Re: [A-List] 'When will genocide end?'

[bar@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Real good but I think you will have to post as a "they refused to post
this".   But it should be published. Nobody else is saying this obious
fact yet.

Chris

> ...Any bets on whether they'll publish it?
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tony black
> To: letters@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 2:40 PM
> Subject: 'When will genocide end?'
>
>
> To the editors:
>
> In last Saturday's edition the Spectator ran an editorial bemoaning the
> seemingly endless procession of 'genocides' that have afflicted
> (especially) the last hundred years or so of world history. This
> world-weary sentiment clearly in response to the  recently publicized
> human rights abuses committed in Iraq by American forces. When, it asked,
> will it all end?
>
> Let me proffer a partial answer by first reminding the Spectator that in
> the weeks and months following 9/11 the Spec gave vent to such a sustained
> and grotesque outpouring of American jingoism, martial ardour and
> patriotic mass hysteria as to (in conjunction with the corporate media
> continent wide) create the very conditions for the prosecution of not one,
> but two illegal and immoral wars of aggression. Two lawless wars that have
> fostered, inevitably, two lawless and brutal occupations.
>
> And yet the media now feign both surprise (as they did following the
> 'revelation' that Iraq harboured no WMD) and disgust at the results.
>
> It was representative then that the Spec at that time (Sept./01), having
> published most of my previous article submissions, declined at this
> 'sensitive' moment to print an essay I submitted critiquing not only the
> mass hysteria they had created, but which also foreshadowed in almost
> every particular the likely consequences of the opportunistic 'policies'
> of Bush & Co. (i.e. the trashing of civil liberties, the attempt to cow
> and suppress critics of economic 'globalization', the cynical use of 9/11
> as a pretext for American military expansionism, the destabilization of
> world security in a nuclear age etc.).
>
> It is further worthy of note that my friends and family were actually
> frightened enough given the media-inspired climate of hysteria and
> fear...not from foreign 'terrorists' mind you, but from state security
> forces...to warn me against submitting the piece!
>
> As Hermann Goering once said,
>
> "Voice or  no voice, the people can always be brought to do the bidding of
> the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being
> attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing
> the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
>
> So when will it all end? Certainly not before the mainstream media, on
> which the 'people' are supposed to depend for real information, are
> transformed into institutions capable of delivering, on the fundamental
> issues of the day, something other than mere state 'manufactured consent'
> and elitist propaganda.
>
> At the very least, not before that....
>
> Antony Black
>
>
>
>