“
Israel's demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a 'strategic asset,' as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to be 'the guardians of the Gulf,' and after the fall of the Shah, Israel's perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here, it has been generally true that US support for Israel's militarization and expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region.
The effect has been to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing danger of superpower confrontation.
”
”
Noam Chomsky
“
I wish we'd be able to deliver our message at the global level on the need to recognize the past genocides in order to prevent new ones. Our message of peace and justice will hopefully reach every corner of the world.
”
”
Widad Akreyi
“
Occupation, curfew, settlements, closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike, terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks genocide with the words of a quiet technician.
Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust the future or have faith that the past will always be there.
Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket attack from an M16.
A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death.
A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths while you watch your family dying around you.
Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water.
And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine.
”
”
Suheir Hammad
“
It is time to recognize the past and ongoing genocides to prevent new ones. Together we can build a better world!
”
”
Widad Akreyi
“
By weaponizing the discourse of human rights to justify the use of force against governments that resisted the Washington consensus, this group of well-connected liberals was able to stir support where the neocons could not. Their brand of interventionism appealed directly to the sensibility of the Democratic Party's metropolitan base, large swaths of academia, the foundation-funded human rights NGO complex, and the New York Times editorial board. The xhibition of atrocities allegedly committed by adversarial governments, either by Western-funded civil society groups, major human rights organizations or the mainstream press, was the military humanists' stock in trade, enabling them to mask imperial designs behind a patina of "genocide prevention." With this neat tactic, they effectively neutralized progressive antiwar elements and tarred those who dared to protest their wars as dictator apologists.
”
”
Max Blumenthal (The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump)
“
My quarrel with Chomsky goes back to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, where he more or less openly represented the "Serbian Socialist Party" (actually the national-socialist and expansionist dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic) as the victim. Many of us are proud of having helped organize to prevent the slaughter and deportation of Europe's oldest and largest and most tolerant Muslim minority, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. But at that time, when they were real, Chomsky wasn't apparently interested in Muslim grievances. He only became a voice for that when the Taliban and Al Qaeda needed to be represented in their turn as the victims of a "silent genocide" in Afghanistan. Let me put it like this, if a supposed scholar takes the Christian-Orthodox side when it is the aggressor, and then switches to taking the "Muslim" side when Muslims commit mass murder, I think that there is something very nasty going on. And yes, I don't think it is exaggerated to describe that nastiness as "anti-American" when the power that stops and punishes both aggressions is the United States.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
Yet, as should become obvious, genocidal events have been common enough to suggest that they cannot be explained as some kind of deviant behavior. On the contrary, given the right circumstances, normal human beings are all too ready to kill by category.
”
”
Daniel Chirot (Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder)
“
The desertion of Rwanda by the UN force was Hutu Power’s greatest diplomatic victory to date, and it can be credited almost single-handedly to the United States. With the memory of the Somalia debacle still very fresh, the White House had just finished drafting a document called Presidential Decision Directive 25, which amounted to a checklist of reasons to avoid American involvement in UN peacekeeping missions. It hardly mattered that Dallaire’s call for an expanded force and mandate would not have required American troops, or that the mission was not properly peacekeeping, but genocide prevention. PDD 25 also contained what Washington policymakers call “language” urging that the United States should persuade others not to undertake the missions that it wished to avoid. In fact, the Clinton administration’s ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, opposed leaving even the skeleton crew of two hundred seventy in Rwanda. Albright went on to become Secretary of State, largely because of her reputation as a “daughter of Munich,” a Czech refugee from Nazism with no tolerance for appeasement and with a taste for projecting U.S. force abroad to bring rogue dictators and criminal states to heel. Her name is rarely associated with Rwanda, but ducking and pressuring others to duck, as the death toll leapt from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, was the absolute low point in her career as a stateswoman.
