Genocide

 

See: "A Formula for Genocide" by John Corry…American Spectator Sept, 1998

See: "After the Genocide" by Philip Gourevitch. The New Yorker Dec 18,1995

 

"Agememnon: "My dear menelaus, why are you so chary of taking men's lives? Did the Trojans treat you as handsomely as that when they stayed in your house? No; we are not going to leave a single one of them alive, down to the babies in their mothers' wombs-not even they must live. The whole people must be wiped out of existence, and none be left to think of them and shed a tear."

-Homer, Iliad

 

"The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame, nor did they even succeed in wholly depriving it of its rights.....but the Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity; tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world. It is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of humanity."

-Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America

 

"It was a thing to melt

the heart of man,

if it was of stone,

to see those little children,

with their bodies shot to pieces,

thrown naked into the pit."

-observer of the mass burial at Wounded Knee, December, 1890

 

 

"A mathematical calculation of Rwanda’s national suicide makes the speed of any other recorded catastrophe or single act of war pale by comparison.

No system of genocide ever devised has been more efficient: The daily kill rate was five times that of the Nazi death camps…..The daily death rate averaged well more than 11,500 for two months, with surges as high as 45,000. During this peak, one murder was committed every two seconds of every minute, of every hour, for days: an affliction befitting the Apocalypse. Transfixed and aghast, the rest of the world watched, fiddled, then hid its eyes and did nothing."

Phillip Gourevitch

(ed note: This was done mostly with machetes…also the killers are now living happily without remorse or regret in their former victims homes….in many cases receiving western aid)…

 

"Tibet is another matter. As an independent state or even culture, it is probably doomed. China is currently implementing what the Dalai Lama calls its "final solution" for Tibet-an openly racist policy of state-sponsored Chinese emigration to the area and forced "assimilation" (the word used in the Chinese press is hanhua, literally "to make Chinese") of what is left of the Tibetan people. Tibet's only hope lies in the extraordinary efforts of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's priest-king, and his followers in exile in Dharmasala, India, to internationalize their struggle. Combined with continuing Chinese blunders, it is possible (though not likely) that global concern will raise the costs to China of its obstinate and destructive behaviour. Meanwhile, Sinophiles at many foreign academic institutions and ministries of foreign affairs continue to advise their political leaders that Tibet has always been a part of China, which is simply not so."

                                        Chalmers Johnson

                                        Blowback

 

the genocide of the Romani, or Gypsies, in the very same process of the Holocaust (which Ian Hancock correctly argues "deserves acknowledgement far beyond that which it now receives," especially by the Jewish establishment);

the Armenian genocide, both in its own monumental right and then also as a prototype of genocide that many scholars see as the precursor, and in a sense also as a facilitator, of the Holocaust;

too-little-known information about the genocides of so many indigenous peoples-the native Americans; genocide in Nigeria-Biafra;

the ethnic cleansing and genocide that occurred in the former Yugoslavia throughout the first half of the 1990s;

a stunning historical analysis of the Atlantic slave trade that argues-the first time for as a genocide scholar-for its constituting genocide; the Ukrainian famine genocide;

and more, making it clear to all people that genocide has been, is, and will continue to be the fate of many different peoples-and one must be careful that even legitimate considerations of the unique-ness of a given genocide (such as the archetypal event of the Holocaust) not blind us to the enormity of the problem of mass murders of many different peoples, especially toward our collective future on this planet.

(foreword by Israel W. Charny to "Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide" by Alan S. Rosenbaum

 

"By the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved him."

-George Orwell, 1984

 

For the great future of Revolution, his deep and warm love embraces all of us at once! How can we describe his virtue and sacrifice for the people and the homeland! Let us keep his love deep in our hearts and follow him to the victory of revolution! Even if we die a billion times, we must be determined to follow him without any hesitation."

-North Korean Junior High school textbook

 

"...the U.S. Holocaust Museum (being) erected in Washington, D.C. A liberal interpretation of the motives for establishing this institution would be that the museum will stand as a moral lesson about intolerance. I suspect it will function more effectively as a bastion of the message that America saved the Jews and is saving Israel now. More important-since remembering the Holocaust is hardly a central project to all American Jews, let alone the majority of U.S. citizens-by advertising that America has the space in its heart and in its capital to commemorate genocide committed elsewhere, the genocidal origins of the United States will be further occluded. How, then, could or should Native Americans react to the fact that there is a U.S. Holocaust Museum but no U.S. Memorial to the Slaughtered Native Americans-especially if they want to avoid offending Jews in the process of expressing any opinion whatsoever?

