[lbo-talk] Waiting for a Leader / Genocide

[amadeus amadeus]

sadly, despite geneva, it will not be considered
genocide among anyone with control over the discourse
(though, as doug shows, we do get the occasional
outburst). this is, for the most part anyway, "killing
people softly." if we are to consider the federal lack
of response to new orleans as genocide, we would have
to include a lot of other genocides not acceptably
deemed as so; for instance, capitalism, which killed
about a quarter billion people in the last century.
most of those people were not lined up and shot;
capitalism is far more efficient than that.

the consensus, for instance, that stalin committed
genocide seems far from a foregone conclusion among
mainstream intelligentsia, though it can certainly be
argued that enough ukrainians and others died from his
policies (far more than hitler though over a much
longer period). i have trouble believing stalin would
not have had a quick response to a natural disaster if
it hit leningrad or moscow; new orleans appears to be
our kiev.

--adx 

--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> amadeus amadeus wrote:
> 
> >The UN General Assembly in 1948 defined genocide as
> >"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
> >conditions of life calculated to bring about its
> >physical destruction in whole or in part;
> >     (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent
> births
> >within the group;
> >     (e) Forcibly transferring children of the
> group to
> >another group."
> >
> >I see A-C occurring right now in New Orleans, most
> >likely D and possibly E. Some articles below.  
> --adx
> 
> I just watched a video on the CNN website that
> starred a New 
> Orleansian (?) named Alan Gould calling it a "modern
> day genocide." 
> That was the title they gave it, too. Pretty strong
> stuff for CNN.
> 
> I couldn't believe the coverage on MSNBC last night,
> either. Horrific 
> scenes and accounts presented with great sympathy
> and anger - unlike 
> those baying cretins on Fox, who couldn't stop
> talking about looting. 
> Even Scarborough was fulminating about how fucked up
> things were. 
> Olberman had Al Sharpton on to talk about race and
> class. I'm sure 
> the normal regime of ideolgoical bullshit will
> return, but this an 
> interesting rupture.
> 
> Doug
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>
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> 

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