Shock And Yawn

[kjkhoo at softhome.net]

At 9:07 PM -0600 26/2/03, Peter K. wrote:
>  >>Silent Genocide
>>>
>>>Well we could easily go on ... but all of that ... first of all indicates
>>>to us what's happening. Looks like what's happening is some sort of
>>>silent genocide. It also gives a good deal of insight into the elite
>>>culture, the culture that we are part of. It indicates that
>>>whatever, what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made
>>>and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the
>>>death of several million people in the next few months.
>
>Genocide is a loaded term and in the last
>sentence here he says "plans are being made
>and programs implemented on the assumption
>that they may lead to the death of several million
>people in the next few months."
>
>Again: he was accusing the government of planning genocide.
>The most likely explanation of why it didn't happen is that
>they weren't making plans and implementing programs
>for a silent genocide. Seeing as how they trounced the Taliban,
>if they had wanted a silent genocide they would have gotten one.

Seems to me that this is just another of those threads on LBO-Talk.

Not a native English speaker, but it seems to me that the sentence is 
pretty obvious: Not that the US govt was planning genocide, but that 
they were prepared to go ahead with plans and programs despite the 
warnings then, i.e. the possibility ("may") of those deaths didn't 
count for much in their scheme of things. It didn't happen. That's 
good. Yet the stories coming out of Afghanistan re the humanitarian 
situation outside of towns like Kabul isn't so great.

As for genocide being a loaded term. Indeed! Yet what's been 
happening has been a progressive extension of the meaning of the term 
to cover much less than total extermination and to situations which, 
a couple of decades ago might not have been thought to fall under the 
term. Whether this is for the better, it at least serves to draw 
attention to such cases. I don't recall that the term was very much 
in currency in reference to the slaughter of the Vietnamese. There 
was the Russell thing, lots of racism, but not that much use of 
genocide as such. But then, the whole genocide thing took off after 
that, didn't it?

kj