First published December 3, 2015, by Miles Mathis
As usual, this is just my opinion, arrived at by reading the mainstream sources and coming to my own conclusions.
Yours may differ.
Fortunately, this paper was written in the US and is protected by the Constitution.
Under the free speech clause, I am legally allowed to question mainstream stories worldwide, and to disbelieve them.
This paper is to prepare you for a much more startling one on the horizon, one I have just begun.
It will be easier to digest once you have digested this one.
I stumbled across an article in the London Independent online yesterday from 2011 on David Irving.
David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English author who has written on the military and political history of World War II, especially Nazi Germany. He was found to be a Holocaust denier in a UK court in 2000 as a result of a failed libel case.
David Irving: ‘Hitler appointed me his biographer’ | The Independent | The Independent
It seemed strange to me, like I was reading it through a mist.
David Irving is the famous or notorious historian best known as an alleged Holocaust denier.
After writing many well-known books about WW2, he decided late in his career (around 1989, age 51) to dive headlong into controversy, publicly questioning the mainstream death figures as well as the presence of gas chambers.
We are told he went to Austria in 2005 to speak, even though he knew there were laws against Holocaust denial there and that he had been banned.
He was allegedly arrested and sentenced to three years in prison, of which he is said to have served 13 months.
He was arrested on November 11.
Yes, that is 11/11.
Remember that for later.
Now for my history on this question.
I supported Irving for years.
Not really for the so-called Holocaust denial—since I have left that question pretty much open for the past two decades—but for free speech.
As an American, I found these European thought-crime laws very strange.
Ironically, I was in line with Chomsky on this, since Chomsky has argued in the same way.
Avram Noam Chomsky (/noʊm ˈtʃɒmski/ ⓘ nohm CHOM-skee; born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called “the father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media. Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner. An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals”. Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard Nixon’s list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky’s commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid,[20] and criticizes U.S. support for Israel. Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel’s role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.
Noam Chomsky is & always has been A SPOOK – Library of Rick and RIA (RARE Information Access)
Chomsky even showed up to support Robert Faurisson, a notorious French Holocaust denier, defending him on his right to be wrong.
Robert Faurisson (French: [foʁisɔ̃]; born Robert Faurisson Aitken; 25 January 1929 – 21 October 2018) was a British-born French academic who became best known for Holocaust denial. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, and by letters to French newspapers, especially Le Monde, which contradicted the history of the Holocaust by denying the existence of gas chambers in Nazi death camps, the systematic killing of European Jews using gas during the Second World War, and the authenticity of The Diary of Anne Frank. After the passing of the Gayssot Act against Holocaust denial in 1990, Faurisson was prosecuted and fined, and in 1991 he was dismissed from his academic post.
Chomsky argued that free speech means nothing unless you can apply it to people you strongly disagree with.
Even after breaking with Chomsky, I still agree with that.
It is also worth mentioning that Irving has never denied the Holocaust happened.
He proposed that the numbers may have been inflated and questioned the use of gas chamber and other specifics, but he never denied atrocities occurred on a large scale.
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna in the first decade of the 1900s before moving to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I, receiving the Iron Cross. In 1919, he joined the German Workers’ Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921 was appointed leader of the Nazi Party. In 1923, he attempted to seize governmental power in a failed coup in Munich and was sentenced to five years in prison, serving just over a year of his sentence. While there, he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his early release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. He frequently denounced communism as being part of an international Jewish conspiracy. By November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the Reichstag, but not a majority. No political parties were able to form a majority coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. Former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative leaders convinced President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933. Shortly thereafter, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933, which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. Upon Hindenburg’s death on 2 August 1934, Hitler succeeded him, becoming simultaneously the head of state and government, with absolute power. Domestically, Hitler implemented numerous racist policies and sought to deport or kill German Jews. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the abrogation of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories inhabited by millions of ethnic Germans, which initially gave him significant popular support. One of Hitler’s key goals was Lebensraum (lit. ‘living space’) for the German people in Eastern Europe, and his aggressive, expansionist foreign policy is considered the primary cause of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and, on 1 September 1939, invaded Poland, causing Britain and France to declare war on Germany. In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. In December 1941, he declared war on the United States. By the end of 1941, German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army. On 29 April 1945, he married his longtime partner, Eva Braun, in the Führerbunker in Berlin. The couple committed suicide the next day to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army. In accordance with Hitler’s wishes, their corpses were burned. The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw described Hitler as “the embodiment of modern political evil”.[3] Under Hitler’s leadership and racist ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of an estimated six million Jews and millions of other victims, whom he and his followers deemed Untermenschen (subhumans) or socially undesirable. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the deliberate killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre. The number of civilians killed during World War II was unprecedented in warfare, and the casualties constitute the deadliest conflict in history.