”
”
Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families)
“
Just as a state's police swear to prevent and punish murder, so the signers of the Genocide Convention [in 1948] swore to police a brave new world order. The rhetoric of moral utopia is a peculiar response to genocide. But those were heady days, just after the trials at Nuremberg, when the full scale of the Nazi extermination of Jews all over Europe had been recognized as a fact of which nobody could any longer claim ignorance. The authors and signers of the Genocide Convention knew perfectly well that they had not fought World War II to stop the Holocaust but rather--and often, as in the case of the United States, reluctantly--to contain fascist aggression. What made those victorious powers, which dominated the UN then even more than they do now, imagine that they would act differently in the future?
”
”
Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families)
“
FLIES IN DISGUISE
Tell me,
Have you
Really seen
Flies in a child's eyes
Or heard their hungry cries
In the middle
Of the night?
Don't lie.
You can protest all you want
About peace
And genocide,
But unless you are willing
To take beatings for your fights,
Your display of trendy showmanship
Simply ain't right.
Go on,
Carry your useless signs
About an issue the world
Already abhors,
But it's TRUE
Heartfelt actions
That will prevent
Suits and
Senators
From creating
Any more wars.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
At the very least, Vietnam should stand as a permanent caution against going to war for any but the most immediate, direct, and vital national interest, or to prevent genocide or wider conflict, and then only in concert with other countries.
”
”
Mark Bowden (Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam)
“
For an instant he was able to cross the line and understand this strange loyalty of Jew to Jew. Those Jews who lived free in England were only there due to some quirk of fate instead of Aushwitz and every Jew knew that genocide could have happened to his own family except for that quirk of fate.
Yet, as time stood suspended, Gilray was all gentiles who never quite understood Jews. He could befriend them, work with them, but never totally understand them. He was all white men who could never quite understand black men and all black men who could never quite understand whites. He was all normal men who could tolerate or even defend homosexuals...but never fully understand them.
There is in us all that line that prevents us from fully understanding those who are different.
”
”
Leon Uris (QB VII)
“
People have explained U.S. failures to respond to specific genocides by claiming that the United States didn’t know what was happening, that it knew but didn’t care, or that regardless of what it knew, there was nothing useful to be done. I have found that in fact U.S. policymakers knew a great deal about the crimes being perpetrated. Some Americans cared and fought for action, making considerable personal and professional sacrifices. And the United States did have countless opportunities to mitigate and prevent slaughter. But time and again, decent men and women chose to look away. We have all been bystanders to genocide. The crucial question is why.
”
”
Samantha Power (A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide)
“
Conflict can become genocidal when powerful groups think that the most efficient means to get what they want is to eliminate those in the way. It can become equally or more murderous when the motive is revenge, and descend to the worst levels of slaughter when there is great fear that the survival of the enemy group might endanger the survival of one’s own group.
”
”
Daniel Chirot (Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder)
“
Never forget” is the collective plea of Holocaust survivors. And in the first few decades after WW2 ended, it really did seem as if humanity would always remember, and perhaps even learn from, the Nazi genocide so that future atrocities may be prevented. Unfortunately, the historicity of the Holocaust has been undermined and chipped away at by the exact same sinister forces that created the genocide in the first place: racists, religious bigots and the most paranoid type of conspiracy theorists who, together, are uniting – often unwittingly – to form a new wave of anti-Semitism that will not willingly accept the obvious facts of the past. This chipping away (at the truth) began slowly and insidiously – much like the Holocaust itself – but sadly, and worryingly, it is gathering pace.
”
”
James Morcan (Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories)
“
In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spelled out a framework for holding governments accountable, followed in three years by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
”
”
Madeleine K. Albright (Fascism: A Warning)
“
The most intractable cause of genocidal killings emerges when competing groups—ethnic, religious, class, or ideological—feel that the very presence of the other, of the enemy, so sullies the environment that normal life is not possible as long as they exist.
