Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
During the three years (1993-1996) Samantha Power
spent covering the grisly events in Bosnia and Srebrenica, she became
increasingly frustrated with how little the United States was willing to do to
counteract the genocide occurring there. After much research, she discovered a
pattern: "The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide
and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred," she
writes in this impressive book. Debunking the notion that U.S. leaders were
unaware of the horrors as they were occurring against Armenians, Jews,
Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds, Rwandan Tutsis, and Bosnians during the past century,
Power discusses how much was known and when, and argues that much human
suffering could have been alleviated through a greater effort by the U.S. She
does not claim that the U.S. alone could have prevented such horrors, but does
make a convincing case that even a modest effort would have had significant
impact. Based on declassified information, private papers, and interviews with
more than 300 American policymakers, Power makes it clear that a lack of
political will was the most significant factor for this failure to intervene.
Some courageous U.S. leaders did work to combat and call attention to ethnic
cleansing as it occurred, but the vast majority of politicians and diplomats
ignored the issue, as did the American public, leading Power to note that "no
U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its
occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on." This powerful
book is a call to make such indifference a thing of the past.
--
Interesting. Most nation states tend to look the other
way when genocide is underway, not just the US.
arthur
A good read on the nature of the murderous virus is
Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide", in
which she reviews the causes and consequences of recent mass killings, and the
ineffectiveness of national and international legal systems in preventing
them.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 9:40
AM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] My ongoing
struggle to see the obvious :: Basic question for economists
The fact is that it takes place, has taken place and will likely take
place again.
National and international legal systems are in place to try to
ensure that it doesn't happen again.
It
is in this way that things are getting better in the world. At least
we now know that humans have some sort of a murderous virus that erupts from
time to time (especially when we know we can beat/subjugate/murder the
other). Knowing the problem brings us a good part of the way to
solving the problem.
arthur
I've been halfway through Diamond for a little
over a year now and must finish it someday, although I don't think I've
ever finished a book in my life. In my view, one reason why
hunting and gathering groups attack and destroy each other is that they
are motivated by fear of something they cannot really
understand. Competition for resources may be another reason.
There is something of a classic case in Arctic Canada, where the modern
Inuit (the so called Thule Culture) replaced the Dorset Culture (Tunit)
beginning about a thousand years ago. From what little I've read,
the lifestyles of these two peoples were very different. The Inuit
used dogs, moved about a lot, lived in tents in summer and snow houses in
winter. The Tunit were sedentary, lived in stone houses (or really
holes covered by stone roofs), and did not use dogs - they apparently
used sleighs that they dragged about themselves. It would seem that
the Inuit pictured the Tunit as some kind of strange and sinister
population of giants that posed some form of shadowy, omnipresent threat,
and it was therefore necessary to get rid of them, which is what seems to
have happened. As they spread across the Arctic from west to east,
the Inuit also needed access to Tunic hunting and sealing areas. As
a distinct culture, the Tunit disappeared about 400 years ago, although a
highly resepected anthropologist I once knew told me that the last Tunit
he knew of, a woman, died on Southampton Island in the 1920s.
I repeat a point I've made frequently on this
list: inter-group or inter-ethnic strife is a very difficult thing to
decompose into its elements. It is far more complex than an envious
alpha-male jumping up and down because he wants to wear the same war-paint
as the chief in the next valley over and is willing to part with his
virgin daughter or kill people to get that paint.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003
8:54 PM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] My
ongoing struggle to see the obvious :: Basic question for
economists
I am about one-quarter of the way through Guns, Germs and Steel
(The Fate of Human Societies) by Jared Diamond. So far the picture
that seems to emerge is that humans tend to band together and with a
murderous rage will defeat the other band if they can. The
stronger culture will defeat/murder/subjugate the weaker culture simply
because it can.
Its a sort of Darwinian survival of the strongest (measured in
terms of resources, technology , social organization, tactics and
strategy)
I don't think its so much about status but about power and
control and maybe its natural, the same way that animals in the wild
will hunt down and kill sick and injured animals.
I suppose the whole legal system is in place to offset this sort
of acitivity....and we are mostly successful in keeping the stronger
from defeating/murdering/subjugating the weaker, although I am sure
there are some on this list who would disagree.
arthur
Brad,
At 07:50
18/12/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Why doesn't all economics
education and inquiry start with the
principle:
Friends hold all things in
common.
(--Desiderius Erasmus, and others)
?
Since we have markets and
such, the first
lemma one seems forced to deduce from this
principle
is that "the economy" is a realm of social
relations
which are at best not friendly (and
which in fact often are in
varying degrees
positively(sic) unfriendly).
I am being
entirely serious here.
You've got the picture
in one! Congratulations!
When the leader of one group of early
man saw the leader of the neighbouring group in war paint -- that is,
with whom he was having a difference at the time -- of a particularly
virulent shade of orange (iron ochre), he badly wanted some of the
ochre for himself so that he, too, could look so splendid. But he
couldn't lay his hands on any because there was none of this
desirabvle rock in his own group's territory. So he had to he had to
parlay with the neighbouring group's leader one fine sunny day when
they were not at war (for, of course, warfare is only an occasional
event) and decided to exchange one of his recently \post-puberty
daughters whom he'd restrained (because she was about to leave anyway
to find a partner elsewhere -- disposed to do so by what is called the
'patrilocal instinct' by the behavioural pscyhologists) for some
"leadership paint". The deal was done and during the trading
transaction the two leaders were pretty friendly.
The next
day, or perhaps a month or two later, the two groups were at war again
-- perhaps one the group had invaded the other's territory and stolen
a pig -- and this time both leaders were wearing war paint. They made
sure that they didn;t kill each other -- leaders seldon do that. They
make sure that the honour falls to an underling.
And,
while they were wearing their war paint -- or perhaps retained it for
days or weeks after wards -- both leaders would have been very
attractive indeed if any post-puberty girls from yet a distant third
or fourth group had come wandering by looking for a mate.
Keith
Hudson
\brad
mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before
men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes
5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. /
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