Never Again!

Stormfront member admits existence of Holocaust(s???)!

2005-10-08T01:32:00.000-05:00

That's right.

There is only one thing missing from today's arsenal of spectacular weapons, and that's the bludgeon of irony. One comment declares the Talmud a "hate manual" while at the same time putting a link to JewWatch (resource site for anti-semites) in their signature and declaring that Jews are the HIV of the human race.

The idea that Jewish persecution is the "Jews' fault" is absurd. Modern morality is such that responsibility (as much as any guilt exists) is individual not communal. Not even the premise of blaming the victim holds water in the ideology of the forum member. If we assume the idea that victims are responsible for their own persecution, then it follows that neo-Nazis are responsible for their own persecution. My own belief is that neo-Nazis are far more responsible, as they actively take up the banner of twelve million dead.

"Dennis, do the right thing!"

2005-10-07T12:44:00.000-05:00

Anti-genocide activist band System of a Down recently held a protest at House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office. They called on him to allow a vote on a House resolution to recognize the Turkish genocide of Armenians in World War 1.

See a video here.

The Armenian genocide

2005-10-03T16:45:00.000-05:00

The band System of a Down held an awesome protest at House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office last week, attempting to get him to finally allow a vote on a House Resolution admitting the fact that Turkey slaughtered Armenians during World War 1. Hastert has prevented two similar bills in recent years from coming to a vote. I thought I'd share a pretty interesting passage from a World War 1 history book about the subject.

Between 1.5 and 2 million Armenians lived under Ottoman rule, almost half on the Armenian plateau in the north-east. [n19] Wehn war broke out their leaders were publicly loyal and asked their people to obey the call-up order [This is the order to form military divisions for war}, which about 100,000 did. However, they refused to summon their fellows across the frontier to rise against tsarist [Russian] overlordship, and the latter enlisted in the Russian army. Yet although the Turkish government claimed to be retaliating against disloyalty and preparations for insurrection, the Ottoman Armenians appear to have been guilty of neither until the action against them began, after Sarikamish, in late February 1915. First the Armenians in the army were segregated, disarmed, and either murdered or forced to work untl they dropped. Those who had not enlisted were searched in their villages for arms, tortured, and killed. With the able-bodied men removed, the second phase from April to August centred on deportations of the remaining Armenians on long forced marches towards detention camps in northern Mesopotamia, where they died in thousands if they had not already lost their lives en route. It is true that Zeitan, the first town to be attacked, was violently resisting conscription, but when the Armenians in the city of Van rebelled (and for a time were relieved by the Russians) in April-May, they were clearly doing so in order to avoid their compatriots' fate. None the less, the Van uprising brought matters to a climax. Hundreds of Armenians in Constantinople itself were arrested and murdered, the remainder of the Armenian plateau was cleared and the Allies warned that they would hold the Turkish government to account and the officials concerned personally liable. [To some small extent this happened, the British held a number of genocidaires in Malta for a while after the war, but as Kemal Ataturk rose to power the criminals were repatriated. See Samantha Power's A Problem From Hell.] As for the Germans, although their advisors deplored the massacres as deeply as did neutral missionaries and diplomats, the Berlin foreign ministry hesitated to press the matter for fear of jeopardizing the alliance. In all, probably over a million people died in what was certainly a centrally planned campaign, inspired by the CUP leaders [Committee of Union and Progress, leading political party in the Ottoman Empire] and implemented by 'Special Organizations' coming under the party and the war ministry. Who took the decision and why remains uncertain, and the relevant documents have been destroyed or withheld. In particular, it is unclear whether a security operation to protect the Caucasus border escalated because of the Armenian resistance and the Special Organizations' indiscipline, or whether the aim from the start was to wipe the Armenians out. Some of the statements of the Young Turk leaders give credence to the latter possibility, and in its implementation the policy was indeed genocidal.

The massacres were the most appalling of many signs in 1915 that this would be a war of hitherto unknown intensity, and the ninteenth-century restraints on the conduct of hostilities were collapsing. They happened when the Young Turks' gamble on intervention appeared to have gone disastrously wrong, though this is no plea in mitigation. In contrast, however, in the second phase in the Middle East the Allies took the offensive but the Turks successfully struck back, containing the Russians' summer 1915 attacks in the Caucasus and repelling both an advance by Indian forces on Baghdad and a determined Anglo-French attempt to capture Constantinople.