”
”
Daniel Chirot (Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder)
“
So De Waal might do well to ask God if he could also curb our tendency to take our lead from charismatic alpha males. Not only might this prevent future genocides and cultural revolutions, it might also reduce the likelihood of another disaster caused by corporate greed.
”
”
D.F. Swaab (We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's)
“
Despite their common origins, and the shared desire for an effective approach, Lauterpacht and Lemkin were sharply divided as to the solutions they proposed to a big question: How could the law help to prevent mass killing? Protect the individual, says Lauterpacht. Protect the group, says Lemkin.
”
”
Philippe Sands (East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity")
“
Commemorating the Holocaust is not, not not not not not, the same thing as fighting to prevent future holocausts. Most of the commemorationists are just whiners. They think that if everyone feels bad about past holocausts, human nature will magically transform, and no one will want to commit genocide in the future.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
“
We have seen too many armed conflicts. We have witnessed far too many violations of human rights. The 2014 genocide wasn't the first genocide, and if history is any indication, it won't be the last if we don't do something now. We must ask ourselves what should we do to help prevent new genocides. It is time to embody justice in our intentions and actions.
”
”
Widad Akreyi
“
This new situation, in which "humanity" has in effect assumed the role formerly ascribed to nature or history, would mean in this context that the right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself. It is by no means certain whether this is possible. For, contrary to the best-intentioned humanitarian attempts to obtain new declarations of human rights from international organizations, it should be understood that this idea transcends the present sphere of international law which still operates in terms of reciprocal agreements and treaties between sovereign states; and, for the time being, a sphere that is above the nation does not exist. Furthermore, this dilemma would by no means be eliminated by the establishment of a "world government." Such a world government is indeed within the realm of possibility, but one may suspect that in reality it might differ considerably from the version promoted by idealistic-minded organizations. The crimes against human rights, which have become a specialty of totalitarian regimes, can always be justified by the pretext that right is equivalent to being good or useful for the whole in distinction to its parts. (Hitler's motto that "Right is what is good for the German people" is only the vulgarized form of a conception of law which can be found everywhere and which in practice will remain effectual only so long as older traditions that are still effective in the constitutions prevent this.) A conception of law which identifies what is right with the notion of what is good for—for the individual, or the family, or the people, or the largest number—becomes inevitable once the absolute and transcendent measurements of religion or the law of nature have lost their authority. And this predicament is by no means solved if the unit to which the "good for" applies is as large as mankind itself. For it is quite conceivable, and even within the realm of practical political possibilities, that one fine day a highly organized and mechanized humanity will conclude quite democratically—namely by majority decision—that for humanity as a whole it would be better to liquidate certain parts thereof.
”
”
Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism)
“
the Blank Slate had, and has, a dark side. The vacuum that it posited in human nature was eagerly filled by totalitarian regimes, and it did nothing to prevent their genocides. It perverts education, childrearing, and the arts into forms of social engineering. It torments mothers who work outside the home and parents whose children did not turn out as they would have liked. It threatens to outlaw biomedical research that could alleviate human suffering.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature)
“
From the perspective of nearly half a century, the Battle of Hue and the entire Vietnam War seem a tragic and meaningless waste. So much heroism and slaughter for a cause that now seems dated and nearly irrelevant. The whole painful experience ought to have (but has not) taught Americans to cultivate deep regional knowledge in the practice of foreign policy, and to avoid being led by ideology instead of understanding. The United States should interact with other nations realistically, first, not on the basis of domestic political priorities. Very often the problems in distant lands have little or nothing to do with America’s ideological preoccupations. Beware of men with theories that explain everything. Trust those who approach the world with humility and cautious insight. The United States went to war in Vietnam in the name of freedom, to stop the supposed monolithic threat of Communism from spreading across the globe like a dark stain—I remember seeing these cartoons as a child. There were experts, people who knew better, who knew the languages and history of Southeast Asia, who had lived and worked there, who tried to tell Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon that the conflict in Vietnam was peculiar to that place. They were systematically ignored and pushed aside. David Halberstam’s classic The Best and the Brightest documents this process convincingly. America had every right to choose sides in the struggle between Hanoi and Saigon, even to try to influence the outcome, but lacking a legitimate or even marginally capable ally its military effort was misguided and doomed. At the very least, Vietnam should stand as a permanent caution against going to war for any but the most immediate, direct, and vital national interest, or to prevent genocide or wider conflict, and then only in concert with other countries. After
”
”
Mark Bowden (Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam)
“
the convention, any one of five acts is considered genocide if “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.11 In
”
”
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning American History, #3))
“
The white men in the East are like birds. They are hatching out their eggs every year, and there is not room enough in the East and they must go elsewhere; and they come west, as you have seen them coming for the last few years. And they are still coming, and will come until they overrun all of this country; and you can't prevent it. [...] Everything is decided in Washington by the majority, and these people come out west and see that the Indians have a big body of land they are not using, and they say we want the land.
