i don't know about any of you, but the biggest news on my tv lately is the recent HOLOCAUST DENIER's convention, attended by some of the worlds loosest cannons. namely president Ahmadinejad of iran! and, and a couple of what appeared to me to be orthodox jews!!! forgive me for making light of such a serious event but i fail to miss the irony. so here we go again, this time on an unprecedented global scale. for the record, i am no nazi, i dislike and perhaps even hate lots of people but they are all taken on a case by case basis and with good reason OTHER than the colour of their skin and ethnicity. as far as i am concerned the holocaust most certainly took place. i have been to poland, visited concentration camps and spoken to former inmates. i have visited many eastern european cities and more than a couple of jewish cemeteries and i have no problems believeing the facts as they were presented to me in school. HOWEVER there are many of people who believe as strongly as i do, that these events did not take place. to put it in perspective, there are those who believe in god and those who don't. one side of this, or any passionate, argument is incapable of seeing the others point of view. so this brings me to Ernst Zundel, a german born canadian and one of the most famous of all the holocaust denier s. during a recent trial, Zundel employed the expertise of Mr Fred Leuchter. Leuchter is the worlds foremost expert on the subject of execution and execution chambers, being an engineer who's sole business is the design and consruction of execution chambers and the apparatus used in them. he consults to most of the US states who employ the death penalty. Leuchter, in the employ of Zundel, went to poland and thoroughly researched the extermination camps, primarily auschwitz, and all the gas chambers within them. now, previous to this case he was a self confessed believer in the holocaust and had never any reason to disbelieve what he had been taught all his life. upon his return, he stood in front of a court of law and gave evidence as an expert claiming that, in his opinion the number of executions claimed to have taken place "did not" and "could not" have taken place at the sites he inspected. suffice to say this blew a few people away. he single handedly swayed the opinions of many credible, sane people and then went on a nationwide tour preaching what he had learned. and to this day the battle wages on...... so my point is this...... i have seen enough things in my life to question just about everything. the propaganda machine is a great and powerful one. we live in an age where millions of people everyday buy things they don't want, eat food they know is bad for them and smoke cigarettes they know are full of poison. millions more in the US alone do not support the war in IRAQ and deny the publicised cause of 911. yet we continue to consume,smoke and live our daily lives within the grasp of this propaganda, marketing driven war machine. doing little, if anything about it. adolf hitler was one man, with (I MO) some fucked up ideas, yet he manages to capture the attention of the german people to the point where he could invade half of europe and set up extermination camps all over the land. that, in a time before television and mass advertising. is it really so hard to believe that the holocaust was all an elaborate hoax?? i think it really happened, and if it didn't i don't see the point in trying to prove it. the romans-----the mongol s----the chinese----the japanese----the english---- every nation in its turn develops to the point that they can invade and suppress another, it is the infernal nature of mankind. governments lie, sometimes small, sometimes big. it is an accepted part of life on earth and there will never be anything we can do about it. sad, but true. i say freedom of speech, freedom of expression. offensive material stimulates passionate conversation and debate. the real values our societies are based on are a result of such things and should never stop.