UK Teachers to stop teaching the Holocaust.

Site Issues 2007 Archive Room
#21

Part 3 of 3

(CONTINUED FROM ABOVE)

2. China

It may be that pushing 500 million people from farms and villages into
cities is too much too soon. Although it gets almost no publicity,
China is experiencing hundreds of demonstrations around the country, which is
unprecedented. These are not students in Tiananmen Square. These are
average citizens who are angry with the government for building
chemical plants and polluting the water they drink and the air they breathe.

The Chinese are a smart and industrious people. They may be able to
pull it off and become a very successful economic and military
superpower. If so, we will have to learn to live with it. If they want to share the
responsibility of keeping the world’s oil lanes open, that’s a good
thing. They currently have eight new nuclear electric power generators under
way and 45 on the books to build. Soon, they will leave the U.S. way behind
in their ability to generate nuclear power.

What can go wrong with China? For one, you can’t move 550 million
people into the cities without major problems. Two, China really wants
Taiwan, not so much for economic reasons, they just want it. The
Chinese know that their system of communism can’t survive much longer in the
21st century. The last thing they want to do before they morph into some
sort of more capitalistic government is to take over Taiwan.

We may wake up one morning and find they have launched an attack on
Taiwan. If so, it will be a mess, both economically and militarily. The
U.S. has committed to the military defense of Taiwan. If China attacks
Taiwan, will we really go to war against them? If the Chinese generals
believe the answer is no, they may attack. If we don’t defend Taiwan,
every treaty the U.S. has will be worthless. Hopefully,China won’t do
anything stupid.

3. Demographics

Europe and Japan are dying because their populations are aging and
shrinking. These trends can be reversed if the young people start
breeding. However, the birth rates in these areas are so low it will take two
generations to turn things around. No economic model exists that
permits 50 years to turn things around. Some countries are beginning to offer
incentives for people to have bigger families. For example, Italy is
offering tax breaks for having children. However, it’s a lifestyle
issue versus a tiny amount of money. Europeans aren’t willing to give up
their comfortable lifestyles in order to have more children.

In general, everyone in Europe just wants it to last a while longer.
Europeans have a real talent for living. They don’t want to work very
hard. The average European worker gets 400 more hours of vacation time per
year than Americans. They don’t want to work and they don’t want to make
any of the changes needed to revive their economies.

The summer after 9/11, France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In
August, the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on
vacation. That year, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living
in nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave
the beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to
scramble to find enough refrigeration units to hold the bodies until
people came to claim them.

This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in America, yet it
didn’t trigger any change in French society. When birth rates are so
low, it creates a tremendous tax burden on the young. Under those
circumstances, keeping mom and dad alive is not an attractive option. That’s why
euthanasia is becoming so popular in most European countries. The only
country that doesn’t permit (and even encourage) euthanasia is
Germany, because of all the baggage from World War II.

The European economy is beginning to fracture. The Euro is down.
Countries like Italy are starting to talk about pulling out of the
European Union because it is killing them. When things get bad economically in
Europe, they tend to get very nasty politically. The canary in the mine
is anti-Semitism. When it goes up, it means trouble is coming. Current
levels of anti-Semitism are higher than ever. Germany won’t launch another
war, but Europe will likely get shabbier, more dangerous and less pleasant to
live in.

Japan has a birth rate of 1.3 and has no intention of bringing in
immigrants. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be 70 years
old. Property values in Japan have dropped every year for the past 14 years.
The country is simply shutting down.

In the U.S. we also have an aging population. Boomers are starting to
retire at a massive rate. These retirements will have several major
impacts:

· Possible massive sell-off of large four-bedroom houses and a
movement to condos.

· An enormous drain on the treasury. Boomers vote, and they
want their benefits, even if it means putting a crushing tax burden on
their kids to get them. Social Security will be a huge problem. As this
generation ages, it will start to drain the system. We are the only
country in the world where there are no age limits on medical procedures.

· An enormous drain on the health care system. This will also
increase the tax burden on the young, which will cause them to delay
marriage and having families, which will drive down the birth rate even
further.