David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, 2004, pages 94-95.

New film on the Rwanda genocide

2005-09-25T15:54:00.000-05:00

Sometimes in April was screened at the Amakula Kampala International Film Festival recently.

A review on the Houston Chronicle, although taking a harsh view of recent movies about Africa including Hotel Rwanda, tells a bit more about the movie. I hope it's released on DVD so those of us without HBO can see it.

More recently, the underrated HBO film Sometimes in April also looked back at the Rwandan genocide, with Idris Elba as a man devastated by the loss of his wife and children. The film's torture scenes are even harder to watch than those in Hotel Rwanda, and its romance is more tentative. The hero tries to rebuild his life with another woman but may be too caught in the horrors of the past. Without the need to attract a theater audience, HBO films are freer to toy with the formula.

Been awhile

2005-09-24T12:58:00.000-05:00

Well, its been awhile since I have posted. I have been pretty busy with work, school, and debate. I am trying throughout my school to get this blog noticed alittle more. But if you have been reading this, then please, some how get the word out about our blog. There arent many blogs out there like this. Most people today dont know much about genocide. If you are one of those people, then I suggest you go out and BUY the movie, "Hotel Rwanda" It is my favorite movie, and it is really touching and opens your eyes. Then, you can visit some of the sites that we have linked on the side.

One other thing. If you go to the StormFront site, dont by into their bullshit. Just look at how they make most of their claims. They think something that could of happend, or the way something happend, THEN they find evidence to support it. Anyone that doesnt consider what Hitler did during the Holocaust a genocide, has no heart nor mind.

His very hair sacred?

2005-09-23T22:19:00.000-05:00

Thread on Stormfront suggests, seriously, that Hitler's mustache might have had health reasons. Of course, this pseudo-science reflects their pseudo-science in their holocaust denial and ideas of race, but never has it been so utterly ridiculous as this. At least the other racist and neo-nazi fields keep a facade of academia.

The same Stormfront member has another thread suggesting that the Basques rigged Guernica to blow during the Spanish Civil War. Of course the facts are not presented in the thread, it's just a "hey, let's suppose for a moment...."

Another thing to consider is why would the nationalists do something that would create a world wide issue when they didn't have to level a city to win the war in that part of Spain at that particular time.

Of course! Why would anyone commit an atrocity when it would be viewed poorly by the world? By this logic, noone in history has ever committed an atrocity, ever! (Except those ritual-killing Jews, though, right Stormfront?)

Wikipedia has a number of reasons why the German Condor Legion (NOT, as the Stormfront member says, the Nationalists) would terror bomb Guernica.

Who's voting against Roberts?

2005-09-21T13:53:00.000-05:00

I blogged a while back about Bush's Supreme Court Justice nomination John Roberts, and his despicable justification for supporting the Genocide Convention. So, I'm deciding to keep a little tally of who's voting against Roberts. This will be updated as I get more information.

9-21: New York Times reports Harry Reid will not vote for Roberts.
9-21: An email from John Kerry saying he will not vote for Roberts.

RIP Simon Wiesenthal

2005-09-21T13:08:00.000-05:00

Simon Wiesenthal, a man who tirelessly hunted Nazi war criminals and supported the war crimes court for genocide in the former Yugoslavia, died yesterday in Austria at the age of 96.

The New York Times has an excellent obituary, even alluding to his wit:

Once, in West Germany, he [Wiesenthal] related, he defused a harangue by a speaker who accused him of dining on Nazis for breakfast, lunch and dinner. "You are mistaken," he replied. "I don't eat pork."

R.I.P.

What price a genocide?

2005-09-19T19:48:00.000-05:00

Cathy Young, who contributes to the right-libertarian Reason magazine and it's blog Hit & Run, recently published this piece in the Boston Globe. I really care little whether Holocaust Memorial Day remembers all genocides or all victims of the Nazi genocide. What I'm interested in is what could Young possibly being using for her definition of genocide????

For example, Young criticizes the Muslims pushing for the inclusion of the "Palestinian genocide" into a newly formed Genocide Memorial Day, dismissing the very notion of a Palestinian genocide by saying:

Clearly, Palestinians have suffered under the occupation. Over 4,000 have been killed since the renewal of violence five years ago. Some of these dead were completely innocent victims; others were fighters, violent protesters, or suicide bombers. (Nearly 1,000 Israelis have died as well.) This death toll is tragic; but to call it ''genocide" is to cheapen the word.

