On December 13th of 1981, on the yacht Apollonia sailing in the Caribbean, two week's of sullen resentment came to a murderous peak. Paul Termann decided to hijack the yacht at gunpoint and declared that Herbert Klein, the owner, had 10 minutes to live. Klein attempted to rescue the party aboard the Apollonia, but only managed to wound Termann, who shot and killed Klein's girlfriend, Gabriele Humpert, and wounded a man named Munsch working on the boat.
Termann then hunted down Klein and finally murdered him.
He was caught, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1982, but released 20 years later. If you want to know more about what happened, try reading Off The Deep End: A History Of Madness At Sea by Nic Compton.
Not so much a "Live In Infamy" kind of guy - more like a villain from a Travis McGee novel. Likely to be forgotten over time as just another crazy asshole with a gun.
However, that was just his origin story. The birth and source of his True Villainy.
You see, Paul Termann is ashamed to be a convicted double-murderer, so he decided to murder history to hide his crimes. The German high court has ruled that he, and others like him, can force their crimes to be scrubbed from news and historic records so they won't be reminded of their shame.
They call it the Right To Be Forgotten.
Let's call it what it is - the Right To Edit History For Personal Convenience.
No wonder the UK wants out of the EU. They can hear George Orwell's anguished screams echoing through the ground. What was once considered Orwellian Nightmare is now a Personal Right in the EU. Not just governments, but any criminal can now erase the past.
In more normal times if a law was passed allowing criminals to hide their crimes, we'd point out the horrible possibility of murderers using it to cover up their crimes and hide their past from the potential victims around them. And, perhaps even more disturbingly, erase all memory of their victims in the process.
But that's where we're starting from these days.
So, how soon can we expect it to be used to cover up war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity carried out by governments and corporations?
Remember - in our twisted laws, corporations - entities founded to escape personal responsibility - are considered human beings, entitled to the same rights and protections. But, as noted, without being bound by all the same responsibilities. They already routinely get away with murder, now they're being handed a tool to wipe it from the public memory.
It's hard to decide if this ruling is epicly stupid or actively evil.
Either way, it certainly leaves me wondering what those who made the ruling must want erased from their pasts?
Or was it simply a matter of being bought by those who want to use the law?
Sorry - no joke today.
Just the joke that Paul Termann played on Truth.
I wonder if Adolf Hitler's relatives can ask for his Right To Be Forgotten.
ReplyDeleteI don't know... with the way things are going these days, they may not even want to.
DeleteI think we'll sooner see a court ruling that bad reputation is an obstacle to profit and allow some corporation to scrub a massacre or environmental disaster or something along those lines.
It would fit with our national religion (The Holy Symbol: $)
Thanks for adding me to your list of recommended blogs. I've returned the favour by adding you.
DeleteAs for the lack of a photo in your post, it's practically impossible to find a photo of Paul Termann online. I've only been able to find a grainy b/w scan of his photo on page 115 of Spiegel 47/1982.
My pleasure. I'm not poking my head out of the cave much at the moment, but the quick look i got at Film Fan ensured i wanted to be able to find you easily when i was out roaming the net.
DeleteI've got a pdf of that issue - it's a fairly wretched image, and with the main system down i wasn't even going to try to make it presentable.
On the plus side, it'll give me an excuse to remind people of his name if/when i find a more usable image or clean that one up. Or both.