Although scary, these demographics also present enormous opportunities
for products and services tailored to aging populations. There will be
tremendous demand for caring for older people, especially those who
don’t need nursing homes but need some level of care. Some people will have a
business where they take care of three or four people in their homes.
The demand for that type of service and for products to physically care for
aging people will be huge.

Make sure the demographics of your business are attuned to where the
action is. For example, you don’t want to be a baby food company in
Europe or Japan. Demographics are much underrated as an indicator of where the
opportunities are. Businesses need customers. Go where the customers
are.

4. Restructuring of American Business

The restructuring of American business means we are coming to the end
of the age of the employer and employee. With all this fracturing of
businesses into different and smaller units, employers can’t
guarantee jobs anymore because they don’t know what their companies will look like
next year. Everyone is on their way to becoming an independent contractor.
The new workforce contract will be, “Show up at the my office five days a
week and do what I want you to do, but you handle your own insurance,
benefits, health care and everything else.”

Husbands and wives are becoming economic units. They take different
jobs and work different shifts depending on where they are in their
careers and families. They make tradeoffs to put together a compensation
package to take care of the family. This used to happen only with highly educated
professionals with high incomes. Now it is happening at the level of
the factory floor worker. Couples at all levels are designing their
compensation packages based on their individual needs. The only way
this can work is if everything is portable and flexible, which requires a
huge shift in the American economy.

The U.S. is in the process of building the world’s first 21st century
model economy. The only other countries doing this are U.K. and
Australia. The model is fast, flexible, highly productive and unstable in that it
is always fracturing and re-fracturing. This will increase the economic
gap between the U.S. and everybody else, especially Europe and Japan.

At the same time, the military gap is increasing. Other than China, we
are the only country that is continuing to put money into their
military. Plus, we are the only military getting on-the-ground military
experience through our war in Iraq. We know which high-tech weapons are working
and which ones aren’t. There is almost no one who can take us on
economically or militarily. There has never been a superpower in this position
before.

On the one hand, this makes the U.S. a magnet for bright and ambitious
people. It also makes us a target. We are becoming one of the last
holdouts of the traditional Judeo-Christian culture. There is no better
place in the world to be in business and raise children. The U. S. is
by far the best place to have an idea, form a business and put it into the
marketplace. We take it for granted, but it isn’t as available in
other countries of the world.

Ultimately, it’s an issue of culture. The only people who can hurt us
are ourselves, by losing our culture. If we give up our Judeo-Christian
culture, we become just like the Europeans. The culture war is the
whole ballgame. If we lose it, there isn’t another America to pull us out.


Herb Meyer served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the
Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence
Council. In these positions, he managed production of the U.S. National Intelligence
Estimates and other top-secret projections for the President and his national security advisers.
Meyer is widely credited with being the first senior U.S. Government official to forecast the
Soviet Union's collapse, for which he later was awarded the U.S. National Intelligence
Distinguished Service Medal, the intelligence community's highest honor. Formerly an associate
editor of FORTUNE, he is also the author of several books.

Herbert Meyer
P.O. Box 2089
Friday Harbor, WA 98250

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#22

Very interesting information, I am printing your post to read it later

Thanks George. :smiley:

#23

Anytime Panzerknacker :smiley:

Cheers

#24

Biggest load of gobbledygook I’ve read in a long time:rolleyes:

#25

To get back to what I think was one of Panzerknacker’s original points, which is that some people and organisations seem to be caving in to vocal and hostile minorities within their own communities and nations, or at least was implicit in his posts, it might not always be that the vocal minority is hostile or aggressive or forcing the unpalatable changes.

Here in sunny Oz, as elsewhere, we’ve have various instances of, for example, Christmas being cancelled in kindergartens and junior schools in case it offends those who aren’t Christians, i.e. Muslims, because nobody ever gave a stuff about Jews and atheists.

We’ve also had instances of other things unremarkable in the dominant community being altered, such as ham sandwiches being taken off the menu at local council functions in case it offended minorities, i.e. Muslims, because nobody worried about it when it was just the occasional vegetarian or undemanding Jew attending such functions.