Hitler’s Genealogy – Library of Rick and RIA (RARE Information Access)
For the most part he has tried to shift the blame for the camps away from Hitler and to those such as Himmler.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈluːɪtpɔlt ˈhɪmlɐ] ⓘ; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German politician who was the 4th Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the German Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. He is primarily known for being a principal architect of the Holocaust. After serving in a reserve battalion during the First World War without seeing combat, Himmler went on to join the Nazi Party in 1923. In 1925, he joined the SS, a small paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party that served as a bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler. Subsequently, Himmler rose steadily through the SS’s ranks to become Reichsführer-SS by 1929. Under Himmler’s leadership, the SS grew from a 290-man battalion into one of the most powerful institutions within Nazi Germany. Over the course of his career, Himmler acquired a reputation for good organisational skills as well as for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) and Minister of the Interior, which gave him oversight of all internal and external police and security forces (including the Gestapo). He also controlled the Waffen-SS, a branch of the SS that served in combat alongside the Wehrmacht in World War II. As the principal enforcer of the Nazis’ racial policies, Himmler was responsible for operating concentration and extermination camps as well as forming the Einsatzgruppen death squads in German-occupied Europe. In this capacity, he played a central role in the genocide of an estimated 5.5–6 million Jews and the deaths of millions of other victims during the Holocaust. A day before the launch of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Himmler commissioned the drafting of Generalplan Ost, which was approved by Hitler in May 1942 and implemented by the Nazi regime, resulting in the deaths of approximately 14 million people in Eastern Europe. In the last years of the Second World War, Hitler appointed Himmler as Commander of the Replacement Army and General Plenipotentiary for the administration of the Third Reich (Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung). He was later given command of the Army Group Upper Rhine and the Army Group Vistula. However, after he failed to achieve his assigned objectives, Hitler replaced him in these posts. Realising the war was lost, Himmler attempted, without Hitler’s knowledge, to open peace talks with the western Allies in March 1945. When Hitler learned of this on 28 April, he dismissed Himmler from all his posts and ordered his arrest. Thereafter, Himmler attempted to go into hiding but was captured by British forces. He committed suicide in British custody on 23 May 1945.
I won’t get into that here, since we will later see it doesn’t matter:
it is all misdirection of one sort or another.
But for now, you should know that at trial, Irving admitted that millions of Jews had been murdered by the Nazis.
The BEER HALL PUTSCH was Faked! – Library of Rickandria
That was one of the desired outcomes of the trial, as well as Irving’s conviction and jailing.
Anyway, along with the general notion of free speech, what I was originally troubled by was that we were seeing a noted historian who had done decades of research and had written many widely read books not being allowed to publish that research or give his opinion of it.
You should find that very strange.
This was not just your average Joe having an opinion based on listening to Rush Limbaugh or something, this was a famous historian.
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (/ˈlɪmbɔː/ LIM-baw; January 12, 1951 – February 17, 2021) was an American conservative political commentator who was the host of The Rush Limbaugh Show, which first aired in 1984 and was nationally syndicated on AM and FM radio stations from 1988 until his death in 2021. Limbaugh became one of the most prominent conservative voices in the United States during the 1990s and hosted a national television show from 1992 to 1996. He was among the most highly paid figures in American radio history; in 2018 Forbes listed his earnings at $84.5 million. In December 2019, Talkers Magazine estimated that Limbaugh’s show attracted a cumulative weekly audience of 15.5 million listeners to become the most-listened-to radio show in the United States. Limbaugh also wrote seven books; his first two, The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) and See, I Told You So (1993), made The New York Times Best Seller list. Limbaugh garnered controversy from his statements on race, LGBT matters, feminism, sexual consent, and climate change. In 1993, he was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame and in 1998 the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. During the 2020 State of the Union Address, President Donald Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Laws were passed all over Europe and indeed the world (see Canada and New Zealand, for instance) against disagreeing with mainstream history or numbers in any way.
Irving’s books were actually pulled from the shelves for that reason alone.
Since we can say that about no other topic, you should find that highly suspicious.
This is what alerted me to the project here more than anything else and is what caused me to give the alternate theories a fair reading years ago.
I figured that if governments were going to such lengths to suppress something, it was either true or was covering an even blacker truth.
When I lived in Belgium, I actually had several major disagreements with friends (and with strangers in pubs) about Irving.
I told them they should be concerned that people were going to jail in Europe for thought-crime.
[I also defended Brigitte Bardot in those strange conversations.]
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot (/brɪˌʒiːt bɑːrˈdoʊ/ ⓘ brizh-EET bar-DOH; French: [bʁiʒit baʁdo] ⓘ; born 28 September 1934), often referred to by her initials B.B. is a French former actress, singer, and model as well as an animal rights activist. Famous for portraying sexually emancipated characters, often with hedonistic lifestyles, she was one of the best known activists in the sexual revolution of the 1950s–1970s. Although she withdrew from the entertainment industry in 1973, she remains a major popular culture icon and a noted figure in ushering in the sexual revolution. She has acted in 47 films, performed in several musicals, and recorded more than 60 songs. She was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1985.
Irving has never called for violence against Jews.
I said that laws against questioning the government were dangerous and that these laws were very Nazi-like themselves.
More Nazi Fakes – Library of Rickandria
I still believe that.
But I couldn’t get anyone I talked to to pay attention.
They were more interested in the (exceedingly boring) football matches on TV.
Years ago, I read some of the alternative literature on the Holocaust, including the claims of Irving.
Still not feeling confident enough to take a side—the arguments on both sides being weak or inconclusive, it seemed to me—I emailed Norman Finkelstein.
Norman Gary Finkelstein (/ˈfɪŋkəlstiːn/ FING-kəl-steen; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist and activist. His primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Everything to do with this question seemed misty, so I thought I would ask a Jewish person who I admired.
Not being Jewish myself, I thought maybe I just didn’t have the proper eye for this stuff.
It was grasping, yes, but that is what I did.
For those of us on the left, Finkelstein—like Chomsky and Zinn—was a minor hero.
His arguments with Dershowitz were enough to make him shine in my naïve eyes.
Alan Morton Dershowitz (/ˈdɜːrʃəwɪts/ DURR-shə-wits; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was appointed as the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law in 1993. Dershowitz is a regular media contributor, political commentator, and legal analyst.
Anyway, Finkelstein said he was pretty sure the Holocaust had happened, but that it was possible the figures had been inflated by some margin.
So, I adopted that stance quietly, not really having any reason to broadcast it.
It wasn’t actually that important to me one way or the other, I just wanted to know the truth.
I like to know things.
So that is where I was on the question until yesterday, when I tripped across the 2011 article on Irving.
In it, claiming Hitler prophesied his coming, Irving quotes Hitler’s doctor, whom Irving allegedly tracked down in the 1970s.
Hitler’s Genealogy – Library of Rickandria
This doctor, quoting Hitler, says this:
One day, an Englishman will come along and write my biography.
But it cannot be an Englishman of the present generation.
They won’t be objective.
It will have to be an Englishman of the next generation, and one who is totally familiar with all the German archives.
I don’t know why that jumped out at me.
Maybe it is because of all the work I have done in the past year on faked events.
The Work of Miles Mathis – Library of Rick and RIA (RARE Information Access)
Or maybe they just got too cute there.
But I said to myself,
“That sounds like crap.”
It isn’t believable.
And I don’t mean Irving’s story isn’t believable.
I mean this story of him telling this story isn’t believable.
The whole thing is starting to stink of a con.
They are trying to sell the idea that Irving has finally gone completely off the deep end, I guess, but they have been selling that story for years.
You may say that Irving is now 77, and maybe he is actually losing his mind a little.
But, given the other things we will look at in a moment, I don’t read it that way.
I read it as the desperation of his handlers, and their well-known disrespect for the intelligence of their audience.
In short, they got sloppy.
They went too far here.
They tore their own curtain, and I finally saw through it.
So, what else do I have?
Well, in the next paragraph we get another tear.
Irving says that his old knees are jelly because he wasn’t allowed any real exercise while in that Austrian prison.
He says that 70 prisoners were only allowed to walk in a circle in a tiny yard once a day.
Right, because Austrian prisons are known as such hellholes.
C’mon, this is Austria, for crying out loud, not Thailand or Israel or Guantanamo Bay.
Why would an Austrian prison treat a non-violent old man jailed for thinking the wrong thoughts like that?
They wouldn’t.
It’s another sign of a fake.
What else?
Well, the author, Johann Hari, gives us the next clue…
But wait, we have seen Johann Hari before, haven’t we?
Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a Scottish writer and journalist who wrote for The Independent and The Huffington Post. In 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent and later resigned, after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001 and making malicious edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticized his conduct. He has since written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, the effect of technology on attention span, and anti-obesity medication, which have attracted criticism for inaccuracies and misrepresentation.
He came up in my outing of Jack London from just a few weeks ago.
Outing Jack London in all ways – Library of Rickandria
Hari is the one who told us all the ridiculous falsehoods about Jack London being the most widely read Socialist in history, or something like that.
Beyond that, a quick search on Hari reminds us he was the one suspended from the Independent for plagiarism in 2011, same year as this Irving article.
He later left the Independent altogether.
He also had to return his Orwell prize, which is pretty funny considering what I just told you about Orwell last week.
Why did he return the prize?
Because, according to Damian Thompson * in the London Telegraph, he “invented an atrocity”.
In other words, made up a fake event.
That is what it looks to me like he is doing here in the Irving article as well.
Instead of asking for the return of the Orwell prize, they should have given him a second one, gold-plated.
Hari also made improper edits to the Wikipedia pages of his critics, under a pseudonym.
Despite that, his career continued pretty much unabated.
He was reassigned to the fake war on drugs, and was hired to do a TED talk this year.
Johann Hari | Speaker | TED
So, this is all unwinding in spectacular fashion, far beyond what I understood when I began writing.
But isn’t that always the way now?
Anyway, Hari says this in the Irving article:
David Irving has limped to the door of his large Berkshire country house, and is standing by a Christmas tree, waiting.
I trudge up the drive, wondering how a recent bankrupt can afford all this, when he beckons me in with a rather severe look.
Given my title, I draw your attention to the Christmas tree there.
Nice touch, Johann!
But the reason I included that quote is what Hari admits about Irving’s posh abode.
How indeed does he afford it all?
Unless. . . maybe his bankruptcy is as fake as all the rest of it.
As the fog began to dissipate, my brain turned on full blast and I thought,
“David Irving.
David Irving.
That name might be Jewish.”
So, I checked.
No easy information on his father, but his mother Beryl Irene Newington is indeed Jewish.
David has admitted it.
A friend of Irving, Rolf Hochhuth stated it for the record in Junge Freiheit (No. 08/2005 from 18 Feb. 2005) while trying to defend Irving from anti-Semitism.
Rolf Hochhuth (German: [ʁɔlf ˈhoːxˌhuːt] ⓘ; 1 April 1931 – 13 May 2020) was a German author and playwright, best known for his 1963 drama The Deputy, which insinuates Pope Pius XII’s indifference to Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, and he remained a controversial figure both for his plays and other public comments and for his 2005 defense of British Holocaust denier David Irving.
Beryl Newington is the daughter of Francis Dolman, who is the daughter of Frederick and Susan Dolman.
Frederick is the son of Fay Uffelman, but his father is denied us.
Frederick Dolman (deceased) – Genealogy (geni.com)
Susan’s parents are denied us.
Irving has denied that he was brought up Jewish.
However, he admits his father left the family either in 1938 or 1942, when David was four.
Since his father John was a Naval Commander, he would have been gone in the war for most of that time anyway, so we will take the first date as more likely.
Since the family lived without a father, we must it assume the children were brought up by their mother.
If she was Jewish and had no man in the house, why would she not bring them up Jewish?
Even if she were non-practicing, she would in no case have brought them up Christian.