-from  "American Indian Persistence and Resurgence" ed by Karl Kroeber

 

"Whatever the explanation-and there are surely many-there is little doubt that at the end of the twentieth century the 'Holocaust' is being made in America. The result-a number of critics have suggested- is that a process of trivialization is taking place. Writers have pointed to the transformation of 'Europe's most searing genocide....into an American version of kitsch', and that a process of 'gentrification' of the Holocaust is taking place over the course of the last two decades. And they are surely right to signal that there is plenty of 'Holocaust' trivia around at the end of the twentieth century. As Finkelstein notes, 'a veritable Holocaust industry has sprung up. The recent publication of a Holocaust cookbook (in 1996 in New York)- to rave notices, no less-points up the marketing possibilities of Holocaust kitsch."

-Tim Cole

Selling the Holocaust

 

Article: Humanitarian Vanities: What does the urge to intervene amount to? by David Rieff  New York Times Magazine Sunday June 2 2008

"The harsh truth is that it is one thing for people of conscience to call for wrongs to be righted but it is quite another to fathom the consequences of such actions. Good will is not enough; nor is political will. That is because, as Iraq has taught us so painfully, the law of unintended consequences may be one of the few iron laws of international politics. And somewhere, despite all the outcry, leaders know that the same people calling for intervention may repudiate it the moment it goes wrong."

-David Rieff

 

   The model for Mr.. Radovan Karadzic's role as leader was provided by Petar Petrovic Njiego's epic poem "The Mountain Wreath" (Gorski vjenac"). Published in 1847, it is deeply embedded in the tradition of Serbian epic poetry, and is a foundational text of Serbian cultural nationalism. Set at the end of the 17th century, its central character is Vladika Danilo, the bishop and the sovereign of Montenegro, the only Serbian territory unconquered at the time by the powerful and all-encroaching Ottoman Empire. Vladika Danilo has a problem: some Montenegrin Serbs have converted to Islam. For him, they are the fifth column of the Turks, a people who could never be trusted, a permanent threat to the freedom and sovereignty of the Serbs.

   He summons a council to help him determine the solution. He listens to the advice of his bloodthirsty warriors: "Without suffering no song is sung." one of them says. "Without suffering no saber is forged." He listens to a delegation of Muslims pleading for peace and coexistence, who are instead offered the chance to save their heads by converting back to "the faith of their forefathers." He speaks of freedom and the difficult decisions it requires: "The wolf is entitled to a sheep/Much like a tyrant to a feeble man./ But to stomp the neck of tyranny/To lead it to the righteous knowledge/. That is man's most sacred duty."

New York Times Sun, July 27,2008

article: Genocide's Epic Hero by Aleksandar Hemon

 

"Asked about the wisdom of an arms deal at such a sensitive time, Boutros-Ghali said he did not think that a 'few thousand guns would have changed the situation'. His contacts with the Hutu regime have never been investigated."

 

"OBAMA MARKS GENOCIDE WITHOUT SAYING THE WORD by Peter Baker  New York Times Sunday , April 25,2010

ASHEVILLE,N.C.-Presudent Obama, who as a candidate vowed to use the term genocide to describe the Ottoman mass slaughter of Armenians nearly a century ago, once again declined to do so on Saturday as he marked the anniversary of the killings........"

 

                  ****************

Book: "A problem from Hell: America & the Age of Genocide" by Samantha Power

Book: "A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide" by Linda Melvern

Book: "Future of a Negation Reflections on the question of Genocide" by Alain Finkelkraut

Book: "At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention." by David Rieff

Book: "Blood And Soil; A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur" by Ben Kiernan

Book: "Get Em All! Kill 'Em!: Genocide, Terrorism, Righteous  Communities" by Bruce Wilshire

Book: "Death By Government" by R.J. Rummel

Book: "Is The Holocaust Unique?" by Alan S. Rosenbaum

Book: "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Dan Pappe

Book: "A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans; 2nd Edition" by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

Book: "The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies" by Guenter Lewy

Book: "The Holocaust Encyclopedia" Ed. by Walter Laqeur

Book: "Encyclopedia of Genocide" Ed. by Israel W. Charny

Book: "The Origins Of The Final Solution" by Christopher R. Browning

Book: "The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response" by Peter Balakian

Book: "Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century" by Benjamin A. Valentino

Book: "Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe"

Book: "People Betrayed; The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide" by L.R. Melvern

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