”
”
George Crook
“
the Blank Slate had, and has, a dark side. The vacuum that it posited in human nature was eagerly filled by totalitarian regimes, and it did nothing to prevent their genocides. It perverts education, childrearing, and the arts into forms of social engineering. It torments mothers who work outside the home and parents whose children did not turn out as they would have liked. It threatens to outlaw biomedical research that could alleviate human suffering. Its corollary, the Noble Savage, invites contempt for the principles of democracy and of “a government of laws and not of men.” It blinds us to our cognitive and moral shortcomings. And in matters of policy it has elevated sappy dogmas above the search for workable solutions. The Blank Slate is not some ideal that we should all hope and pray is true. No, it is an anti-life, anti-human theoretical abstraction that denies our common humanity, our inherent interests, and our individual preferences.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature)
“
One example of systematic oppression is structural violence. This concept was introduced in the 1970s by Johan Galtung, a pioneering Norwegian researcher in peace and conflict, and founder of the International Peace Research Institute. He describes structural violence as “a form of violence which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a given social structure or social institution kills people slowly by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Institutionalized elitism, ethnocentricism, classism, racism, sexism, adultism, nationalism, heterosexism and ageism are just some examples of structural violence. Life spans are reduced when people are socially dominated, politically oppressed, or economically exploited. Structural violence and direct violence are highly interdependent. Structural violence inevitably produces conflict and often direct violence including family violence, racial violence, hate crimes, terrorism, genocide, and war.
”
”
Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky (Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others)
“
As we close out the second decade of the twenty-first century, we can draw some conclusions about the post–Cold War era. This has been a period in which new information and communication technologies have burst onto the world scene in forms that have made them widely available. There have also been great advances in development, including in medicine and life expectancy. Economic growth has been considerable and widespread. Wars between countries have become rare. But this has also been an era in which the advance of democracy has slowed or even reversed. Inequality has increased significantly. The number of civil wars has increased, as has the number of displaced persons and refugees. Terrorism has become a global threat. Climate change has advanced with dire implications for both the near and the distant futures. The world has stood by amid genocide and has shown itself unable to agree on rules for cyberspace and unable to prevent the reemergence of great-power rivalry. Those who maintain that things have never been better are biased by what they are focusing on and underestimate trends that could put existing progress at risk.
”
”
Richard N. Haass (The World: A Brief Introduction)
“
By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel’s spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. The killing of the Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite identity but also served as a shattering, tangible illustration of Israel’s being set exclusively apart for God.
”
”
William Lane Craig
“
Of course, according to the deniers, the answer to this question is quite simple: German officials were forced into a false admission of guilt by “the Jews,” who threatened to prevent Germany’s reentry into the family of nations. But this, too, makes little sense. German leaders had to know that admitting to a genocide of such proportions would impose upon the nation a horrific legacy that would become an integral part of its national identity. Why would a country take on such a historical burden if it were innocent? Moreover, seventy years after the end of the war, with Germany now a global political and economic leader, it could have proclaimed that “it’s not true; the Jews made us say this back in 1945.” Instead, the German government created a massive memorial in Berlin to the murdered Jews.