I’ve looked into several of these instances that generated a lot of predictable publicity adverse to Muslims, portraying them as hostile to our culture (yes, I know that ‘culture’ is an odd word to use to describe Australia’s dominant customs :D) and aggressively demanding that the rest of Australia must conform to their rigid Islamic beliefs.

What came out of these events, once one got past the prejudiced over-reactions by talk-back shock jocks and tabloid journalists to the imagined intentions of an imminent Muslim takeover of Australia , was that in no instance had any Muslim demanded anything.

The few Muslim leaders and community members who got the rare chance to offer their views on talk back radio etc about what they thought, as distinct from what people who knew nothing about them accused them of thinking and doing, were unanimously of the view that they couldn’t give a stuff about any of these things, as long they weren’t forced to observe things they didn’t agree with. That is, incidentally, entirely consistent with the Koran’s teaching on how Muslims should live in other communities.

The few Muslims who were allowed to be heard by the radio etc guardians of our culture were also unanimous that nobody was trying to force them to observe things they didn’t agree with, and that they couldn’t, for example, give a stuff whether or not schools had Christmas things with Nativity scenes or whether ham sandwiches were served at council functions, as long as they weren’t required respectively to participate in or eat them.

The problems weren’t caused by fanatical minority Muslims demanding that the rest of Australia conform to their views but by well meaning non-Muslims who are fanatical in their ill-informed beliefs about being pathologically inclusive, so that society should operate to ensure nothing happens which might even remotely offend the views of tree-hugging feral trans-gender bisexual disabled exploited migrant Hare Krishna sex slaves … blah blah blah …

It’s easy to interpret an event as confirming the existence of undesirable influences in a community or nation. Too often, it’s the wrong undesirable influences which are accused of doing it.

#26

Biggest load of gobbledygook I’ve read in a long time

Are you talking about my interpretation or Ellers links ?

Do you have something more important to say or just like the shorcuts discalificatives ?

#27

Well thats the schools choice but I dont think its a good one. They are going to learn about it one way or another. My Stepdad never learned about the Holocaust. He had just heard the name and basics of what happened. One day I figured out that he knew next to nothing about what happened. So I decided to show him Schindler’s List. He watched the whole movie. I could see once it was over he was glad. To this day he refuses to watch that movie again and it almost makes him sick to his stomach to think about it. He is not a stupid man and knows that people can be quite evil. However I dont think he (like most) had ever seen it on that level before.

IMO its a good thing to study and remember coz that could happen in any country…not just Germany.

#28

I don’t know that’s it’s so terrible to leave the Holocaust out of school curricula.

It’s just one of a number appalling exercises in human history which, because of Western cultural orientation and other influences, gets a much greater degree of attention than it merits on a comparative basis with other events in modern history such as, for example, Stalinist purges; Japan rampaging through China and the Pacific; Partition in India; Algeria; Angola; the Cultural Revolution; Pol Pot; Bosnia etc; Rwanda, and currently Dhafur.

One problem is that schools’ curricula are too crowded, with demands from all sorts of interests who want their pet subjects covered, along with bicycle education, driver education, drug education, sex education, consumer education, etc etc etc all presented in a non-discriminatory, gender inclusive, racially tolerant, religiously tolerant (including apparently by Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish and sundry sects’ schools which all believe they’re the adherents of the one true faith) and generally impossibly balanced way.

They can’t cover everything.

It’s not necessary to focus on the triumph of evil, like the Holocaust, to make people think, nor to do it as a history subject

For example, Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is an outstanding example of the moral man in a dark and complex situation.

While there’s a fashion in modern education for rubbing kids’ noses in what was bad and went wrong, often to extreme levels such as one of our fabled Australian high school text books not so long ago which referred to soldiers as ‘harm workers’ :rolleyes:, there’s a lot to be said for an older style which extolled the positive virtues of exemplary people rather than slagging everyone in sight. (Except self-styled ‘radical’ teachers, who are the repository of all community virtue. :evil:)

Of course, we could take a radical step and decide that parents are primarily responsible for the moral education of their children and for teaching them to ride bikes and to look both ways before crossing the road and to brush their teeth before going to bed, with some reinforcement from schools rather than making them primarily responsible for such things, but that is just such an obviously silly idea that nobody would ever see any sense in it.

