back towards the island of Cyprus to again be incarcerated in a new type of camp, the 'Interment Camp'. They were finally allowed entry into Palestine in 1948 after Israel became independent. By 1949, some 92,000 survivors had emigrated to the USA, Canada, South America and Australia, all eager to get as far away from Europe as possible. The first census carried out in Israel in 1948 listed 712,000 Jews, a year later it had reached one million.
I wouldn't worry.Neither Miliband could lead Labour to victory other than in 1997 type circumstances.They may be venerated in Westminster but to the public they are deeply strange and without connection.They make Brown seem the man in the street.The jibe about DM resembling"a pillock on his gap year"was actually a shrewd and astute observation.
Take no notice of Dennis MacShane he was "beasted" by Paxman last night on Newsnight over his allegations that there are 25,000 women being sold into prostitution every year in the UK.When Paxman asked where MacShane got his figures from MacShane said "The Mirror" newspaper ! Paxman was totally incredulous and MacShane started to blather on about Paxman patronising him - I thought from the look on Paxman's face that he was going to leap over the desk and punch MacShane's "lights out". Watch it on BBC i-player.
I just watched that Macshane interview on Newsnight. What a complete and utter twit (sorry about the spelling)
And to think he was Minister of Europe!
This is the same Labour party that tried (and probably suceeded) in stirring up anti-semitism at the last election by producing posters of Michael Howard depicted as Shylock/Fagin, and another poster depicting Howard and Oliver Letwin as flying pigs. Although the posters were eventually withdrawn they got the point across to the electorate that Michael Howard was Jewish.
I wouldn't get all heat up about the hysterical rantings of an odious creep like McShane. Anyone who saw him on Newsnight last night could see perfectly what a stupid prat he is.
It looks like the Tories are on very dodgy ground on this one, now the American State Dept and ADL are getting in on the act, in their concerns over the Tories new allies in Europe.
This is one you can't win, and a shrewder politician than Cameron would never have touched this one with a bargepole.
It doesn't even matter that the allegations are unfair, as they may well be.
The defence is much too complex to overturn the shrill simplicity of the allegation. I'm afraid that's just how it works, as right-wing smear merchants well know.
As someone once said, "Let's hear them deny it".
Sauce for the goose etc...
I've seen it all before.
"The Conservative Party is facing pressure from the Obama administration over its European policy and links with far-right parties from Latvia and Poland".
"Mrs Clinton is facing calls from influential Jewish groups to challenge the Conservative Party's decision to enter a European parliament coalition with a Latvian party, some of whose members attend memorials for Latvian units of Hitler's Waffen-SS, and a Polish politician who has questioned the need to apologise for an anti-Jewish pogrom during the second world war".
"An American official, asked about the consequences for the US and about the far-right links, said: "I do not see any upsides in the new grouping. I can only see downsides. In life it is normally best to do things when they have an upside."
"I think Churchill would turn in his grave. It is an insult to the tradition of this great party," George Schwab, president of the New York-based National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a Holocaust survivor from Latvia".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/6391838/Conservative-Party-facing-US-pressure-over-links-with-far-right-parties-in-Europe.html
Simon Gardiner (is that really your photo?) and the troll above him: I love the quote about going to bed with fleas. It applies to all the parties in Europe. (Labour's loony left allies are far worse than the Tories'.) I hope you keep up this line of attack as you'll only succeed in pursuading more people that we shouldn't be in the EU at all.
Iain, you are usually very sensible in your analysis, but I don't think that Milliband's comment that every MP would condemn the massacre of Jews in Poland could be taken as implying that Tories approve of the action. Sorry, but that is a silly statement and totally illogical. In fact, I am sure that Milliband's words are true: that every MP would condemn the deaths of those people.
You've been bitch slapped by the grammarians, don't mess with them Iain, they never forget, nor forgive.
When people insist on behaving in the way Millipede has, and when his colleagues refuse to criticise, I wonder how you are still able to converse with them as if they are just good people doing a job in a way which differs to you politically.
"What a disgrace. What he and his lapdog MacShane are trying to do is nothing short of political vandalism."
But calling an opponent a "murdering terrorist" is a step back towards civility is it?
The Tap has some background detail:
http://the-tap.blogspot.com/2009/10/wicked-witch-combo-handbags-cameron.html
Anon 9:25
Well, we start off on the right foot - the number killed at Jedwabne was in the region of 300, not 1600.
It was perpetrated by around 40 villagers, from Jedwabne, in the presence of German troops.