So, the story we are told doesn’t make any sense, as usual.
Here’s a curious passage early on Irving’s Wikipedia page:
Irving described his childhood in an interview with the American writer Ron Rosenbaum as:
“Unlike the Americans, we English suffered great deprivations … we went through childhood with no toys.
We had no kind of childhood at all.
We were living on an island that was crowded with other people’s armies.”
According to his twin, Nicholas, Irving has also been a provocateur and prankster since his youth.
Note that he is being interviewed by the Jewish Rosenbaum.
Then notice the lie.
England was never invaded during the war, so how could it be
“Crowded with other people’s armies”
It was bombed, not invaded or occupied.
Then notice the last sentence, about Irving being a provocateur and prankster.
Really?
They are giving you the clue here.
Best you get it.
Irving is a provocateur.
Eustace Mullins was an Anti – Library of Rick and RIA (RARE Information Access)
And here’s a curious passage in the Independent article.
When Hitler’s doctor tells Irving he was the one chosen by Hitler to cleanse his history, Irving replies,
“Why me?
Why me?
Why haven’t you given it to Jacobson or Hilburg or one of the other great historians?”
Someone is a terrible speller, and I guess we have to blame it on Hari and the Independent, since I assume newspapers still have editors.
In context, Irving must be talking about Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Raul Hilberg, well-known historians who specialized in Hitler and WW2.
A Study of History by Miles Mathis – Library of Rickandria
Note the correct spelling.
But it gets weirder, because Hilberg is Jewish.
Why would Irving think that Hitler or Hitler’s doctor would give any information to Hilberg, much less assume Hilberg would re-evaluate him?
It is beyond absurd and is just another example of Irving the prankster.
But apparently no one noticed.
The article has been up for four years now, and no one has thought to correct the two misspellings.
Do we get yet another clue in the next paragraph?
David admits that his father made things up about his time in the Navy.
In the navy, they call this make-believe and exaggeration “swinging the lantern”.
Hari then ask him,
“Are you like your father, David?”
In other words, is this all make-believe?
You can see why I said this all read “as through a mist” at first.
The whole article is telling you something without telling you.
It isn’t about what it appears to be about.
We can tell this by the lines Irving is being fed, which are totally over-the-top.
Every other sentence he is slandering the female sex, to make sure any and all female readers are fully prejudiced against him.
Later he says he was beaten sadistically by his schoolteacher,
“But wouldn’t have missed it.”
So, we are supposed to think he likes being beaten.
We also get a clue to why this decades-long hoax has been perpetrated.
Although Irving wrote about Dresden, he also confirmed Hitler’s death:
Otto Gunsche had been Hitler’s personal adjutant, the man who burned his body at the end and he liked the Dresden book.
Otto Günsche (24 September 1917 – 2 October 2003) was a mid-ranking officer in the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was a member of the SS Division Leibstandarte before he became Adolf Hitler’s personal adjutant. Günsche was taken prisoner by soldiers of the Red Army in Berlin on 2 May 1945. He was then detained by the Soviet Union until 2 May 1956 and provided key testimony regarding Hitler’s death.
After a series of meetings, he led Irving to the rest.
So, you see, far from overturning the mainstream story of Hitler, Irving actually confirms the important parts of it.
Irving readers would never have bothered looking for Hitler in South America, would they?
We get another curious statement after that.
Irving says:
And I thought to myself – there must be two Hitlers, there’s the Hitler we’re told about by Hollywood and Madison Avenue and there’s the Hitler that these people worked for.
Hollywood and Madison Avenue?
Not “the history books” but “Hollywood”.
STRANGE RELATIONS – Library of Rickandria
That should look curious to you, coming from a historian.
Is Irving telling you that the Hitler we have come to know, and hate was created mainly by Hollywood and Madison Avenue?
That’s what he just said, isn’t it?
Finally, at the end of the interview, Hari asks him outright if he is a provocateur.
Irving says,
“I am a scamp, yes, a scamp.
Ever since school.
I like to have one piece of mischief on every page I write so you go to turn the page and are thinking, well, what was that page about?”
And he [Irving] closes his eyes tightly in the freezing air.
For one moment, it seems as though he is back at Brentwood School, asking for a copy of Mein Kampf for speech day, and thinking all this – all this hate, and all this hard work to rehabilitate the worst genocidal killer of the twentieth century – is only a jolly, jolly jape.
Yes, I’m sure it is, but is it the jape we are being sold here?
We are being sold the idea that Irving is toying with us, and he is.
But how far and in which direction?
Is he, as the article implies, just toying with us to make us think Hitler was innocent?
Or it there actually much more to it than that?
Before I answer that question, I would like to point out one more time how odd it is to find this important article so full of typos and errors of fact.
I had to correct two obvious typos in that last quote alone.
And the article says Irving’s father died in 1964.
He didn’t, he died in 1967.
John James Cawdell Irving (1898 – 1967) – Genealogy (geni.com)
The article was clearly rushed into print, never proofed, and never corrected in four years.
That by itself is very odd.
You would think Irving himself would write in and ask for corrections.
You will say it is because Hari was busy fighting plagiarism charges that year, and didn’t have the opportunity to fix it.
But I don’t see it that way.
I read even the typos as clues.
I think they have left the typos in to test the readers.
They want to see if anybody is reading this closely, and the way they do that is monitor people writing in about typos.
My guess is no one is doing that, so they have a pretty good idea what people are seeing these days.
They not only don’t see horrible contradictions in mainstream stories, but they also don’t even see typos anymore.
Or if they do, they don’t care.
Now, I think Irving is a provocateur, but not the little niggling provocateur we are being sold by Hari.
I now think Irving is part of a long hoax of great depth and importance.
I think he is a cloaked Zionist playing the controlled opposition in another one of their games.
His job is to make anyone who questions mainstream history look like a disgusting sadistic sexist pig.
Even more important is that he makes you think that if you don’t believe the history, you have been sold in every detail, you may end up in jail walking in a tight circle with dangerous criminals.
Reading all the stories of:
- Irving
- Faurisson
- Zundel
and so on would make you think that even being in the US won’t help you, since they will just deport you to a country where the courts will hang you out to dry.
But my guess is Irving never spent a day in jail.
We now know they fake trials all over the world, and many people you are told were in jail never were.
More Proof the Trump Trials are Vaudeville – Library of Rickandria
I am adding Irving to my list.
In fact, I am adding all these guys to my list.
They all appear to be part of a long project.
I doubt that any real Austrian court would convict someone for disbelieving the mainstream these days on any given topic, or that any Austrian jury would find against him.
People know they are being lied to constantly, and in Europe that is even more true than in the US.
The Europeans think we are gullible for believing anything our government tells us.
I know.
I lived there.
I was told that directly.
I was told I was a gullible Ameri-cain, and you know what, at the time I was.
I am slowly coming out of it.
Just look at the polls over there on 9/11.
Almost no one believes the mainstream story.
In France I think the disbelief is something like 90%.
I don’t know what it is in Austria, but in Germany it is also about 90%.
Poll in Germany: 89.5% doubt official version of 9/11 | 911Blogger.com
74% in Germany believe the Kennedy assassination was a lie of some sort.
80% believe the CIA conducts covert operation on German soil.
Almost 40% believe in a secret world government and 50% believe they are being spied on.
That is higher than in the US, but even here around 84% think 9/11 was an inside job.
Guess where that last link links to:
if you guessed the London Independent, you win the prize.
For the grand prize, guess the date.
11/11/11.
Although the Independent tells us that was a New York Times/CBS poll, the poll is not mentioned at Wikipedia or on a Google Search.
We in the US can know about it only from a London newspaper.
Anyway, Austria is just across the border from Germany and speaks German, so it is doubtful the opinions there diverge greatly from those of Germany on these issues.
Do you still believe these are the sort of people who would convict a man for doubting a mainstream story?
Irving tells us eight of the people on his jury were fat hausfraus, but that isn’t believable, either.
[It reminds of the faked O. J. Simpson trial, which also had a curiously high number of women on the jury].
But even if they were, I still don’t think they would convict him.
As it turns out, women are more likely to question mainstream stories than men.
If you study the breakdown by sex of the Zogby polls on 9/11, you surprisingly find women more likely to believe the mainstream story is a lie.
So fat hausfraus may be your best friend if you ever really find yourself in Irving’s position—not that you ever would.
Now, let us return to Irving’s Wikipedia page.
In the first section, it is admitted Though Irving’s negationist views of World War II were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was recognized for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents.
Red flag!
If my suspicions here are true, we should find it curious that Irving is unearthing new historical documents.
Even if these documents are genuine, we should ask how he was the one to “find” them.
He tells he dug on shelves in the library no one else dug on, but that isn’t really believable.
We have another signal of a set-up here.
If he doesn’t have to believe the Jews’ accounts of the Holocaust, I don’t have to believe his accounts of anything, and I no longer do.
I believe he was used as a conduit all along.
In this line, it is also curious to find that Irving has a twin brother.
That could come in handy, as you know.
Perhaps his brother has taken part in “pranks” we don’t even know about?
In this way, David Irving can be in two places at the same time.
Remember that.
Intelligence loves twins for that reason.
Which brings us to some strange entries in his early career.
We are told he dropped out of university because he couldn’t afford it.
Most people who can’t afford university don’t come out of the Brentwood school.
It is very posh.
It was founded in 1557.
Jack Straw went there, as did:
- Sir Nick Scheele (Ford Motors)
- Sir Peter Stothard
- Charlie Bean
- Lord Black
- Baron Carter
- Andrew Lansley
and many other celebrities.
What I Finally Understood – Library of Rickandria
Did your high school look anything like that?
Those who can’t afford university also don’t normally make their start at Imperial College London.
In 2015 QS rankings it ranked above Oxford and Harvard.
QS World University Rankings 2015: Top Global Universities | Top Universities
It is very exclusive.
Since Irving’s father didn’t die at that time, I don’t see why his finances would have changed from one year to the other.
At age 21 David Irving moved to Germany, where he worked as a steelworker at a Thyssen AG plant.
Big red flag there, since Thyssen was a huge Jewish bankroller of the Nazis.
Of all the places Irving could have worked after university, he worked at Thyssen.
We are told he learned German while there.
He was,
“The only foreign laborer in the whole of the Ruhr.”
Not believable.
To start with, you don’t just become a steelworker overnight.
Normally you have to have a period of apprenticeship to work in a major plant like that.
You would also be expected to know German going in.
Beyond that, it makes no sense that this British college boy from the University of London would just pack it up and go work steel in Germany.
He wasn’t in Germany long enough to apprentice as a steel worker, because the next year he was in Spain working as a clerk at an Air Base.
Obviously, that’s either a military or Intelligence job, probably the latter.
That job also didn’t last long, because another year or so later (1962) he was back in Germany writing about the Allied bombing campaign for Neue Illustrierte.
This magazine was started by the English occupation government, so Irving was clearly on assignment from London.
So, why was the English occupation government pushing the Allied bombing campaign, including the horrible Dresden bombing?