#29

I think the should touch on all these issues! Not just the Halocaust. Genocide will not end in the future but we should be aware of what it is. Thats how I see it.

#30

True.

But try teaching any of it to a bunch of 15 year olds in the West whose main interest is the type of case to put on their bloody iPod, or a bunch of kids about the same (or possbily much younger) age somewhere else who, if they’re lucky enough to have a school, are mainly interested in killing everyone who doesn’t think like or look like them or is just the wrong religion, tribe, or clan, and are being encouraged in that belief by some local character who they think is an admirable man but who you and I would think is a dangerous fanatic. Pretty much the same view that man has of our respective leaders. And we’re probably all correct!

The biggest problem is that most of the people who fight wars and who do other violent things are usually too young to respond to much beyond their primal instincts and dangerously simple ideas like ‘patriotism’.

Older people, who rarely fight in wars, know that there’s a lot more to it.

The problem is, you can’t put an old head on young shoulders.

Which, alas, is pretty much what is required if Holocaust or any other studies of history are to have any effect on young people in the education process.

#31

When I was in High School during the mid to late 1970’s we were taught about the Holocaust as part of our world history course. We did not have a course dedicated to Holocaust studies. But, at least it was given some coverage.

One week before the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler allegedly commented, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” or “Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?” (alternate translation). He was referring to the attempted genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. (The quote is now inscribed on one of the walls of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_quote
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” - George Santayana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/George_Santayana/
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2042.html

#32

Hmm, the trouble is and I’m not trying to offend anyone here, how long is a subject relevant? I was taught about ww2 including the Holocaust, my Daughter was taught about ww1. When Persia fought Greece (or the Greek states) in the 500’s BC, both sides did some heinous things to each other, including the Persians persecutions and deliberate transplanting of a heck of a lot of Greek ionians (impaling thousands etc etc).

My point is that man can be very inhuman when he wants too. I dont mind kids not being taught directly about the Holocaust, it doesnt mean that we condone the events it just means that its not as paramount in the 21st century as it was to so many people in the late 20th.

#33

Maybe classes should be taught about man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man. Some examples from more recent history: the Balkans, Rwanda, Kurdistan, Cambodia…

Last I heard, anti-semitism is still on the rise in Europe and the Middle-East.

Whether or not more emphasis on studying the Holocaust would reverse the trend - I don’t know. I think that probably much of the bigotry that exists in this world is learned at home.

#34

My point is that man can be very inhuman when he wants too. I dont mind kids not being taught directly about the Holocaust, it doesnt mean that we condone the events it just means that its not as paramount in the 21st century as it was to so many people in the late 20th.

Who cares about 6 million jews aniway.

#35

Far more people than care about 1 million plus Cambodians, and millions of others who’ve been massacred in the past century by other evil regimes. And not so evil ones, either, when one looks at the indigenous peoples damaged by supposedly good governments in supposedly decent nations over the same period.

#36

Well war itself is pretty inhuman as well. I guess there is difference between killing a soldier of a country you are at war with vs killing a civilian for no reason. Yet both have the same end result…death. Maybe we should quit drawing lines and call death what it is?

Sounds to me like the school wants to forget about teaching genocide and just stick to war. You can talk about all the whys but if ppl dont see the horror that runs along with war then why even teach that.

Try teaching a class on sex ed and just describing the possible STDs. Then try it again with pictures of what some of these look like. Im sure you will get two different reactions. Might not change their ways but im sure the will be off to the doctor alot quicker if they notice something funny down there!

#37

I think that the underlying roots of genocide run deeper and are based on long standing hatred based on ethnic, cultural and/or religious differences. They can run for centuries or even thousands of years. The goal tends to be more sinister with the ultimate objective being the complete destruction of the targeted people (e.g: Armenians, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Bosnians, Kurds, Tutsis, etc.).

In war, the duration is more temporary and alliances are subject to shifting. Old enemies can become friends and former allies can become enemies. Their causes and objectives are more varied ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War ), but no less violent or brutal. Massive destruction and death can result, but generally not the complete annihilation of either side.