”
”
Deborah E. Lipstadt (Antisemitism: Here and Now)
“
But so far as I can ascertain [the] record now is, despite our commitments and moral obligations: (1) we have failed to take effective action [to repatriate accused Yugoslav war criminals], (2) we have prevented [the] British from taking effective action, (3) we have not insisted that Italy take effective action, (4) we are apparently conniving with the Vatican and Argentina to get guilty people to haven in the latter country. I sincerely hope I am mistaken, particularly regarding [this] latter point. How can we defend this record?…”31
”
”
Christopher Simpson (The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Forbidden Bookshelf))
“
Pluralism, transparency, separation of powers, and the rule of law are obstacles that prevents autocracy's triumph. In return, autocracy deceives the masses with its spectacular lies to bypass democracy and builds its legitimacy on these promises. At the same time, it forbids even two people from talking each other in private, so as not to spoil its spells. That is why, in authoritarian regimes, at least one person is recruited as an agent from each household. But a naive child who may rat out everything that he/she hears at home is an irreplaceable agent.
-To be tried as a Jew-
”
”
Jeyhun Aliyev Silo
“
Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.
”
”
Madison Grant (The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History)
“
The growing population is bound to manifest itself on a grand scale as the scarcity of resources and minerals on earth causes environmental issues to arise due to pressure on chastity and exactitude in this nature. The lives of Democrats will be changed into large variations in the pursuit of a prosperous life and the factions of every policy of modernization. Every living soul will be deprived of purity and precision as they will be genocidally opposed and confiscated with heavy wrecking equipment supplied by that era because they have licence for it. They will continue to carry on and perpetuate poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy. In today's epoch, population growth is needed to moratorium in an extreme manner, so that overpopulation can be prevented.
”
”
Viraaj Sisodiya
“
the most general condition for guilt-free massacre is the denial of humanity to the victim. You call the victims names like gooks, dinks, niggers, pinkos, and jags. The more you can get high officials in government to use these names and others like yellow dwarfs with daggers and rotten apples, the more your success.... If contact is allowed, or it cannot be prevented, you indicate the contact is not between equals; you talk about the disadvantaged, the deprived. Troy Duster, "Conditions for Guilt-Free Massacre" (1971)
”
”
Brendan C. Lindsay (Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846-1873)
“
If you add up all the wars, genocides, and terrorist acts that occurred since 1973, the death toll is a staggering twelve million. Prior to its eradication, smallpox killed 1.5 to 3 million people every year, so by preventing these deaths for over forty years, its eradication has effectively saved somewhere between 60 and 120 million lives. The eradication of smallpox is one success story from aid, saving five times as many lives as world peace would have done.
”
”
William MacAskill (Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference)
“
During a news conference aboard a plane on his way home from Seoul on Monday, Francis was asked: "Do you approve [of] the American bombing?" The question was set up with a comment that the United States is "bombing the terrorists in Iraq, to prevent a genocide, to protect minorities, including Catholics." Francis avoided addressing details of the Iraq conflict, instead going into a more general discussion of Catholic theory and teaching on war. "In these cases where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say this: It is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underline the verb: stop. I do not say bomb, make war, I say stop by some means. With what means can they be stopped? These have to be evaluated. To stop the unjust aggressor is licit," he said, according to a transcript by America magazine.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Since 1945 Turkey has, of course, acquired far more importance for the US as a strategic ally, first in the Cold War and now the War on Terror. In the last twenty years, increasing pressure from the Armenian community, today much more salient than in the 1920s, and the emergence of an Armenian scholarship that has pioneered modern study of the exterminations of 1915-16 in the West, have made repression of the question more difficult. After previously unsuccessful attempts to get resolutions on it through Congress, in 2000 the House International Relations Committee voted for a bipartisan resolution condemning the Armenian genocide, while carefully exempting the Turkish Republic from any responsibility for it. Ankara’s response was to threaten withdrawal of American military facilities in Turkey, trade reprisals, and to talk of a risk of violence against Americans in Turkey – the State Department even had to issue a travel advisory – if the resolution were passed by Congress. Characteristically, Clinton intervened in person to prevent the resolution getting to the floor. In Ankara, Ecevit exulted that it was a demonstration of Turkish power.