I don't think that it is something that the Polish nation should apologise for - the vast majority fought the Nazi invaders.
What Kaminski is saying is that, if you are wanting a blanket apology from the Poles, then there are other groups, who should be made to apologise - why single out only the Poles for Jedwabne?
He feels that that is an injustice.
The reason is simple - Labour are trying to make political capital out of the situation.
What you infer is the opposite of what Miliband actually said - literally, he said that he thought every Tory MP would not approve of the massacre.
Don't worry I have the same problem when Tories say that they believe in equality of opportunity or that the NHS is safe in their hands.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
There's really horrible stuff too in the Guardian today trying to link Cameron and Hague via Kaminski to Holocaust revision. Team Milliband are obviously trying to smear the Tories as anti-Semites.
Response:
1. David Cameron and William Hague have never done or said anything personally to suggest they do not feel the deepest revulsion at acts of genocide and war crime, in Poland by Nazis, Gaza by Jew's or anywhere else. They have repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism in all its forms throughout their careers in public service.
2. The Conservative party is a pro-Jewish party. It had its first Jewish leader in the Commons in 1852 and has had many prominent Jewish MPs and ministers since Disraeli. The Conservative Friends of Israeli is a large sub-group of the party.
3. Kaminski has repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism, including in his Total Politics interview in 1941. He can't be blamed for what happened in Poland in 1941.
4. The Labour government since 1997has made some friends in Central Europe with dubious pasts to say the least. For example Tony Blair in 1998 welcomed to Downing Street Gyula Horn, then Prime Minister of Hungary. I can't remember Blair quizzing Horn on his role in 1956-7 as a member "pufajkás" brigades who tortured and executed civilians involved in the 1956 uprising against Soviet Communism.
If something is found to have been misrepresented in history, or factually incorrect, then revision is is the correct course of action.
Does he not realise how ridiculous he sounds?
To the public it sounds like classic lefty screeching, and a public that is increasingly believing in Cameron's calm, stable sanity will not change their minds because Labour make out that they are Nazi apologists.
In fact, they'll probably see straight through it and do the opposite.
Hi Iain,
Don't know how to comment on your fine blog but if I could I would say "Paxman skewered me last night on Newsnight because I oppose sex slave trafficking and Dale does it again this morning because I think Kaminski should apologise for the massacre of Jews at Jedwabne and the Tories should not place their MEPs under his leadership until he does. In his interview with Dale which Iain kindly posts on his blog Kaminski specifically rules out an apology. Nuff said. Leave to others difference between infers and implies but William Hague has dug a deep hole - getting deeper all the time as the rest of the world wakes up this misalliance - and dropped poor David Cameron in it. I hope someone can find a ladder for Dave to climb out - maybe by allowing the Tories to sit as an independent group in the European Parliament if they hate Sarko and Merkel so much. Be helpful if Sir Malcolm Rifkind replaced William Hague who looked very uncomfortable in the Commons yesterday as the Kaminski/Latvian-Waffe SS row rumbles on and on. William is finest parliamentary speaker of our time and a big beast. But even his best friends acknowledge that foreign policy is not his forte. Rifkind dominates the House and the Today programme on almost any foreign policy question with experience, intelligence and calm probing of government policy."
(posted on behalf of DM by ID)
Tell it to the Louis Susman, the US Ambassador. Tell it to Clinton, tell it to George Schwab, president of the New York-based National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a Holocaust survivor from Latvia who said "I think Churchill would turn in his grave. It is an insult to the tradition of this great party." Why not raise it with Ben Helfgott, a Holcaust survivor who said Kaminski's attempts to compare the massacre of 1,600 Jews in Jedwabne in 1941 with acts of collaboration with the Soviet army by individual Jews is "not acceptable."
Are these all Labour activists?
I want to know exactly WTF any of this has to do with Mrs Clinton or Mr Obama.
The OED only distinguished "imply" and "infer" in 1976 so after my time and it is accordingly a distinction I ignore
Well there is genocide & genocide. I doubt if there are 5 MPs of all parties put together who have publicly condemned the massacre of at least 210 unarmed civilians by British police outside Kosovan HQ in Dregodan.
It is one thing to condemn murders by Hitler 60 years ago. It is infinitely more important that all those invilved condemn similar murders for which they themselves are personally responsible.
Denis McShane has himself refused to condemn the perpetartors justifying it by saying Milosevic was responsible. This is something which could never, under any circumstances, have ben said by anybody who was not a total racist Nazi.
