The European Court of Justice Goes Mindless. And Paperless. Away

Marquel, TPVs Times Holocaust Denial correspondent, could not believe his eyes when he read that the New York Times actually published: European Court Lets Users Erase Records on Web. As far as we know the holocaust never happened…In the EU.

Marquel couldn’t sleep. He got up out of bed but he still couldn’t sleep. So he got back into bed to see how long he could stay awake. Something was keeping him up. As the Internet’s most important and least known digital author and its most important critic he was sensitively attuned to all things digital. All he could hear was paper shredding. Sheaf after sheaf of paper was being shredded and he couldn’t sleep.

Finally he got out of bed again and did some internet searches. He came up with nothing. Not even the ads to clean his hard disk or make his computer 200% faster. Finally by dawn, everything had returned to normal. He could buy counterfeit Viagra, made in Crimea, once again. The world was again normal

But he couldn’t figure out what happened. He read in the Times about the latest EU judicial opinion allowing private users to demand that old news be left as that…and links to it deleted. Marquel had a sinking feeling that he knew what had happened and would continue to happen. He went to Google’s German site and searched for holocaust news. Nothing. All the old articles were gone. It was as if the holocaust had never occurred in Germany. The same with the French servers. And the Italian servers. But it was still on the US servers.

I didn’t want to be a holocaust denier but it really did look like it was an American fiction. No holocaust in all of Europe. Only in America. Nice title for a book, I thought.

I contacted Google and asked if they had received any requests since the decision.

“Thousands,” the man from Google said, “most from Germany and France, a few from Italy, and a scattering from the Scandinavian countries. A whole lot from Argentina but those we rejected.”

“And the ones from Europe?” I asked.

“We cannot investigate every complaint of privacy so our default position,” he told me, “is to just delete the link.”

All of Europe and Argentina, I told myself. What does that sound like. A Nazi conspiracy. I know that’s a bit sensationalistic and I didn’t truly believe it either. But it was a clue. I asked Google for a list of names of people requesting link deletions. After a lot of hemming and hawing, which was unfortunate because it turns out time was of the essence, they turned me down flat.

I went to my internet expert, Mufi, who is also my Chinese chef and go-between for Asian contacts. He told me he could hack into the list but it might already be erased. It only exists as long as the process is going on.

I had some moo shoo and before my last chopstickfull, he brought me a printout. I grabbed it out of his hands, and took a look. Most of the names were unknown to me but I knew what to look for. There was a Himmler, two Goering’s, a Goebbels, and a Mengele and what looked like a Hitler cousin.

I went home with the list and googled them. Tons of Holocaust information and a lot of revisionist shit too. I went into the French Google and there were only a few of the revisionist pieces. Same with the German and Belgian servers. To believe what it said there was no Holocaust in Europe although the Jews did their best to start World War II and came off the winners. With millions of dollars in profits to show for it.

Nothing about stolen art on the European servers, nothing but on the US server.

Obviously I concentrated on Nazi or Nazi descendants petitions to have links erased but the list was huge and they probably ran the gamut from people with bad kindergarten reports to descendants of the War of the Roses who objected to some relatively harsh  beheadings. What were the Europeans doing with their history?

I Skyped the head of France Google and asked him just that.

“What history?” He asked.

“Well, for instance,” I said, “World War II.”

“That was between…” He hesitated. “That was a long time ago. Can’t we concentrate on the present. We are the EU now. You’ll find everything about the EU on France Google.”

“I don’t think you realize the seriousness of gaps in our history less than 75 years ago.” I said.

“That was a long time ago. Aren’t you interested in the EU?” He asked.

“Well of course I am,” I said, “but I’m also interested in the Holocaust.”

“Which one,” he asked.

“For chrissakes,” I said, “thank God there was only one.”

“Well I was wondering,” he said, “because I think I can tell you without violating privacy that there was a huge number regarding that. It seems everything we had about it was false according to the petitioners because when we got done there wasn’t a single link to it left. I thought there had to be multiple holocausts.”

“There are now,” I said.

“Comment?” He asked in his silly diverting French way.

“Well,” I said, “the first when they killed almost all the Jews in Europe,” I said, while he was nodding at me, “and the second when you killed every shred of news about it in Europe. Two holocausts. I think Europeans really don’t like to remember. Anything.”

“That is not so”, he said. “We all have memories we treasure. There was this little girl in Alsace. Barely 18. She and I…”

“That’s a good point”, I interrupted. “I should have said you don’t like bad memories.”

“Who does?” He asked.

I said good bye and turned off my computer. I did delight in my good memories. There was this girl, not even 18, and another barely 16. I was only 16. We went to… Well, I shouldn’t be delving into my good memories when I’m so concerned with resurrecting these bad European ones. Let’s just say it was summer, the most  beautiful summer of my life.

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BY MARQUEL

European Court Goes Paperless and Mindless. It Just Went Away