”
”
Perry Anderson
“
Randy says, “You asked me earlier what is the highest and best purpose to which we could dedicate our lives. And the obvious answer is ‘to prevent future Holocausts.’ ”
Avi laughs darkly. “I’m glad it’s obvious to you, my friend. I was beginning to think I was the only one.”
“What!? Get over yourself, Avi. People are commemorating the Holocaust all the time.”
“Commemorating the Holocaust is not, not not not not not, the same thing as fighting to prevent future holocausts. Most of the commemorationists are just whiners. They think that if everyone feels bad about past holocausts, human nature will magically transform, and no one will want to commit genocide in the future.”
“I take it you do not share this view, Avi?”
“Look at Bosnia!” Avi scoffs. “Human nature doesn’t change, Randy. Education is hopeless. The most educated people in the world can turn into Aztecs or Nazis just like that.” He snaps his fingers.
“So what hope is there?”
“Instead of trying to educate the potential perpetrators of holocausts, we try to educate the potential victims. They will at least pay some fucking attention.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
“
They took her; sent Anna to the state-run school.’ In the near-dark, Henry’s eyes narrow. ‘The schools prevent Uyghur kids from practicing Islam. Change their language, enforcing standard Mandarin. Make them eat pork. It’s Basic Genocide 101.
”
”
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier (Off the Books)
“
In short, self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection—or compassionate action.
”
”
James Waller (Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide)
“
Three times more peace agreements were negotiated and signed during the first decade of the post-Cold War era (1990–2000) than in the previous three decades combined. At the United Nations (UN), more peace operations were mounted in the decade of the 1990s than in the previous four decades combined.25 In spite of these global peace dividends, we witnessed in the 1990s some of the most egregious cases of civilian populations being “done to death.” Although fewer borders were violated, more people were. In 1994, in Rwanda, more than 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in the space of just 100 days. Three hundred and thirty-three and a third murders occurred per hour. Five and a half lives terminated every minute, a rate of death nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust.
”
”
James Waller (Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide)
“
Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden which our century has placed on us—neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be.
”
”
James Waller (Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide)
“
At its root, genocide happens because we choose to see a people rather than individual people and then we choose to kill those people in large numbers and over an extended period of time.
”
”
James Waller (Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide)
“
the Enlightenment’s belief in continuous improvement and advance is no longer credible. It has stalled, and it did nothing to prevent the horrors of the Holocaust, the world wars, and the genocides in the twentieth century. Whether the progress hoped for was for human advance in general or the dream of economic betterment in particular, the evident frustration and cynicism in the younger generation stem from their bitter conclusion: The promised future may not be better than the past, yet the term progressive is still flaunted as self-evident.
”
”
Os Guinness (Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times)
“
Hate is not a simple absolute; it has many forms. In its base appearance, hate is about social exclusion and stigmatizing others. It can also be about bullying and ridicule, segregation and economic disadvantage, all the way to violence and genocide. But, combatting hate first begins with combatting social exclusion and stigmatization; all other forms cannot flourish if prevented from taking root in this soil.
”
”
Kurian Mathew Tharakan
“
The moral certainty about preventing another genocide imparts a moral justification to the pursuit of power with impunity.