Incidentally McShane, having helped ensure the British media censored any mention of our Dragodan genocide, publicly complained that the media only gave substantial rather than enormous coverage to an alleged mass grave of Saddam's victims which, being the hypocrit he is, he had used as an ex post facto justification for invading Iraq while lying about WMDs
It’s time Milliburn and MacShane looked into a few more of the obscenities of WW2, something like 70 thousand Jews were massacred in Latvia, why no mention of the non Jewish Latvians who died, some 130 thousand and what happened to them? Its not unrelated to why Latvians were keen to see the Nazi invasion, they naively though along the lines “my enemies enemy is my friend”. Latvia was a small independent country until the soviet invasion and subsequent terror. The UK did nothing, the one small neural country that survived communist aggression was Finland. Backed discreetly by the UK until Germany fell out with its soviet co-aggressor in ’41 at which point the UK told Finland to surrender and declared war on Finland when they did not. After the war in ‘45/46 there were war crime trials of the Finnish wartime leaders for "definitely influencing Finland in getting into a war with the Soviet Union and United Kingdom in 1941 or preventing peace" , they were found guilty and punished. It’s all terribly new labour, there appear to be quite a number of stories which the UK does not seem to remember too well, things like the national wartime myth that we were all pulling together – my father was in the Navy and said some rather different things about what they experienced at times in UK docks. Allegedly (some guy called Churchill said it I think) UK tank factory labour problems mysteriously improved when the UK abandoned its commitment to Poland etc and allied with the USSR.
MacShane is loathsome. Interesting that he has not followed up his CiF article on the original Afghan "election", which he claimed was as good as it would ever get there.
Gone very quiet on that.
And why does he hide his Polish heritage? His real name is Denis Matyjaszek, his father a Pole.
Asked by Matthew Parris whether there were any circumstances in which terrorism was justified, Mr Miliband said: ‘Yes, there are circumstances in which it is justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective.’
He does not deserve to be listened too on any subject.
Why are the Consrevatives having anything to do with people like Kaminski?
My father was a Lancaster pilot who was shot down and saw what the Nazis did first hand. You Conservatives should be ashamed of yourselves and ask David Cameron to publicly sever all links with the man and his party.
Hello MacShane. Shame on you and the Labour Party who denied us the Lisbon referendum and denying about the EU constitution. This Labour Party is morally bankrupt. Waiting for Tuscan Tony ( Bliar as he is called) to be crowned as the EU president? Not democratic voting like America! Hague is much much better than that 7 year old called Milliband. Still reminds me of his silly grin and a banana in one hand at last year's Labour Party conference. Didn't he create a furore with his light weight undiplomatic silly remark in India about Kashmir which made the PM Sigh ballistic? What was the excuse from Gordo then? Milliband is 7 year old and ignore him?
I voted for for Maggie after the union leaders mocked Callaghan for his 5% pay restraint and the union members left dead bodies unburied. Gordo is much weaker than Callaghan and is sacred of the CWU, who donate the funds to this disgraceful Party.
Milliband is of course using the totured logic and application of Marxist principles.
Principles by the way that led the Communist Russian state into an unholy alliance with Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the partition of Poland in 1939.
Principles that further led the NKVD and other organs of Soviet repression into the nasty and infamous massacre of Polish intelligentsia at Katyn.
If Milliband and his ilk want to throw stones they had better have clean histories. Milliband's father was a Marxist through and through and can be tarred for Katyn and all else that the soviet's committed in the name of communism.
Indeed, I also believe that Milliband senior was an illegal immigrant to the UK post war and spun a pack of lies to remain in the country.
Like father, like son, Milliband and his brother are a pair of odious oiks who should be slung out of office and Parliament and politics.
There appears to be a tendency for people to assume that the massacre of Jewish people is a German/Polish thing here - I think we have in our time, done our fair share in that respect.
The Nazis went superleague with it, but 400 Jews is pretty much nothing compared to those that we murdered in various methods to include starvation and burning in our time....Perhaps Mr Milliband would like to start his diatribe with an apology?
Denis MacShane gets his come uppance on Newsnight
Being a UKIP member, I am familiar with this tactic of being smeared by association because of partners in the European parliament.
@Penfold
You think David Miliband is a marxist. I almost choked on my Chardonnay. His dad (Ralph M.)was of course a famous Marxist writer (and a good one), but this generation of Milibands is far from revolutionary.
I think, on the whole, I prefer Ed (although both are cute if you squint a bit).
@Anon.
Imply/Infer.
Well it can be pushed back to 1917 (but by Americans, so does that count?).
Ian did break current rules, but he has a defence.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&pg=PA542&lpg=PA542&dq=%22imply%22+and+%22infer%22+OED&source=bl&ots=nYuVihw0U1&sig=29TPYMxb_RHPXdlKMKocoIlVeaA&hl=en&ei=3jXfStmsFoWs4Qa6qaEW&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22imply%22%20and%20%22infer%22%20OED&f=false
Mrs Clayton
the point is that the Conservatives are still having dealings with people who think those things you refer to are 'ok'
surely you can see that?
So if this is incorrect, let Milibland repeat these sentences outside parliamentary privilege and then use the full force of the law against him
Especially if they are some of the laws introduced by the Labour Government. It will present a certain irony
More crap from the New Nasty party...cant however see this being any sort of talking point at the bar of the Dog and Gun in Hebden Bridge......although how crap Broon and Liebour are certainly is, and will continue so to be.....
@At October 21, 2009 2:31 PM , Blue Eyes said...
I want to know exactly WTF any of this has to do with Mrs Clinton or Mr Obama
//
True. But I am sure that we were all chuffed to pieces when Mrs. Clinton said that the USA did not intend to meddle in the politics of Northern Ireland.
Such a gracious woman.
@anonymous
and Obama could be seen as negotiating with terrorists.
Cameron has also been talking with Sinn Fein representatives - shall we take a little history and accuse the Tory party of supporting the Bishopsgate Bomb?
Is it just me that is seeing a smear from the past being used to prevent progression here, being made by people who appear to be selling off the family jewels because they can't face the facts of the present?
I am a great British nationalist, but even I recognise that my countrymen have been engaged in vicious and ruthless massacres of civilians for centuries all around the world. My father was a senior officer in the Kenya Police during the Mau Mau insurgency, and though I have no knowledge of his exact actions its quite possible he himself was involved in things that would make me shiver. The point is that a country cannot be expected to apologise for everything that has ever been done by its citizens. There is a place for apologies for the greatest crimes, like the Holocaust or the slave trade, but as Kaminski says those events are distinctly different from the smaller crimes that are terrible in their own right but for which moral responsibility lies with the culprits not the nation at large.
Neil
I absolutely agree with you.
I hate to say this knowing the effects these actions had on our own fathers and grandfathers.
but if we want to play the blame game then we would have to ignore an entire empire including massacre, slavery and setting fire to huge tracts of lands. Before we can ever deal with the past there we have to apologise for our own....or we could just move on....we can do that? It is better to have cordiality between nations rather than bickering isnt it? - lets remember we killed more Jews than them and we would hate to get in that type of competition
The Though Police really cannot comprehend that people elsewhere my have a different perspective on past events than their own.
I have to admit that while I accept The Holocaust was a terrible crime against humanity it was no worse than things the British Raj did in India. We cannot absove ourselves of blame simply because Indians have decided to leave the past behind.
Perhaps the current obsession of the left with The Holocaust has a touch of guilt transferrence to it.
We should not forget but we should be willing to let Latvians, Poles, Lithuanians etc. have their own opinion.
Iain, why get wound up about a New Labour puppet asking a question of another New Labour puppet?
David, old boy, this is simply not the British way...I mean culturally, not racially, OK. We have island mentality, remember? We see the funny side. All this Jew-hating stuff is not us, and neither is your aggressive Jew defending.
Moseley never cut it here, other than with BNP types. Miliband is finding his market, it seems.
The Jewish communoty of Kosovo was ethnicly cleansed by our rulers. The Bosnian one is almost gone under the (ex-)Nazi regime we enforced there. Croatia, of course, has had no Jews for some time.
Neither McShane nor any other senior British politician has a single word of condemnation of the racists responsible for that because it includes themselves.
Miliband seems to be bandying racist accusations about the Tories around at every opportunity. The impression given is of a party desperately realising just how lost their cause is in the run up to the next election. Its very reminscent fo university (or even sixth form) politics. Its a shame Mili hasn't managed to progress past that yet despite being in his forties and occupying a major office of State.
"I thought David Miliband was better than this"
I'm sure I warned you about this before.
"it appears I was wrong"
Correct. At last.
But not to worry. Up on Planet MacShane truth seems to mean only whatever he wants it to mean. As others have pointed out, this week he was telling prostitutes that they don't understand anything about prostitution. We are all accustomed to his EU fanaticism. Now he's using the Jews. Just ignore the fool, everyone outside politics does.
And by the way, what his position on associating with the criminals who launched the wholly unprovoked war against Yugoslavia?
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