When did the body count, or "price," become the defining character of genocide? America's leading expert on genocide, Samantha Power, refuses to even consider establishing a death toll for determing what constitutes a genocide. She said at my university last year that this was because, and I paraphrase, "the people committing genocide would kill until they were just below the "genocidal" death toll and stop."

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide established that genocide is:

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
A. Killing members of the group;
B. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
C. Deliberately inflicting on the group the conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
D. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the groups;
E. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Nowhere does it establish a numeric body count as a determining factor, not even as part of what may constitute genocide. Whether Israel is set out to destroy Palestinians is not a debate I care to be involved in, obviously in any conflict there are groups that want to exterminate the enemy entirely and the Mid-East has no shortage of such groups. I don't know enough about the situation to determine whether such genocidal groups are in power and implementing their designs or not. Young claims that extremists are perilously close to the mainstream in Islam, but it's important to note that elected heads of Israel have gone so far as to say, "the Palestinians are not a people." But I digress, to the point: Cathy Young's argument for dismissing the "palestinian genocide" as inequal to the Holocaust misses the point of what a genocide is.

"A wimp on genocide"

2005-09-18T10:58:00.000-05:00

Nicholas Kristof writes another stunning article about the Bush administration and genocide in the New York Times today.

Mr. Bush's position in the U.N. negotiations got little attention. But in effect the United States successfully blocked language in the declaration saying that countries have an "obligation" to respond to genocide. In the end the declaration was diluted to say that "We are prepared to take collective action ... on a case by case basis" to prevent genocide.

Obviously, Mr. Kristof, that means we should always wait 15 years until after the genocide is long gone, and then invade the country! Worked in Iraq, right? Ya just have to "get" the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Of course, Kristof is entirely correct to say that it's Bush's religious right-wing base that has mobilized significantly around the Darfur genocide. I've seen little proof of it where I live -- then again, the most active the churches around here have been recently was when the city wanted to shut down the Church of the Awesome God. However I have read about this some months ago from a neoconservative writer.

Kristof is an amazing writer, one of those journalists with a heart -- no not Greta van "let's go to Aruba and camp out for this missing rich white girl" Sustren/Fox News heart, but a heart that forces him to write about genocide much of the time.

I'm a broken record on Darfur because I can't get out of my head the people I've met there. On my very first visit, 18 months ago, I met families who were hiding in the desert from the militias and soldiers. But the only place to get water was at the occasional well - where soldiers would wait to shoot the men who showed up, and rape the women. So anguished families sent their youngest children, 6 or 7 years old, to the wells with donkeys to fetch water - because they were least likely to be killed or raped. The parents hated themselves for doing this, but they had no choice - they had been abandoned by the world.

Kristof's closing statement is powerful:

the failures of others do not excuse Mr. Bush's own unwillingness to speak out, to impose a no-fly zone, to appoint a presidential envoy or to build an international coalition to pressure Sudan. So, Mr. Bush, let me ask you just one question: Since you portray yourself as a bold leader, since you pride yourself on your willingness to use blunt terms like "evil" - then why is it that you're so wimpish on genocide?

Keep fighting the good fight, Nick. The rich oil cronies might not like you, but anti-genocide activists and the victims of genocide are all behind you. And your friends tell a lot about your morals.

Action on Darfur

2005-09-17T17:36:00.000-05:00

This is sort of a preliminary announcement, there are NO set dates as of this time, nor even set actions.

I talked to the president of the local Nebraskans for Peace group last week, and I'll talk to him again on Wednesday. We're trying to put together some kind of action over Darfur, using the suggestions from SaveDarfur.org that can be found on the right side of the blog. Last year, Amnesty International had some events over Darfur but they seem uninterested thus far this year. We'll also talk to them and perhaps they'll join.

What we're looking at right now is a booth at the Student Union to hand out information on the genocide, perhaps we'll buy some green "Save Darfur" bracelets to hand out for free as well. If Amnesty gets involved, we could probably hold the booth every day for a week. If its only NFP, we likely will only have the booth 2 or 3 days because we're much smaller.