”
”
Mahmood Mamdani (When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda)
“
The term “genocide” has usually been reserved for particular conditions defined in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted on December 9, 1948, in the aftermath of the fascist scourge during World War II. Some of you are probably familiar with the wording of that convention, but let me share it with you: “Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such, killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
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Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
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any one of five acts is considered genocide if “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.11
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Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning American History, #3))
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Cabot continued. “But so far as I can ascertain [the] record now is, despite our commitments and moral obligations: (1) we have failed to take effective action [to repatriate accused Yugoslav war criminals], (2) we have prevented [the] British from taking effective action, (3) we have not insisted that Italy take effective action, (4) we are apparently conniving with the Vatican and Argentina to get guilty people to haven in the latter country. I sincerely hope I am mistaken, particularly regarding [this] latter point. How can we defend this record?…
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Christopher Simpson (The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Forbidden Bookshelf))
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Lansing lobbied influential friends before and during the conference, historian James Willis reports, arguing that “any breakdown of authority in Germany must be avoided to prevent the spread of Bolshevism.”27
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Christopher Simpson (The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Forbidden Bookshelf))
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They claim that the mass infusion of nonwhite populations into Europe and the United States—which has never been democratically approved of by any of the host populations and has instead been foisted upon them—violate this passage in 1948’s United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. The howling double standard—i.e., the fact that no one is forcing Africa, Asia, or Israel to “diversify” while cramming diversity into every majority-white nation on earth—has led to Robert Whitaker’s famous phrase “Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
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Jim Goad (Whiteness: The Original Sin)
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We can prevent power structures from returning by establishing exosocial collaboration and refusing to allow autogenocidal actions like pollution to be re-normalized.
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Heather Marsh (The Creation of Me, Them and Us)
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Education plays a key role in preventing genocide.
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David Eagleman (The Brain: The Story of You)
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With unity and absolute togetherness, we can prevent genocide from taking place again. The future of our children is of great essentiality to us, and we can assuredly make a better future for them if we stand together. Together we stand, divided we fall!”
-Shenita Etwaroo
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Shenita Etwaroo
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What is an Indian?", asked Commissioner Thomas Morgan two years after the Wounded Knee massacre. And his answer, "blood and land". He was right, but not in a way he understood. If the U.S. army and government had spent more in the ruthless elimination of the tribes, root and branch, as Sherman hoped, then strangled off their resources as Congress wanted, the "Indian problem" would have been solved. But nothing is straightforward in American history, not even ruthlessness and the nation's better angels prevented total genocide. Their hearts were right but their methods were mad. To save the Indian, they reasoned, they must kill the Indian inside. Thus began decades of social engineering rivaling the darkest visions of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. The reservation was the laboratory where new and often contradictory policies were introduced and tested much like those classic social experiments where lab rats are shocked and rewarded but always randomly. Each era had its own philosophy. Assimilation, reeducation, christianization and termination of the tribes. Yet the purpose of each was similar. Strip the Indian of his "Indian-ness", then reshape him as an idealized american, stamped and milled as if in a machine. It is easy to see why the young rebels of AIM felt such loathing for the BIA and Washington. In the parlance of the counter-culture, they saw it as "the machine". How does one survive in such a world? The machine is overwhelming and unstoppable, larger than any one woman or man. Black Elk saw it early, though he never used such dystopian terms. Perhaps the only true defense is the most intimate, preservation of one's soul. Seen that way, his life is more than just another tale of Indian vs. white, it becomes instead a parable of modern man.
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Joe Jackson
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But President Kagame himself told me that when we have lived through their many genocides (1994 was actually but one in a long series), we will have the experience and the right to judge their genocide prevention policies.
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Ashley Judd (All That Is Bitter And Sweet: A Memoir)
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A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide—a moving, tightly reasoned discussion of America’s lackluster response to genocide and the need for stronger global leadership in preventing mass atrocities.
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Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
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Mass annihilation, mass extermination, and mass murder are in most respects broader terms than genocide, which was coined for purposes of international law. The UN Convention on Genocide of 1948 was meant to encourage early intervention by outside powers in order to prevent or stop mass killings and to bring the
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Abram de Swaan (The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder)