We remember Pharaoh. We remember Haman. We should remember what Hitler did and with the greater wisdom that should come of traumatic experience. We have something today that earlier generations could not have imagined grasping and incorporating in their survival: we have ventured into the psychology attending evil; we have made ourselves deeply cognizant of the nuts and bolts associated with dictatorships and anti-Semitism (and we know how those two travel together — and are traveling together now). We are aware of dangers and done with denial. We should have greater foresight. If that’s not a blessing, I don’t what is.
“X” appears here careful to avoid the misappropriation of the term “genocide”, which really refers to a categorical cultural-racial basis for the elimination of an entire people. In such a frame, the Tutsi of Rwanda were the target of genocidal Hutu mania. Similarly, the white Arab onslaughts brought against the black animists of Darfur similarly constitutes “genocide” —
The perception of “war crime” cannot hinge on carnage alone, nor some whacked out ideas about fairness in the parity of death counts. The war against war entails the destruction of one party’s will to war, or, if failing that, ability to make war. If one were to suggest that WWII was excessive in every aspect by every party in every respect, one would have difficulty arguing against that and the necessity of having in place, at least, a United Nations and an International Criminal Court. Of course, neither have proven of much use in Syria or against ISIS in Iraq, but at least we have them, and in time, we may have each other in such a way as to forestall the empowerment of personalities who lead themselves, their nations, and all surrounding into immense destruction.
Notably, the forces massed against Berlin (at the end of WWII) — and with an immense Russian force doing the honors — may suggest what it has taken in the past to eliminate the grandiose messianic will driving such war. That will, fear, drive, motivation, etc. exceeds limits, does not reason, would seem to fight to and perhaps even beyond death — and then it may work against an energy equal to its challenge and, eventually, greater than itself.
If hate were shit, and it is, a lot of people would seem to be walking around with a load in their pants.
A part of the psychology addressed in the generation of bigoted rhetoric lays out within the “paranoid delusional narcissistic reflection of motivation“. How that becomes pattern in behavior and indicative of habits of mind, I wouldn’t hazard to guess but would suggest the language process associated with the same resides in childhood and a natural cowardice and imagination inclined to package fear borne by objects in such a way to push them away from the personal atmosphere.
I barely understand adults.
🙂
I don’t understand children.
However, to understand adults — to “get” an anti-Semite or other form of vociferous bigot — it might help to delve into the formation of language-sustained beliefs and attitudes adopted in childhood, and the coming into existence of some socially grammatical, rule-deriving, and later rule-based response to natural fears and emotional needs.
““We are being slaughtered!” she sobbed, her voice raw and worn out, as seen on this parliamentary video. “We are being exterminated! An entire religion is being exterminated from the face of the Earth. In the name of humanity, save us!””
“Brothers, away from all humanitarian disputes, we want humanitarian solidarity” (1:00)
Kurdish MP Vian Dakhil pleading for life before Parliament, August 5, 2014:
One Yazidis showed al-Jazeera a series of text messages received by Yazidis upon the arrival of ISIS, reading: “Where are you going to go? I swear [to] God I will cut you into pieces… We are coming for you, you pig, you enemy of God.”
The Yazidis took the threat seriously. The Washington Post reports that estimates vary from 10,000 to 40,000 Yazidis currently stranded on a mountain above Sinjar, knowing their immediate death awaits them at the foot of the mountain.
No IPTC data found. Source of download: Breitbart.
Thousands of Yazidis — a Kurdish ethno-religious community — have been trapped on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq as they attempt to escape the extremists’ grasp. The sole parliamentary representative of the Yazidis, Vian Dakhil, warned that her small community, which has roots in a 4,000 year-old faith, faces the threat of extermination.
Other religious and ethnic groups, including Christians, Shiite Turkmens and Shabaks, have also recently been displaced since the Islamic State began waging a violent campaign against minorities in the territory it controls.
Yazidis believe in one God and worship seven angels. Melek Taus, known as the Peacock Angel, plays the most important role. Worship of the Peacock Angel is where the label “devil worshipper” stems from. Christianity and Islam view the Peacock Angel as a fallen angel or devil for refusing to bow before Adam. Yazidis interpret this as a test of the Peacock Angel’s commitment to God and see the Peacock Angel as the chief of God’s angels.
David Rubin: Is that then part of it? This is so savage that partly . . . you know, everyone keeps saying the images out of Gaza are horrible, which they are, but there’s this definitive narrative There’s a bomb that drops on something . . .
Nikki DeLoach: It’s a war that we recognize. That’s how we’ve seen war. This is not that. This is savage. It’s like . . . medieval . . . something you would see on Game of Thrones.”
I doubt any will see the mass beheading of children (as has been reported in relation to the slaughter of Chaldean Christians in Iraq) on Game of Thrones.
(CNN) — If you’re following the news about ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State, you might think you’ve mistakenly clicked on a historical story about barbarians from millennia ago.
“The heinous crime of the Islamic State was carried out not just against Christians, but against humanity,” Sako told a special church service in east Baghdad where around 200 Muslims joined Christians in solidarity.
http://phylliscartersjournal.blogspot.ca/2014/08/the-abuse-of-god-death-and-destruction.html – 8/8/2014 (I continue updating a piece for a little while afterwards as new and telling verbiage appears. As ISIS is basically a raiding party, events move very quickly through its machinations. Where it hustles, Iraq and its allies plod, by comparison, toward getting their act together. At the moment, Aug. 8, 2014, and despite some U.S. activity, ISIS has battlefield resource superiority — arms and ammo, cash, armor and domestic vehicles, a modern enough headquarters, and some techniques in cover and cruelty that have made them especially hard to get at. In their world, the world is running away from them, which for plunder must suit them fine).
“Tal Kayf is now in the hands of the Islamic State. They faced no resistance and rolled in just after midnight,” said Boutros Sargon, a resident who fled the town and was reached by phone in Arbil.
“I heard some gunshots last night and when I looked outside, I saw a military convoy from the Islamic State. They were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is greatest],” he said.
Unfortunately, when it comes to political absolutism (why I call them the dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”), despotism, and fascism (Hungary’s Jobbik now relates to Iranian heritage), there seems no end to variants.
ISIS has been proving vulnerable to the Kurdish Peshmerga, who know what will happen to them if they lose, and some ad hoc assembly of very small ambush parties that are targeting its leaders. Nonetheless, they’re using Erdogan’s embassy in Mosul as a headquarters (and they have gotten Erdogan to purchase $800 million in oil from them — and Erdogan has blacked out mention of the story in Turkey . . . all of which is bad news for NATO and the Turkish people).
The story with dictators who “take off” always ends in surreal depravity and sadism, and that much BadDaddy Baghdaddi’s lunatics have clearly accomplished.
More From the News
Jihadists who took over large areas of northern Iraq today have forced 100,000 Christians to flee as they occupied churches, removing crosses and destroying manuscripts.
They have fled with nothing but their clothes, some on foot, to reach the Kurdistan region, according to Louis Sako, the leader of Iraq’s largest Christian denomination.
However, as has always been the case even in the darkest chapters of human history, there have been the noble few to whom “never again” was a promise to be kept regardless of the cost, and who have risen above the prevalent apathy and helped those in most need. Despite having their resources and capabilities stretched to the breaking point, for three years neither Jordan nor Lebanon ever closed their borders to the multitude of Syrian refugees. Refugees who managed to reach Turkey found a country and people whose hospitality and generosity knew no limits.
And despite having every reason to hunker down behind a big fence or wall, Israel did no such thing when it came to helping Syrians in need, and thousands of Syrian lives were saved by Israeli medical assistance on the Golan.
My two cents on global sluggishness and resistance to settling the Syrian Civil War with an influx of weapons and manpower sufficient to defeat both Bashar al-Assad and the Al-Qaeda affiliates now operating throughout the battlespace.
Endemic Syrian anti-westernism bolstered by a present if not embraced expanding “Islamism” (Islamic Jihad) may dampen enthusiasm for long-term adversary that needs immediate assistance.
Arab and Arab-Syrian anti-Semitism, of which this blog has taken note, would seem to prove that the revolution would rather fail and die then alter its alignment against the “criminal genocidal imperial colonialist Zionazi entity”.
The Great Dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei lies, misleads, steals (from its own people) and a third of it is a known nuclear power.
My advice to the “moderate” Syrian revolutionary leadership: lose the anti-Semitic, anti-Western contempt and hate, so that I may remove the quotation marks around “moderate” and others may reevaluate how to meet Russian President Putin’s gambit in Syria and the Middle East for re-founding and sustaining a Greater Russian Empire.
Their story is more evidence that Christian children are being taken from West Papua and converted to Islam – a practice officially denied after being revealed in Fairfax Media’s Good Weekend magazine last year. It also makes clear for the first time that knowledge of the practice reaches high into the upper echelons of Indonesia’s political elite.
The religious conversion of any young child is illegal in Indonesia, and the United Nations deems any transfer of a minor, even for education, as trafficking.
Posted on Facebook by the Free West Papua Campaign, March 3, 2014: “Indonesian police and plainclothes police can be seen taking sickening “trophy photos” of the corpses of West Papuan people they have just stripped and murdered and thrown into a drainage ditch used as a makeshift mass grave in the middle of a highlands village. According to sources, this is in the Central Highlands of West Papua, possibly the Puncak Jaya region and was taken relatively recently. What appears to be the National flag of West Papua, the Morning Star can be seen raised behind the horror. The raising of this flag has been made illegal by Indonesia and carries a 15 year jail sentence. As this photo has just emerged, we are currently finding out as much as possible about the details and cannot yet verify the exact date and location but what is for sure is that this photo, taken in the highlands of West Papua is 100% real and genuine, hard evidence of Indonesia’s 21st century apartheid and genocide in West Papua.”
I have yet to download a conflict photo loaded with EXIF/IPTC verbal data identifying the camera used, the photographer, and photographer’s title and caption. Most often too, these incendiary images come out of the special interest press representing religious denominations and organizations that repeat their use or transpose images taken in one place to captions representing another event. The Free West Papua Campaign, however, insists itself on locating the specific photographer who took it, when, and where. It believes in the veracity of the image enough to question its exact provenance, and therefore I believe in its accuracy too.
UPDATE, OCTOBER 16, 2017:for those coming off third-party sites using the above photograph — one has actually disinformed its public by putting “Rohingya Muslims” in place of West Papuans in its headline — I’m no longer certain of the forensic quality of the photograph: the bodies look related in hands-behind-head security postures; the police could just be checking ID in a most humiliating manner; or there could be some mix of dead and living. One had to be there, of course, and the one who was there to take the picture has not apparently distributed the same with captioning data intact.
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How BackChannels views the West Papua Conflict: on the border between the Muslim and Christian worlds, the indigenous of West Papua struggle to keep their culture and land intact, refusing forced conversion and assimilation to the Muslim-majority state whose international boundary has overrun their property.
As is common and familiar to Muslim-majority states worldwide, the tack pursued with regard to West Papuans has been than of cultural annihilation and political suppression.
Coming from an American of European descent, this layout of the story would seem hypocritical, for as West Papuans may be to Indonesia, so Native Americans would seem to have been to European colonizing forces. However, these days, the Native Americans of the United States have title to reservation as well private properties, the freedom to arrange themselves and worship as they see fit, and in all other aspects to own businesses and enjoy or hate the American tapestry as they see fit within the bounds of the common law, which codes revolve most around the freedom and security of all persons.
America’s Native Americans are not getting their continent back, of course, but they are supported in their endeavors related to the defense of culture, family, property, and religion, the same as any, and every, American.
Coming from a Jewish background that includes lending attention to Israel as the unique cultural, political, and religious homeland of the Jews, the bond between the true indigenous of a land and indigenous elsewhere might apply, albeit in the progressive Jewish manner with adaptation toward modernity — some things will stay with the people forever in freedom, and some (like cannibalism) may recede into history.
In the larger scheme, our planet supports 6,900+ living languages, and it loses a few each month: it should be sustaining those few and perhaps working to encourage separable language evolution or new language development although natural language behavior is not like biology: we’re just not going to ship a healthy population of humans to an island, cut them off from social commerce, and visit them again in a thousand years (if they have survived their own company).
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JONAH WENDA (voiceover): They were picked from different places like school, gardens, on the road and even taken from their home and kill them and throw them in the bush.
In May, Indonesia’s human rights record was assessed under the UN Universal Periodic Review. The government rejected key recommendations to review specific laws and decrees which restrict the rights to freedom of expression and thought, conscience and religion. In July, Indonesia reported to the CEDAW Committee. In November, Indonesia adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, despite serious concerns that it fell short of international standards.
PM – More details emerge on West Papua massacre allegation 28/05/2013: “The Indonesian Embassy in Canberra has issued a blanket denial, describing the reported violence as rumours and lies. / But the ABC has been provided further information that tells a different story, as Peter Lloyd reports.”
Religious intolerance against the Muslim Rohingya minority and Christians from the Chin and Kachin minorities continues despite the pleas of a dozen former Nobel Peace laureates urging “an international, independent investigation of the anti-Muslim violence in Burma” June 2013.