We may also show the 10-minute movie with a panel of people to discuss, but this is a much more tentative idea. It would involve getting professors and others to speak. Hopefully we could get Professor Avery, I took his International Relations class last year and heard him speak at the Death Penalty panel and the 2nd Presidential Debates. He's an amazing professor.

"Never again" again, and again, and again.

2005-09-14T00:32:00.000-05:00

A powerful statement from three survivors of 20th century genocides:

14/09/05
Act now, say genocide survivors

THE Holocaust, and more recently the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, are three of the worst crimes that man has ever perpetrated. We, survivors of each one, were lucky enough to avoid being killed.

But we knew what it meant to be ignored by the world, to be left without protection.

For each of us it meant watching while members of our families were killed in front of us. It meant witnessing rape, torture and brutality beyond belief.

It meant experiencing all this while the world stood by and watched.

After each of these crimes against humanity the international community has said ‘never again.’

But the fact that these crimes span 60 years shows that the cry of ‘never again’ has often been little more than a rhetorical flourish. Action to ensure that ‘never again’ actually means never again has been sadly lacking.

This week the Irish Government has a chance to help make ‘never again’ a reality by adopting a new agreement to stop future genocides and mass killings. It is an agreement that the world will accept its responsibility to protect the victims of such violence - and, when necessary, to take action through the UN to do so.

This commitment is in the current draft agreement for the UN world summit that takes place next week in New York.

But some countries such as India and Russia are still trying to weaken it or delete it altogether.

We urge the Irish Government to use every diplomatic resource at its disposal to secure this historic agreement and ensure that no one has to experience what we went through.

Kemal Pervanic
Kent
England
(Survivor of the genocide in Bosnia and inmate of Omarska)

Beatha Uwazaninka
London
(Survivor of genocide in Rwanda)

Susan Pollack
London
(Auschwitz survivor)

Need information

2005-09-13T22:28:00.000-05:00

Well, CSPAN failed to show the video. I couldnt make it to the demonstration. I would really like somebody to fill me in on what happend. If you are reading this, and you have some information regarding it, then please post a comment and it will be posted in the blog. All help is appreciated.
Thanks.

Reminder

2005-09-07T23:37:00.000-05:00

Reminder about Elie's post last week. If you can't attend, make sure to check out C-SPAN.

Who terror bombed first?

2005-09-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

There's a lengthy and rather amateurish discussion of what nation practiced terror bombing of civilians first going on at Stormfront.

Before commenting on the actual debate, I have to comment on the first post. It's rather indiciative of how right-wing revisionists "debate." Here it is:
Step 1: Find a position, a conclusion, a belief about a particular historical fact.
Step 2: THEN find evidence for that position.

Ideology uber alles, eh fellas?

Most of the rest of the thread consists of "Britian bombed Germany here, which is first!" and "Germany terror bombed Poland first!" I think both sides' arguments are shut down by a lil' thing called Guernica, where German planes from Luftwaffe General von Richtofen's Condor Legion sent to help Franco in Spain terrorized the town in April 1937.

If the objectives in Guernica had been strictly military, the Germans should have made a test run which would have allowed them to refine their aim. In fact, an order from Salamanca of 6th January 1937, signed by the Supreme Commander of the Air Force, had already established that in the case of air-raids over built-up areas aim should be precise in order to avoid civilian victims. However, the Germans decided to waive the test run. The decision, incomprehensible if the intention was to hit clearly defined objectives of a purely military character, was perfectly logical if, on the contrary, the plan was to drop their bombs on the town with the principal intention of razing it to the ground.

Premeditation is also suggested by the cargo of bombs that the German Junkers carried. In the case of the 3rd Squadron the ten kilogram devices were removed and replaced by others of 250 and 50 kilograms. The incendiary bombs in the forward bays were also kept. It was perfectly possible that such lightweight bombs (1 kg) could fall on the town, as the Command knew only too well, but they were not ruled out. This circumstance encourages one to believe that, unlike the Italians, Richthofen (who had reached an agreement with Vigón to make Guernica an objective of the Condor Legion) had no scruples against the bombardment of the town.

In fact, the combination of bombs was especially suitable for destroying a town. As Richthofen wrote in his diary, the incendiary bombs formed a third of the total, and the effects of these devices were well known after having seen the results of, for example, the bombardment of the pine forests near the Barázar Pass.

