Extract from the trial of Anton Kaindl, former commandant of Sachsenhausen Death Camp

On Jewishgen.org you can read an extract from the trial of Anton Kaindl, former commandant of Sachsenhausen Death Camp:

Kaindl: In march 1943, I introduced gas chambers for the mass exterminations.
Public Prosecutor: Was it your own decision?
Kaindl: Partially yes. Because the existing installations were too small and not sufficient for the exterminations, I decided to have a meeting with some SS officers, including the SS Chief Doctor Baumkotter. During this meeting, he told me that poisoning of prisoners by prussic acid in special chambers would cause an immediate death. After this meeting, I decided to install gas chambers in the camp for mass extermination because it was a more efficient and more humane way to exterminate prisoners. [...]
Public Prosecutor: Accused Kaindl, did you receive the order to destroy any evidence of the murders committed in the camp?
Kaindl: Yes. On February 1st, 1945, I had a conversation with the chief of the Gestapo, Muller. He ordered me to destroy the camp with artillery bombing, aerial bombing or by spraying gas. But due to technical problems, this order coming directly from Himmler was impossible to fulfill.

German Constitutional Court declares Police Law unconstitutional

The German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe released a judgement today which declared parts of the Lower Saxony Police Law unconstitutional. These parts allowed the police to tap phones to prevent crimes.

The reasoning was based on the one hand on the formal argument the the province has no authority to make regulations about criminal prosecution since the federation already regulated this all-embracing.

In respect of the content the judges argued the the law was too vague and disproportionately restricting basic rights. Last, the law offered no protection of intimate and highly personal conversations.

• The Constitutional Court's Press Release.
• Some interesting comments about that decision on the lfg blog.

Listen to Earthquake in South-East Asian from X-Mas 2004

The Earth Institute at Columbia University has a paper online about the sound of the earthquake which hit Sumatra, Indonesia and Thailand on the morning of December 26th 2004. You can download the sound as a mp3 file there. Actually, it doesn't sound that impressive, at least to my ears. More just like a big truck passing by.

German President suspends Parliament after Lost Vote of Confidence

Yesterday the German President Köhler suspended the German Parliament (Bundestag) after Chancellor Schröder lost purposely a vote of confidence. Not only in this blog but also other people share the opinion that this procedure is unconstitutional. From an article on expatica:

Greens MP Werner Schulz accuses Schroeder of having bent the law to bring about a new election when in fact the legal avenue would be for him to resign.

Schulz's constitutional lawyer is Wolf Ruedigar Schenke, who also challenged the vote of no-confidence in 1982 that brought down Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and elevated Helmut Kohl to power. The high court turned down Schenke's objections then, but legal experts say it is unclear whether they will do so this time.

If the constitutional court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has not objections, then new elections will be held on September 18th. Also you can read on CNN "Schroeder's poll verdict imminent".

IBM suggests migration from OS/2 to Linux

Since IBM will stop selling OS/2 Warp from December 23rd 2005 on and stop the standard support on December 2006, it recommends that OS/2 users should migrate to Linux:

There are no replacement products from IBM. IBM suggests that OS/2 customers consider Linux as an alternative operating system for OS/2 client and server environments.

German Constitutional Court: European Arrest Warrant Act void

On the 18th July 2005 the German Constitutional Court declared the European Arrest Warrant Act (Europäisches Haftbefehlsgesetz) unconstitutional and void. From the English press release:

According to the Court, the Act encroaches upon the freedom from extradition (Article 16.2 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz – GG)) in a disproportionate manner because the legislature has not exhausted the margins afforded to it by the Framework Decision on the European arrest warrant in such a way that the implementation of the Framework Decision for incorporation into national law shows the highest possible consideration in respect of the fundamental right concerned. Moreover, the European Arrest Warrant Act infringes the guarantee of recourse to a court (Article 19.4 of the Basic Law) because there is no possibility of challenging the judicial decision that grants extradition.

Note that this is only about the extradition of German citizens to other European countries. This has nothing to do with the extradition of Non-Germans, which happens much more often.

How comparisons with Nazi politics are criticized

The German socialdemocrat Ludwig Stiegler compared the election program of the conservative party CDU with a Nazi slogan, as the Frankfurter Neue Presse reports. Stiegel said the CDU slogan "Social is what creates new jobs" reminds him of the Nazi slogan "Work makes free". This was the slogan of various concentration camps including Dachau and Auschwitz.

A meaningful critic came from the head of the SPD Frank Müntefering: "Democtratic parties shouldn't accuse each other with slogans of the extreme right or even of the national socialism. That is not appropriate and not our language." And also a commenter in the Tagesspiegel found Stiegler's comparison ludicrous.

These critics are wrong because they never argue if such a comparison is right or not. Stiegel pointed out a common ground between the two ideas: Both the Nazis and the Conservatives (and the Socialdemocrates by the way too) find work quite important. They both have positive concepts of work. They both think that if somebody is lazy that this would not be a good thing.

Typo in new Harry Potter

I already found a typing error in J. K. Rowling's new "Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince" (Chapter 3, p. 42):

The misty fug of his breath had left on the window...

What is a 'fug'?

Dennis86131 has a good comment on that:

You would think that as many kids love these books. They would have made sure the simple words are correct.

Murderer of Child sues Germany for Torture Threat

As FAZ.NET reports Magnus Gäfgen, kidnapper and murderer of the son of a Frankfurt banker Jakob von Metzler, wants to sued Germany. His lawyer Heuchemer filed an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights.