I assume it was initially as cover.
They wanted to sell themselves as pro-German and anti-English, so they started by publicizing their own atrocities.
This would convince the readers they were really German.
But there was probably more to it than that.
You will have to wait until my next paper to get in any deeper there.
So, it looks like Irving may have been recruited for MI6 or Naval Intelligence out of Imperial College.
Remember, his father was a Naval Commander in WW2.
Commander is a rather high rank, and he may have had even higher rank after the war—captain or even admiral.
If he was career military and lived until 1967, he probably reached captain or higher.
The father was also from Oxford, which is likewise a clue.
Definitely not a working-class town.
Strange we know so little about John James Cawdell Irving.
John James Cawdell Irving (1898 – 1967) – Genealogy (geni.com)
But remember that Intelligence historically came out of the navy.
And although Irving has long claimed his father was out of the picture, in that Independent article from 2011 we find he was living with his father in 1964 while they were working on the Jutland book together.
Supposing Irving was recruited by British Intelligence, that would have been near the start of his career.
It looks like he may have been recruited in 1959, so to see him living with his supposedly estranged father in 1964 is somewhat curious and may be a clue.
Remember, his Wikipedia page tells us the father “severed all links” with the family in 1942.
We now see that isn’t true, and conflicts with the 2011 article.
It is also curious that Irving’s first book became an international bestseller.
He was only 25 with no degree, so how did he make that happen?
Who was the publisher of this Dresden book in 1963?
William Kimber.
A web search turns up almost no useful information on that publisher, although it is said to have existed until the 1980s.
It appears to have specialized in war propaganda and later ghost stories, so it looks to me like a front for British Intelligence.
So, I do a search on “William Kimber British Intelligence” and get a hit.
In fact, I get several nice hits at Google Books.
In the first footnotes of Phillip Davies 2004 book MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, we find Kimber as the publisher of two books:
one on the Philby Affair in 1968 by Hugh Trevor-Roper and one by Phillip Johns in 1979 called Within Two Cloaks: Missions with SIS and SOE.
Below that, in footnote 94, we find another spook book from 1981, Flight Most Secret:
Air Missions for the SOE and SIS, by Gibb McCall.
And in footnote 117 we find yet another:
Secret Sunday by Donald Darling, 1975.
In Nigel West’s 2005 book The A to Z of British Intelligence, we find another nest of footnotes.
The A to Z of British Intelligence – Nigel West – Google Books
In them we find that Kimber published a book Soldier into Spy by Roland Rieul in 1986.
Also, British Agent by John Whitwell in 1966.
Also, Secret and Personal by F. W. Winterbotham in 1969.
Also, Secret Service Rendered by Lily Sergueiev in 1968.
And in Richard Aldrich’s 2000 book Intelligence and the War Against Japan, we find three more Kimber publications in the footnotes.
Intelligence and the War Against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics of … – Richard J. Aldrich – Google Books
Operations most Secret by I. Trenowden, 1978.
SOE Singapore, R. Gough, 1985.
And Undercover in the Jungle, J. Bowen, 1978.
That pretty much confirms my suspicion.
It is really surprising how easy this is.
More confirmation comes from a hit on Leon Uris, whose English publisher of Exodus was William Kimber.
Leon Marcus Uris (August 3, 1924 – June 21, 2003) was an American author of historical fiction who wrote many bestselling books, including Exodus (published in 1958) and Trinity (published in 1976).
Leon Uris: Life of a Best Seller – Ira B. Nadel – Google Books
This was a novel about the founding of Israel, so you see the link to the question at hand.
In the book Uris mentions by name a Dr. Dering who had been a prison doctor at Auschwitz.
Uris said he did medical experiments in sterilization, and Dr. Dering sued him.
The 1964 trial received coverage around the world, of course.
Lord Gardiner *, later that year Lord High Chancellor of England, argued for Uris, which is convenient.
Gerald Austin Gardiner, Baron Gardiner, CH, PC, QC (30 May 1900 – 7 January 1990) was a British Labour politician, who served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain from 1964 to 1970. In that position he embarked on a programme of reform, most importantly setting up the Law Commission in 1965.
22 witnesses from Auschwitz appeared.
Nonetheless, the jury found in favor of Dering but awarded him only a farthing.
The judge ordered him to pay court costs as well as the legal fees of Uris’ team.
We are told that Dering died a year after the trial and that Uris did not press the widow for outstanding court costs.
Right.
This sounds like another project to me.
Real court proceedings don’t work that way.
Why?
Because the loser pays court costs, not the winner.
English rule (attorney’s fees) – Wikipedia
Why would the winner be ordered to pay court costs and the lawyers’ fees of the loser?
That would only happen if the plaintiff lost.
If you sue and lose the case you can be ordered to pay the defendant’s legal bills, but not if you win.
Dering won, and it doesn’t matter that his damages were tiny.
The point is he won.
A win is a win, just like in football:
a one-point win is just as good as a 100-point win.
Lord Gardiner is worth researching as well.
He is the grandson of Count von Ziegesar, who—far as I can tell—was a Jewish merchant given a title in Hungary in the 19th century.
According to his bio, Lord Gardiner was called to the Bar in 1925, but he had no degree.
He was expelled from Oxford, we are told.
How does that work?
We are told he was at Oxford in the 1920s.
Why not be more specific, in a public bio?
But if he was at Oxford in the 1920s and was expelled, say, in 1923, how did he have time to be called to the Bar in 1925?
He would have to return and finish his degree (which we are not told he did), then spend at least two years studying law and doing his pupillage.
I guess degrees are important only for us not in the peerage.