And the effects of the bombing?:

The total number of deaths caused by the bombardment of Guernica was considerable in absolute numbers, but in proportional terms could only be described as extremely high. In total, the figure must be situated between two hundred and fifty and three hundred people, with the number of injuries rather higher. Of a population of five thousand people16, this meant a little more than five percent dead. A bombardment of the same proportions would have meant approximately half a million deaths in a city like the present day Moscow or London, and not much less than this figure in an urban area like New York. Proportionally, it amounted to the equivalent percentage of deaths suffered among the combatants of both sides in the total of the battles in the Spanish Civil War. It was undoubtedly an excessive price to pay for a town that, until then, had had no military value and that had been characterised by its exceptionally peaceful and tolerant wartime way of life within the framework of the two Spains mapped out by the breakout of the Civil War.

Source.

I realize some Stormfront people will try to shimmy out of this by saying the Stormfront thread asks who terror bombed civilians in WW2 first. That's a cop-out. Fact is Hitler's Luftwaffe, his vaunted elite military force for most of the early part of the war, got it's first taste of atrocity in Spain. They became hooked on the bomb tighter than any heroine addiction.

Irony...from the folks at StormFront

2005-09-04T21:47:00.000-05:00

Wow, I honestly never seem to be amazed at the idiocy of some of these people who post on StormFront. If you want to see Irony of many different levels, click here. My Co-poster just made the comment to me. " i didn't know it was possible to post on a forum when you have fewer than two brain cells touching one another" and I agree with that. Some of these people are so stupid. And to take the Irony meter off the charts. Some of these dumbasses are Christian. If you post on StormFront, and you are reading this, What the hell do you think Jesus was? dipshit.

Idiots on StormFront

2005-09-04T15:12:00.000-05:00

Also, in that thread on Hurricane Katrina. Some people were discussing why God would put black people on this earth. Hmmmm. if some of these people claim to be so religious and into the bible, do they actually believe Jesus was white? That is fucking stupid. Considering where he lived and grew up, that is basically impossible. My question to them is. If you actually read the bible, and claim to be strong in your faith, then how can you act the way you do? The bible has many versus talking about racism and how you should love ALL of God's children. If you reject everyone that isnt white, then you are infact rejecting Jesus Christ himself. And we all know that the Bible clearly sais the only way to get into heaven, is to accept Jesus into your heart. So if I where you, I would take a step back, look at your ways, and do a shit load of praying. Because you need to realize that if you truly want eternal life in heaven, your current ways arent going to take you there. You will have eternal life, but not in heaven. And you can guess option number 2.

Stormfront: Celebrating disaster

2005-09-04T00:04:00.000-05:00

"White power" isn't about being white at all. It is not, as they say, a counterpart to "Black Power" or other minority movements. Need proof? Check out Stormfront's thread on Hurricane Katrina.

You'll see such stunning intellectual thoughts as, "If there is a God, why did he create Negroes?"

More importantly, why did He create Hitler? White Nationalists complain about the "looting" from black people, but that does not even begin to compare to Hitler's Gotterdamerung, his attempt to loot all of Germany from future Germans.

Various other posts try to amateurishly "prove" that the looting in New Orleans somehow proves that the black race is "fleecing" the world. The syllogism, when extrapolated, looks a little like this:

"A. looters in a disaster area are representative of their race
B. Blacks make up most of the looters
C. Therefore, blacks are a race of looters."

The problem with this, however, is that Black people make up most of the looters because they make up most of the population of New Orleans. Therefore, it's going to skew the syllogism -- not that the Stormfront racists have much problem with that.

Another problem with the idea is that it assumes looters are representative of their race. What proof is there to this assertion? None, at least none presented. There's a reason few white nationalists are in the field of sociology or psychology and therefore they lack the sort of knowledge required to analyse peoples' actions in the case of a disaster properly.

Further, even if we assume that individuals are (SOME OBSCURE WAY, SOMEHOW) indicative of their race, then we must also point out the white looters. They don't make up such a small percentage of the looters because their "race is better" or somesuch nonsense, but because there are so few of them in New Orleans in the first place. Any person with the most basic knowledge of statistics knows this.

Another poster proclaims: "Used to be looters were shot on sight, to keep the peace. Since the race riots of M.L.K. Jr. we can't do that, so now the savage hordes of the city have free reign, all they have to do mass in numbers and take what they want."