The background is that Gäfgen was threatened by the deputy police chief Wolfgang Daschner with being tortured and raped by blacks if he didn't reveal the location of the kidnapped boy. More about the trail against Gäfgen on DW-World, about the trial against the deputy on Bloomberg.

Update your Firefox

The mozilla foundation released an update for Firefox today. The lasted version 1.0.5 includes several security fixes.

ZDNet.de points out that users don't know yet which security holes existed and how they were closed. Still, it is strongly recommended to upgrade your Firefox. Especially, since exploits for security holes in older versions of Firefox, like an image parsing problem as FrSIRT reports, are available on the web.

Death Penalty For Hackers?

On Slashdot there is a story with the title Death Penalty For Hackers?:

The New York Times Op-Ed page has a piece entitled Worse Than Death (Obnoxious but free registration required) that calls for harsher 'hacker' penalties as a deterrent, quoting one academic as recommending even well, the death penalty – as a deterrent for the likes of Sasser author Sven Jaschan.

This article is based on Steven E. Landsburg's article Feed the Worms Who Write Worms to the Worms.

Slashdot comments on that were as usual – mostly boring and absolutely uncritical. I got the impression that most commenters found death penalty generally fine or disagreed with it, because in their opinion there are so many who deserve it. And did you find anybody questioning the idea of punishment?

I am so afraid!

I found a interesting article in this German blog about the We're-not-Afraid-Site. Translation by me:

But they should be afraid, because the free nations and their democratic leaders always talk about the "inevitableness" of such attacks, which does not make them stop their wars of reorganizing the world and their extortions in the respective countries, which are at least are a prerequisite that disappointed nationalist in the Arabic world decide to bomb back. The dead of NY, Moscow, Madrid and now London are just the worn out material of humans that democratic leaders take into account for their purposes, the export of freedom and democracy. Whoever is not afraid and proudly pledges loyalty, is just as wacko as a religious suicide bomber who chucks his life away for Allah and neither has anything from it.

Therefore I would propose a counter blog, maybe something like http://www.wereafraid.com/, which is not registered yet:

Why emphasize that victims of London bombs were innocent?

Tony Blair pointed out in his press release on July 7th 2005 that the terrorist killed innocent people in the London bombing:

This has been a most terrible and tragic atrocity that has cost many innocent lives. [...] they are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cower us

So it is fine to kill guilty people, in war or through death penalty? If someone emphasizes that the victims were innocent, you notice that this person has absolutely no problem with killing people. Else he would not make the difference between innocent and guilty ones.

Think about how many people the British Army has killed all over the world. That is not a problem for Blair because they killed guilty people.

Sasser programmer gets 19 months in jail on probation

In the trail against the programmer of the worm Sasser (covered in this blog before) ended with one year and seven months in jail on probation for the teenage programmer. Computing.co.uk:

Sven Jaschan, the German teenager who admitted releasing the Sasser virus, has escaped a custodial sentence.
A German court has given Jaschan, from the village of Waffensen in the northern Germany, a probationary sentence of one year and nine months after pleading guilty to charges of data manipulation, computer sabotage and interfering with public services.

You might also want to read Silicomvalley or Yahoo News.

European Parliament against Software Patents

Today the European Parliament did not pass the draft of the EU Commission on software patents, as for example The Spiegel reports. From a mail of the Free Software Foundation Europe:

After years of struggle, the European Parliament finally rejected the software patent directive with 648 of 680 votes: A strong signal against patents on software logic, a sign of lost faith in the European Union and a clear request for the European Patent Office (EPO) to change its policy: the EPO must stop issuing software patents today.

Also read on epatents blog about this story. The FFII offers some a pretty good background on software patents.

Dalai Lama: A feudal ruler

So, today is the birthday of His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, whose monk name is Tenzin Gyatso. While he has many supports like Richard Gere oder the Beasty Boys, I wonder what everybody finds so great about him.

1. He was and is a feudal ruler. Before the Chinese Army occupied Tibet in 1950 the country was ruled by a monk caste. They lived in monasteries and had a firm ruling of poor farmers. The whole Tibetan government system is build upon the authority of the Dalai Lama and a elite monk caste.
2. The material situation of the people of Tibet actually improved after the invasion of the Chinese since they were not exploited by the monks anymore.
3. Just a few words about the peacefulness of His Holiness: He said about Shoko Asaharas, the notorious planer of the poison gas attack on the Tokyo underground, that he is a friend "not necessarily a perfect one". Note, that was weeks after the attack in Tokyo.

A very good article on that topic is Michael Parenti's Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth. A good book about the Dalai Lama is Colin Goldner's Book "Dalai Lama Fall eines Gottkönigs" (in German, The Downfall of a God-King), which is reviewed here

Religious Truth

I found a postcard with the title "Religious Truth". It reads:

Taoism: Shit happens.
Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn't really shit.
Hinduism: This shit has happened before.
Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.
Catholicism: Shit happens because you deserve it.
Protestantism: Let shit happen to somebody else.
Judaism: Why does shit always happen to us?

I also found on the web some funny extensions:

Confucianism: Confucius say, 'Shit happens.'
Zen-Buddhism: What is the sound of shit happening?
New Age: Affirm: 'Shit does not happen to me.'
Atheist: I don't believe this shit.
Rastafarian: Let's roll that shit up and smoke it.

Promoter of online demonstration fined

Zdnet Germany reports that the promoter of a online demonstration against the Lufthansa was fined with 900 Euros by the Local Court of Frankfurt. On his web page he had called to download a program to block the site of Lufthansa. The program sent tons of connection requests in a short period so that the Lufthansa web page was not reachable for 10 minutes.

Read more about Denial-of-service attacks on Wikipedia.