Or maybe you don’t need to study the real law when you are running fake trials.
If you are a Lord, you just make up the law as you go.
Did Dr. Dering really die in 1965?
No way to know, but he was only 62.
Since it looks to me like the trial was a show trial, that would mean Dering and Uris were actually on the same side, Dering just being hired to play his part.
In support of that, remember that Poland and England were allies in WW2.
Dering was Polish.
They also admit he was living and working in London when Exodus was published.
That’s curious, wouldn’t you say?
He just happened to be there at hand for this trial?
Very convenient.
Also, convenient he died just a few months after the trial.
Also, convenient that Uris’ publisher William Kimber decided to let Dering’s widow off the hook for his lawyers’ fees.
No publisher I know of would have done that, since the fees were no doubt steep and since the publisher would have been embarrassed to lose the case.
The publisher’s only consolation was those fees, which were his Pyrrhic victory.
Plus, the widow was a doctor’s wife and probably not broke.
And she had been awarded £500 a couple of years earlier by Uris’ British printer Purnell & Sons.
I guess British Intelligence didn’t need the money.
They have all they want.
But back to Irving and Dresden.
They tell you Irving inflated the deaths in Dresden by large amounts, first claiming as many as 250,000.
He then adjusted them down in later editions.
But Wikipedia does a similar thing, telling us two versions of the same story that don’t match.
First, they tell us According to the evidence (as introduced by Richard J. Evans at the 2000 libel trial that Irving brought against Deborah Lipstadt), Irving based his estimates of the dead of Dresden on the word of one individual who provided no supporting documentation, used forged documents, and described one witness who was a urologist as Dresden’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer.
Sir Richard John Evans FRSL FRHistS FBA FLSW (born September 29, 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume The Third Reich Trilogy (2003–2008). Evans was Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge from 2008 until he retired in 2014, and President of Cambridge’s Wolfson College from 2010 to 2017. He has been Provost of Gresham College in London since 2014. Evans was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to scholarship in the 2012 Birthday Honours.
Two sentences later, we are told this:
Irving based his numbers on a falsified document “TB 47” promulgated by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, as well as claims made after the war by a former Dresden Nazi functionary, Hans Voigt, without verifying them against official sources available in Dresden.
The second version doesn’t match the first.
It wasn’t one individual, it was at least two (and actually more than that).
There was supporting documentation, since TB 47 wasn’t known to be forged until later (1977), and misidentifying a doctor is caviling.
Also, according to my research, Hans Voigt wasn’t a “functionary”, he was a major general.
Also note the number 47, which is numerology and a clue this is all a fake.
But it isn’t really worth arguing about, since Irving isn’t the only one adjusting numbers all over the place on this topic.
It is still going on, since I remember quite clearly the number was around 45,000 just a few years ago.
I looked it up when I was re-reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5.
According to Wikipedia, they have now halved that number.
The bottom line is, I don’t trust any of these historians on anything.
Like politicians, they just say whatever they like.
They then apparently run fake lawsuits against one another, as promotion of the field in general.
I honestly think they promote various histories on purpose, to keep small people arguing over details, as we see if we visit any history forum on this topic or any other.
My only conclusion from researching this is that Dresden didn’t have any reliable sources itself, since if they had these numbers wouldn’t be changing all over the place to this day.
All parties are just making up data, as if they are physicists or something.
I can see why people visit Dresden to look at evidence for themselves, since the public never gets anything but lies.
It is nearly impossible to come to any decent conclusion based on what we are told by the mainstream.
Your only hope is to sift all the lies and somehow hope to spot the truth in the flour.
I haven’t done that yet with Dresden.
However, I can tell you that Wikipedia appears to be spinning with its numbers.
I searched on TB 47 and was taken here, a current Emory university page that is anti-Irving.
Page not found – Holocaust Denial on Trial (hdot.org)
They tell us that the new TB 47, now taken as genuine, says in the authentic Ehrlich copy the death figure was put at 20,204, the expected dead at 25,000, and the number cremated at 6,865.
To me, that is still criminally unclear.
What do they mean by “death figure”?
Is that the counted bodies?
And what do they mean by “expected dead”?
Does that mean they expect another 4,800 above the 20,000?
Or does it mean they expect another 25,000 above the 20,000?
Either way, what is this expectation based on?
It is an extrapolation of what?
Even the last figure is unclear.
Since this was a firebombing, all the dead could be said to have been cremated.
So, is that third number included in the first, or do we add it?
At a first reading, my instinct would be to add the three numbers, getting a total of about 52,000, but they clearly aren’t doing that.
They need to tell us why.
But again, I think these things are stated with no precision on purpose.
The confusion is never accidental.
Plus, none of the claims or numbers of Wikipedia or Emory mention US four-star General Ira Eaker, who estimated the number to be around 135,000.
General (Honorary) Ira Clarence Eaker (April 13, 1896[1] – August 6, 1987) was a general of the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Eaker, as second-in-command of the prospective Eighth Air Force, was sent to England to form and organize its bomber command. While he struggled to build up airpower in England, the organization of the Army Air Forces evolved, and he was named commander of the Eighth Air Force on December 1, 1942.
“In 1945, General Eaker was named deputy commander of the Army Air Forces and Chief of the Air Staff.”
Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force – Wikipedia
So, it seems he might have known something about it.
Wikipedia conspicuously leaves any information about Dresden off of Eaker’s own page.
They mention the ill-advised bombing of Monte Cassino in 1944, but nothing about Dresden.
Very curious.
We know why Irving might wish to inflate the dead at Dresden, but why would Eaker wish to do that?