Mass in numbers? Take what they want? Sounds like September 1, 1939! More to the point, however, it seems to me that a person's life is worth more than a person's property. Property can always be replaced. A family member is gone forever.

John Roberts: Unprincipled support for the Genocide Convention

2005-09-03T22:12:00.000-05:00

Washington Post reports today that John Roberts, although initially opposed to it, did advise Reagan to sign the Genocide Convention.

It would be better for Roberts if his justification to Reagan weren't so embarassing itself:

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. once expressed some agreement with conservatives who opposed entering an international anti-genocide treaty, saying that foreign governments might try to use it to prosecute the United States for its military actions overseas.

But Roberts, then a young White House lawyer, ultimately urged President Ronald Reagan to sign it, arguing that to do otherwise would be a public-relations embarrassment on the world stage.

So, according to Roberts, it's just dandy that hundreds of thousands die if an American soldier can avoid prosecution under international law. But heaven forbid America is embarassed!

How soon we forget those "moral values" so many supposedly voted for in November.

Attend if possible.

2005-09-02T23:21:00.000-05:00

"A Day for Darfur: Stop the Genocide, Protect the People"
On One-Year Anniversary of Bush Administration’s Finding of Genocide in Darfur, Powerful Event will Draw Hundreds to Demand White House Action
WHAT: A special event to mark the one-year anniversary of the Bush Administration’s recognition of genocide in Darfur, Sudan and to demand immediate action from the White House to stop the genocide and protect the people of Darfur.
WHO: Civil & political leaders, celebrity figures and advocacy groups will join hundreds of activists. Invited speakers include:
Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon Rev. Dr. Robert W. Edgar, General Secretary, National Council of Churches Fatima Haroun, Darfurian Representative of Sudan Peace Advocates Network Ruth Messinger, President, American Jewish World Service Rev. Jim Wallis, Founder and Editor in Chief of Sojourners Magazine Salih Booker, Executive Director, Africa Action David Rubenstein, Executive Director, Save Darfur Members of Congress
WHEN: Thursday, September 8, 2005, 12pm - 1pm
WHERE: Lafayette Park in front of the White House (near the intersection of 16th Street & H Street, NW, Washington DC)
One year after the Bush Administration’s declaration that genocide is occurring in Darfur, Sudan, the genocide continues. More than 400,000 lives have been lost, and yet the President has done little to provide protection to the people of Darfur. "A Day for Darfur" will bring hundreds of people together to express their outrage and to demand that the President take every step necessary to ensure an immediate multinational intervention to support the African Union and provide security to the people of Darfur.
This powerful event will feature musical performances, dramatic visuals, and remarks from leadership figures and celebrities, who will lead a call to conscience and urge immediate action from the Bush Administration to stop the genocide in Darfur. The event will close with a coordinated calling campaign at 1pm, where participants in the park will pull out their cell phones, and thousands across the country will pick up their own phones to call President Bush and pressure him to take immediate steps to stop the genocide.
This event accompanies a nationwide grassroots petition effort, which has gathered tens of thousands of signatures in recent weeks, and which also calls on the White House to support an urgent multinational intervention to stop the genocide in Darfur.
This major event is the latest of more than 1,000 actions on Darfur held around the U.S. in the past 6 months alone. "A Day for Darfur" will kick off a period of renewed activism by people of conscience across the country, who will increase their pressure on President Bush in the coming weeks to take action to stop the genocide in Darfur.
"A Day for Darfur" is organized by a diverse coalition of advocacy groups

I myself am currently making efforts to attend this. I dont know how possible it will be, but I encourage others reading this to make an effort to attend. I will definatly post an update afterwards to let everyone know how it went.

Some good, if late, news

2005-09-02T16:27:00.000-05:00

The US has pledged funds, starting at $2 million, to investigate the atrocities carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It's an excellent start.

Among various reactions to the creation of the investigative committee is Norodom Sihanouk, the man who according to the Guinness Book of World Records has held the most official government positions in recent history. Sihanouk says prosecuting Khmer Rouge leaders would be a "comedy and hypocrisy." Of course Sihanouk says this. Sihanouk was an ALLY of the Khmer Rouge when Communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 and ended Pol Pot's genocide.

Sihanouk's idea, however, does have some merit. It would be better to give the money to Cambodian peasants for irrigation and farming. But I wouldn't hold my breath. Had Western nations cared about Cambodian peasants, they would never have bombed Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge might never have gained the support it needed to rise to power.

