----- Original Message ----- From: "Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 7:55 PM Subject: Re: Killings, evil and pictures to assure accountabillity was, Re: The Mercies of The Vatican
> Gautam Mukunda wrote: > > >Sonja, I'll make you a deal. If you stop making > >excuses for people who participated in the Holocaust, > >I'll stop calling you on it when you do it. > > > > > > > No deal. Your basic presumption is flawed. Not every German during the > holocaust was automatically and without exception a participant in the > holocaust and a jew murdering nazi. Not every one, probably not. But, it was common knowledge and there was no indication of public horror at it. As Gautam said, it wasn't accidental; it was deliberate policy from on high. I've read your arguements on this type of subject for a while, and I've seen a pattern that I'd like some feedback on. Consistancy, you lump all bad outcomes together. What happened in Abu Ghraib was wrong. People should be punished; and that includes officers who were derelict in their duty to provide the proper environment. You saw my opinion expressed in my recent post. Having said that; there is no comparison with this and genocide. One was, IMHO, a criminal neglect to establish a proper prison environment, where the long established procedure was not enforced. The second was a systematic, well planned slaughter of millions of innocent humans that gained momentum as new, more efficent murder techniques were developed. Information about this, according to documentation from the time, was readily available to the average citizen. In the US, there was a hue and cry about the crimes. It may very well be that we will not sufficiently punish people far enough up the chain of command, but it is also clear that a number of pro-military people in the US are mad as hell that things were not done right. I have not seen an acknowledgement of the multiple order of magnitude in the difference between these two things. To me, its like comparing a mother who yells at her kids when she shouldn't because she is upset about something else and a mother who burns her kids with a cigarette. Both are wrong, but the order of magnitude of the wrongs are enormously different. It seems to me that you differ with this idea. Bad is bad, wrong is wrong, and there is no worse. The difficutly with this is that it lumps all non perfect things together. I can't see the validity of this. Let me give a personal example. My Zambian daughter was stopped with two of her friends for DWB (driving while black) in the Woodlands. It followed the typical DWB pattern, cop car is beside a car, sees that black people are in it, slows down and follows the car for a while and then pulls it over. They were asked why they were in the Woodlands (which has very few blacks). After 10 minutes, they were given a verbal warning for one of two liscence plate lights being out, and were allowed to go on their way. I realize that there is racism in the police up here. I realize that the association of blacks with criminals results in unarmed black and Hispanic kids being shot from time to time. One or two die in an average year this way. It is wrong, and I feel we need to adress this. Yet, this is nothing like what I would feel if I knew Neli was in Sudan. There, there is a deliberate policy, given a wink and a nod by the UN, to commit genocide against the black majority by the Arab minority that runs the country. If she were there, there would be a good chance that she would be killed. In Houston, there is a small chance; its still too big mind you, but it is small. >From what I've read of your post over the years, I have gotten the opinion that until we clean up our act concerning the racism in Houston, we have no right to comment on the genocide in the Sudan. People dying is people dying, so make sure your own house is in perfect order before pointing out problems in another's house. The problem I see with that is that humans are not perfect. We will never have perfect justice. Thus, if perfect justice is required for genocide to be stopped, it will never be stopped. Its as if we cannot stop a mother from burning her children until we never ever parent imperfectly. If this is not your view, then it would be helpful for you to clarify it. For example, a contrast and compare between the magnitude of AG and the Holocaust would be helpful. Either data that refutes the documented claim that the Holocaust was common knowledge in Germany, or acceptance of that would also be helpful. I realize that this involves a switch in worldview because most of us were taught a convenient fiction in school. I certainly believed that the Nazi's had a police state, even for the Ayrians, from the start. I thought the Holocaust was very secret. But now, I accept the evidence that Nazi Germany was not a police state and the Holocaust was not all that hidden. If you differ with this, then I'd be very open to evidence to the contrary. An example of this was Nick's arguement concerning the fraction of the French Jewish population that was killed. He provided solid data to convince me that he had a reasonable point. Are you also opened to being convinced? If so, what is insufficient in the evidence that has been provided? Dan M. Dan M. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
