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Thoughts in remembrance of the 6 million (est.) murdered in the Holocaust
J-Mac:
Well, before this thread goes away, I'd just like to add my condolences, sorrow, and prayer in remembrance of the six million who were killed in the Holocaust. I didn't realize that there was such a period of remembrance every year. But I do now. It was a terrible time that thankfully ended when it did.
Jim
IainB:
However, though over 10 million [North American slaves] were killed during this exercise, the same level of remembrance is not paid, nor power conferred. Perhaps it is because of a lack of shared cultural identity since the same exercise destroyed that cultural identity in a systematic manner.
Worse can be said of the Native American genocide.
from http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html
...according to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a"vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record."
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Thus, I think if you were to draw any uniqueness from the Holocaust, it would be summarized in this one line:
So the 6 million deaths might not have been entirely in vain.
-IainB (April 19, 2012, 05:35 AM)
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-wraith808 (April 19, 2012, 11:03 AM)
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+1 from me - Very good points indeed. :Thmbsup:
I did wonder how come the USA didn't seem to figure on the table of 20th Century Mortacracies provided (above) by @Renegade, but I didn't like to ask as it might have been going rather off-topic.
IainB:
Would it be wrong for me to suggest this thread started off as being borderline appropriate for DC and is only becoming more so.. It's not that these discussions aren't valuable to have, just a question of whether they are most appropriate for this forum.. Of course there is great latitude for going off topic in the Living room section, but still..
-mouser (April 19, 2012, 11:43 AM)
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I couldn't say whether it would be "wrong" per se, but I would suggest that it is arguably little different in intent to the humanitarian aspects (i.e., thoughtful remembrance of those who have been pointlessly murdered en masse) associated with remembering (say) the waste of life in the 911 attack, or the WACO massacre.
Therefore:
While the scale doesn't compare, I'd like to remind you all that today is also the 19th anniversary of the massacre at Waco. 74 men, women, and children were murdered by US government agents, and not a thing was ever done about it. The scale might be wholly different, but in this case the blood is on our hands.
-CWuestefeld (April 19, 2012, 11:34 AM)
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+ 1 from me for what @CWuestefeld says.
This is one of those cases where we might be able to use one more category, Other Discussions etc. There's value in getting this crew's opinions about any topic that isn't pure trolling, because y'all put more work into your posts than almost any other forum I've seen. Given our efforts to discuss the various censorship problems, it WOULD bother me (open mouth, insert foot moment coming up), "Oh, it's fine to refuse all censorship, until it hits YOUR pet topic, THEN it's "not appropriate".
That's precisely the profound fundamental problem with censorship - it starts with the edge cases of "not appropriate" and then according to people's agendas, slowly scope-creeps its way into people getting arrested for tweets.
-TaoPhoenix (April 19, 2012, 12:04 PM)
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+ 1 from me for what @TaoPhoenix says.
...borderline appropriate for DC...
-mouser (April 19, 2012, 11:43 AM)
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I would be interested in any non-arbitrary definition you might consider for this. It could form a basis for "Living-Room" censorship rules, where we could all know where we stand and thus what we need to conform to - i.e., the rules thus set. You would presumably (?) be the decision-taker on this.
It would be a shame if this was censored. Discussion of such things/incidents - Man's inhumanity to Man - are relevant to our humanitarian principles. If we wanted to be equitable about spreading our remembrances, we could probably group these incidents into 365 bunches - one for each day of the year - and have a Remembrance Day for each bunch.
Some (including me) might find that a bit too much to cope with, but I categorically do not have any difficulty with thinking upon, remembering and discussing the more modern 20th century incidents that (hopefully) have provided salutary lessons enabling us to make the choice to become more human, more civilised and less barbaric towards our fellow men.
This is not so much an opinion as a philosophical approach that my mother taught me, and which I see as standing up to hard critical scrutiny as a valid and useful philosophy for the development of the Self. It is decidedly not a PC approach.
So I would embrace in that the Armenian massacre, the Holocaust, the 911 massacre, the WACO massacre, the Native Indian massacres, and the American-African slave massacres, etc.. Sadly, only the second seems to figure in terms of lessons that have been extended so that they were properly addressed in Law - i.e., with legal remedies - so as to help deter/avoid/mitigate a future recurrence.
By the way, and getting back to topic, there is a rather spine-tingling video here of what happened in Israel when the Remembrance-Day sirens went off.
Holocaust Remembrance Day Tel Aviv, Israel
Hear that noise in the background? Those are the air-raid sirens going off...
That's right, the Israelis still need air-raid sirens. The only time I have heard them before was in old WW2 London blitz newsreel footage.
wraith808:
...borderline appropriate for DC...
-mouser (April 19, 2012, 11:43 AM)
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I would be interested in any non-arbitrary definition you might consider for this. It could form a basis for "Living-Room" censorship rules, where we could all know where we stand and thus what we need to conform to - i.e., the rules thus set. You would presumably (?) be the decision-taker on this.
-IainB (April 19, 2012, 05:43 PM)
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Not censorship per-say, but focus. If this isn't a place to discuss religion and politics, then that's just not the focus, and calling that censorship is IMO cheapening the effect of the word when used if not an outright misuse of the word. There's a big difference between having a set of rules so that people that come to the site know what to expect and censoring posts.
IainB:
Not censorship per-say, but focus.
-wraith808 (April 19, 2012, 06:27 PM)
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Yeah, right.
Bet I can I can think of more euphemisms for it than you! ;)
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