Maybe education is not the complete answer. IMHO, until people’s hearts and attitudes change these issues will remain.

#38

If you read my post it wasnt about not caring about anything. Simply put, time passes and there are a lot of wrongdoings that could be taught about history.

Point being, how long should it be paramount?

#39

Other genocides…

6 million is the accepted number of Jews, and others, killed in the Holocaust.

However.

Bosnia
a three year war (with some ethnic cleansing) between 250,000 and 300,000.

Rwanda (1st War)
a 100 day killing spree during 1994 (mainly with machete) between 800,000 and 1,000,000. 500,000 of which were Tutsis.

Berundi
Civil war (1993 to 2006) 300,000 killed.

Congo
First civil war (1996 - 1997) over 100,000 killed, 60,000 in one Armies slow advance through the country.
Second civil war (1998 - 2003) 3,500,000 - 4,400,000 killed (some by malnutriion and diesase rather than direct action.

Khmer Rouge
Set upon the Vietnamise population of Cambodia (400,000) late '60s.
during the same timve frame the civil war (which went on in to the '70s) took 600,000 and 1,000,000 lives (not including the Vietnamese).
During it’s reign of Cambodia anything up to 3,000,000 (generally accepted as 1.5 million.
A motto from the reign “To keep you is no benefit, to lose you is no loss” in relation to the population.
It was once of the most deadliest regimes in the history of the world (when you compare the population of only 7.5 million (est) at the time.

Stalinist Russia.
Under Uncle Joe, the Russians have specific numbers of some 3,000,000 killed by the State (in records). 800,000 executed, 1,700,000 died in the Gulags and a further 400,000 in forced relocations.

These are beleived to be woefully under estimated. Whilst some claim up to 60 million. 20,000,000 is more likely.

1.5 million executed
5 million in Gulags
1.7 million (out of 7.5 million)from the deportions/relocations
1 million German and other POWs, kept at the end of the war. (Pauluses Army only had 5,000 survivors return home from some 100,000 POWs taken at Stalidgrad).
10 Million from this.

And also approx 8 - 9 million from the 32/33 famine.

Nearly 20,000,000 deaths.

#40

No OTHERs ydstare . ONLY the jews.
Coz the jewish authors and historians refused to join to the holocaust the mass execution of the gipsys and other “low races”

Stalinist Russia.
Under Uncle Joe, the Russians have specific numbers of some 3,000,000 killed by the State (in records). 800,000 executed, 1,700,000 died in the Gulags and a further 400,000 in forced relocations.

it’s not correct.
According the official NKVD arhives figures the total quantity of the executed since the 1931-1953 i.e over 20 years was about 800 000. Plus perished about the same i.e 1 mln of peoples.
The victims of Stalin’s terror was no more 2 mln of peoples.
Plus approximatelly 500 000 of deported Chechens&Ingush , 20 000 Crimea Tatars and about 300 000 of poles who was deported to the deep Russa and Syberia in the 1939-40.
Total about 1 mln of peoples.

These are beleived to be woefully under estimated. Whilst some claim up to 60 million. 20,000,000 is more likely.

the 20/40/60 of millions of the Stalin’s terror is the Nazy/cold war propoganda ( or “historians” like Solzenitsyn, Volkogonov, Resun and ets sort of D.Irving in the West).

Nearly 20,000,000 deaths.

The bullsh…
Indeed the most blood period was in early the 1918-22 during the Civil war and when the Bloody Bolshevics hold the Red Terror agains “class enemies” ( that were in reality mostly Russian origin intelligencia).
In this period periched from 2 to 5 mln of peoples ( this is inpossible to calculate).
BTW the most amazing is the fact that the Western “historians” boldly added those victims to the Stalins terror.
Indeed Stalin had no relation to the Red terror, that was sunctioned the Trozkij-Bernshtain, Lenin-Blank and Sverdlov-Movshevich - the top leaders of the Bolshevic gov at that time…
However i have to say that NOT ONLY Bolshevick mass kdded the peoples - but also and White Army.
Moreover the White Army command ( who officially supported by the West) often closed eyes for the jewish pogroms in Ukraine.