File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0310, message 38


Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 23:38:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Antschel <antschel-AT-m-net.arbornet.org>
Subject: Re: Endless War




On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, Judy wrote:

>
> War of this nature is quite real to me, over the past 40 years of my
> life. that is much too long. It has been hurting for too long, and it
> promises to get much worse before it can get better, if there is any
> hope that it can get better which is hard to see.
>
> thank you for the opportunity to ventillate a small amount of all the
> pent up grief and anguish that i live with, my social conscience
> suddenly discovered 40 years ago.  Is it a social conscience?  My
> interests are selfish.  Like you, i want a different kind of world.

The nightmare has been going on for some time.

Under the Somoza regime, supported of course by the US government,
peasants were often forced to live in boxes, roughly the size of coffins.
Not to sleep in them, but to actually live in them.

Yet Franklin Delano Roosevelt is credited with the following statement:
"Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

As for Chechnya, someone on this list suggested that this was merely a
"civil war" that has been going on since the time of Stalin. This is
completely false and misleading. Do a google search of the Russian human
rights group "Memorial" who are documenting events there.
For one thing nearly two thousand peace activists are missing in Chechnya.
Russian military men in masks drive about in armoured cars without numbers
and capture peace civilians, mainly young people, and take them away. More
often the captured people are missing, sometimes their relatives find them
killed. It is impossible to find those who committed the crimes. The militants
say that they do not have any facts. As to the officials of pro-Moscow
authority, they also are helpless in the situation which reminds one of
the terror of the 37s and 38s in the USSR, although the numbers involved
are less. Do a google search of the French philosopher Andre Glucksmann
who has visited Chechnya, written on the devastation of Grozny, how the
entire city was reduced to rubble, with men, women and children inside
their homes. Death squads go out at night and capture, torture and kill
Chechnyan "terrorists". Don't take my word for it, Andre Glucksmann has
written extensively on Chechnya and documented the slaughter taking place
there.

This is all extensively documented by Amnesty International, Memorial and
Human Rights Watch as well. Look it up.

There's no question the Russian military is sending out death squads to
slaughter innocent Chechnyan civilians.

And what does it mean when someone makes death into a matter of
statistics? This doesn't matter because more people died there, etc.
Iraq matters, of course we should oppose the war in Iraq, but so do the
other war zones matter.

If you want look at in terms of statistics the longest lasting
and bloodiest war on earth has been in the Congo, where more than 2
million people have died since 1998. But of course no one in Europe (or
the US elites) care about that since it's just a bunch of niggers killing
each other, right?

Does merely pointing out this fact make me hysterical?

Do your own research, if you doubt me. The facts are there for anyone
willing to do a few minutes research.

And I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about Iraq. We should, of course. But
my question to Europeans is why so little outrage over the slaughters
taking place in Chechnya, Algeria or the Congo?

Why is what's happening in Iraq less acceptable than what's happening in
Chechnya? Is is just compassion fatigue or is there something more cynical
going on. Such as, in order to be a "worthy victim" you have to be a
victim of the US army?

That's all I'm asking and it's perfectly  legitimate question,
non-hysterical question.

p_antschel


   

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