In the same year the Dresden book came out (1963), Irving went to the police claiming he was burgled.
Gerry Gable admitted he did it, and his lawyer admitted Gable was looking for papers to take to Special Branch.
That’s curious on the face of it.
Why would the defense lawyer be admitting things like that?
Because this was probably another set-up.
Gerry Gable is Jewish, and it is now admitted on the Searchlight Wiki page that he had links to MI5.
His leaked 1977 London Weekend Television memo stated that he had,
“Given names I have acquired to be checked out by British/French security services.” †
Gable was the long-time editor of Searchlight, a self-styled anti-fascist magazine that now look like another Intel front.
For much more on that, you may go here.
Searchlight for Beginners – Larry O’ Hara (libcom.org)
It looks to me like the burgling of Irving’s flat may have been done either to give his book publicity or to give Gable publicity for his upcoming magazine, or both.
Regardless, it is also curious that although we are told this burgling got wide press coverage, we aren’t told the outcome, either on Irving’s page or on Gable’s.
I assume Gable was convicted, since he admitted he did it.
How was he sentenced?
Gable has been involved in a lot of other weirdness that is now admitted, like the libel suit against him and Panorama—also concerning Nazis—which the BBC had to pay out.
Finding him linked to Irving early on certainly bolsters my thesis here, though it of course doesn’t prove it.
Next, we come to the 1967 book on the death of Polish General Sikorski, in which Irving claimed Churchill ordered the assassination.
Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski (Polish pronunciation: [vwaˈdɨswaf ɕiˈkɔrskʲi] ⓘ; 20 May 1881 – 4 July 1943) was a Polish military and political leader.
Churchill had died in 1965 and couldn’t sue, but we would have expected the Government to have responded explosively.
Since Poland was part of the Alliance, this implied Churchill was ordering the deaths of his allies.
Instead, the British Government has done little or nothing to counter all of Irving’s anti-Churchill claims (there were many more later)—other than post pretty tepid denials.
However, that wasn’t the only book Irving published in 1967.
He also libeled Commander Jack Broome in 1967, and Broome was still alive.
Captain John Egerton Broome DSC (23 February 1901 – 19 April 1985), also known as Jackie Broome, was a Royal Navy officer who served in both World Wars. He commanded the escort group of the ill-fated Arctic Convoy PQ 17 in 1942. After the Second World War, he became a writer and illustrator.
Irving had to pay a huge sum, and the book was pulled.
This finding may bear on the case of Churchill, since if Irving was willing to lie about Broome, he may have been willing to lie about Churchill as well.
Much more research could be done on Irving, and probably should be, but I have shown you enough here for my purposes.
I have shown you a pretty big pile of contradictions and inconsistencies and red flags, and my guess it will be hard to look at Irving the way you did yesterday, no matter what you thought of him.
I didn’t write this paper to prove a case against Irving, since I have no real interest in that.
My interest is in compiling things already on the internet and putting them in front of you so that you can come to your own conclusions.
And, and I said going in, I was interested in leading you into bigger questions.
As you can see, what I have discovered here begs some very big questions, not only about Hitler, the Jews, the Holocaust, and Dresden, but about WW2 in general.
I think it is becoming clear we have been told some very big lies from all sides, but it may be possible to unwind some of them, getting a better picture of what that war may have been about.
As a first question to lead you into my next paper—which may not arrive terribly soon, it is a big one— just ask yourself if it isn’t a bit curious that with all these gigantic wars that have happened over the centuries, so little territory in Western Europe has actually changed hands.
Alsace moves back and forth occasionally, but little else changes.
Even Ireland is still sitting there (with her borders) ‡ mostly untouched after centuries, although you would have expected England to have taken her long long ago.
Mull that over and I will meet you somewhere in the future.
I later discovered some more things about Irving’s genealogy, which you can read here and here.
Sorry, but they are buried in long papers about more important things.
*
If you think this makes Thompson a good guy, think again.
They are just agents outing each other.
Thompson wrote a book on conspiracy theory called Counter-knowledge, which is just disinfo and fake debunking.
He tries to convince us there that all 9/11 theories that question the mainstream theory are,
“Part of a pandemic of credulous thinking.”
He also tries (and fails) to debunk alternative medicine, Moon landing questions, and questions about the Holocaust.
According to his way of thinking, no one in the government has ever lied to you before, so why be suspicious?
**
He is related to Cecily von Ziegesar, who wrote the Gossip Girl books, so beware of her.
Cecily Brooke von Ziegesar (/ˌvɒn zɪˈɡeɪzər/ VON zig-AY-zər; born June 27, 1970) is an American author best known for the young adult Gossip Girl series of novels.
†
First published in the New Statesman 15 February 1980, reproduced in Lobster magazine, issue 24 December 1992.
‡
I added the parentheses after hearing from some Irish friends, who pointed out my original word choice was criminally sloppy.
Since I am a Malloy on my Mom’s side, I had to agree.
The Irish themselves have certainly not been “untouched”.
What I had meant—and stand by—is that I find it curious that the entire island wasn’t simply taken, losing its name and its borders completely.
That is what any objective bystander (say, someone from Pluto) would have expected, given the history of empires all the way back to Alexander the Great.
Of course I am glad Ireland is still Ireland.
When I lived there for a few months in 2007, I nearly got into a fight because I was being too pro-Irish in the wrong place (you have to be careful over there).
When I was younger, I used to say that Ireland hadn’t been taken because it was protected by the Shi, and I was mostly serious.
I still leave that possibility on the table, but now begin to think there may be another more mundane explanation, which we will look at in the follow-up paper.