This pledge of $2 million is a good start for the US to begin apologizing for our support of the Khmer Rouge from 1978 to the late 80s.

Spread The Word

2005-09-02T08:35:00.000-05:00

Ok, I am asking everyone that is reading this blog, to spread the word. I want this blog to be known. So, I ask you, after reading this. I want you to copy this URL, and send it to as many people as you can. We need some momentum going.
Now, this blog isnt just a slam on StormFront, most posts may be, but thats not its entire purpose. It was also created to help people be more aware of the disasters of genocide. And also to show you how horrible hate and racism are.
So, please. Get our message out. We want as many people to read, and comment on our blog. We need sites like StormFront to be known. These are horrible sites, that only promote hate. They need to be stopped. Lets do our best.

Rwandans complicit in genocide allowed to return home

2005-08-31T19:38:00.000-05:00

I'll have a bit more to say about this. At the moment, I'm about 10 minutes from an important campus meeting so I must be brief.

BBC reports that Rwanda is allowing 22000 detainees, many admitted to being genocidaires since 1994, are being allowed to return home after extensive reconiliation schooling.

As Gourevitch notes in his book, this is the first country to truly come to terms on a large scale with both the victims and those complicit with the Hutu Power movement. Amazing, in other words. However, also a bit disappointing that it hasn't thus also become an object of study by sociologists and psychologists in the years since.

Update: Politinfo.com says 36,000 will be released. I don't know about their numbers, though. As with any genocide, the actual death toll is very hard to estimate. However, the number they give for the 1994 genocide, 500,000 is EXTREMELY at odds with standard estimates of between 800,000 and 1,000,000. They give no reason for the low number.

2005-08-30T21:42:00.000-05:00

I am the other blogger that will be posting once in awhile. The reason I wanted this blog to be created, was because of my severe dislike of the people on StormFront. How ignorant and soulless do you have to be, to act the way some of these individuals act. These views are not right. They really need a reality check. Racism is a horrible thing. No race on this planet is superior to any other. And the man, they support, Adolf Hitler. What he did was horrible. These people on StormFront, dont think about how much damage they are doing. Every human on this earth is equal. Supporting Hitler is like Supporting the Devil itself. Pure evil.
I am going to sign off for now. But I want to encourage each and everyone of our readers, to do everything in their power to stop these acts of hate. We need to shut down StormFront.

Something I've found a little funny...

2005-08-30T17:47:00.000-05:00

A number of people over at Stormfront seem to have a tendency to quote George Orwell in their signature. Either they are trying to be intentionally ironic or they are simply being fools.

I think the latter is true. Orwell was a socialist, a British nationalist, and was also libertarian (though not in the American sense of the word). He was not a National Socialist the way the term was used by Hitler. I suggest to everyone on Stormfront: read his book "Homage to Catalonia." They are Orwell's memoirs from his participation in the anti-fascist coalition in the Spanish Civil War (specifically the anti-Stalinist anti-Fascist POUM militia), and they show why the fools on Stormfront should stop quoting Orwell when they support the very things he opposed with his every fiber.

Another thread engages in shallow deconstructionism about Orwell, seen here, which is ironic given the person's "war on postmodernism" signature. Also ironically, a Stormfront moderator sets the fool straight.

Never Again!

2005-08-29T19:28:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about launching an anti-genocide blog for some time now. After a conversation with my soon-to-be co-blogger about the Stormfront White Nationalism community, I decided it was time.

As my profile says, I study at a university. Last year was a vast re-orientation of my life. I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda and read Philip Gourevitch's book, both about the Hutu genocide of Tutsis in 1994 in Rwanda. Samantha Power, one of the foremost authorities on genocide in American academics, also spoke at my university last year and I purchased her book afterwords. In addition, Amy Goodman, who was one of very few journalists to report on the Indonesian genocide in East Timor, also spoke to my university and gave a powerful description of her experience in her recent book.

Genocide, and the often accompanying racism or more generally "Otherization," has thus become the focus my studies.

My username is dedicated to the late Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who warned of Nazi Germany's plans in the 1930s and later coined the term genocide while pushing the Genocide Convention in the then-newly formed United Nations. I hope this blog will change others' apathy in regards to mass slaughter the same way my life was changed.