Not So Pure, Are We?
I ran across this whilst working on an essay. I found it highly insightful. Some of you are, no doubt, going to chalk this post up as simply another example of my "communist" or "pacifistic/idealist" political views. I suppose that's fine, because I don't really care what you think of my political stance. However, if you take the time to read, or even to scan the article, please also have the decency to take some time to actually consider the information contained therein. That is my only request.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6925
A few excerpts:
"Take for example, what south of the Rio Grande is often called the other 9-11. September 11th, 1973, in which the United States was very heavily involved -- that's the bombing of the presidential palace, the military coup, the death of the president, the destruction of the leading democracy, the oldest democracy, in Latin America."
"And that's only one, I'm not even talking about the major wars like say, Vietnam, which was straight aggression, can't call it terror, with, who knows, four million people or so killed, and people still dying from the effects of massive chemical warfare started by Kennedy. And that's just the United States. Take a look at other states, they're not as powerful as the US, but their violence is extraordinary - France in Africa, the British in Kenya and elsewhere, just…far beyond the scale of any terrorist activity."
"The media are, in this respect, just part of the general intellectual culture, which includes all of us, including you and me. I mean, we don't see, we prefer not to see the horrible crimes that are going on all the time, which we could do something about easily. So take say, we just passed the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda massacres, which were pretty horrible, maybe 8,000 people killed a day for a 100 days. Pretty awful massacre. And there's a lot of wringing of hands and lamentations about how we didn't do anything about it, we didn't intervene, we didn't send military forces, and so on, wasn't that terrible. Well yeah, it was pretty terrible, but let's take a look at today."
"Furthermore if we go a step further and ask ourselves - speaking of barbarism - what kind of society do we live in where the only way we can think of preventing Rwanda-level killing among children everyday is by bribing private tyrannies to do something about it. I mean that itself is beyond barbarism."
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6925
A few excerpts:
"Take for example, what south of the Rio Grande is often called the other 9-11. September 11th, 1973, in which the United States was very heavily involved -- that's the bombing of the presidential palace, the military coup, the death of the president, the destruction of the leading democracy, the oldest democracy, in Latin America."
"And that's only one, I'm not even talking about the major wars like say, Vietnam, which was straight aggression, can't call it terror, with, who knows, four million people or so killed, and people still dying from the effects of massive chemical warfare started by Kennedy. And that's just the United States. Take a look at other states, they're not as powerful as the US, but their violence is extraordinary - France in Africa, the British in Kenya and elsewhere, just…far beyond the scale of any terrorist activity."
"The media are, in this respect, just part of the general intellectual culture, which includes all of us, including you and me. I mean, we don't see, we prefer not to see the horrible crimes that are going on all the time, which we could do something about easily. So take say, we just passed the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda massacres, which were pretty horrible, maybe 8,000 people killed a day for a 100 days. Pretty awful massacre. And there's a lot of wringing of hands and lamentations about how we didn't do anything about it, we didn't intervene, we didn't send military forces, and so on, wasn't that terrible. Well yeah, it was pretty terrible, but let's take a look at today."
"Furthermore if we go a step further and ask ourselves - speaking of barbarism - what kind of society do we live in where the only way we can think of preventing Rwanda-level killing among children everyday is by bribing private tyrannies to do something about it. I mean that itself is beyond barbarism."