(Copiapo, Chile)
It is one of our worst nightmares as human beings, a fear noted by many horror writers and film directors, and yet for many miners being buried alive is a very real occupational hazard. Right now thirty-three Chilean miners are trapped seven kilometres underground. They have been there for weeks; they will be there for months before being rescued.
Inevitably the mining company and the Chilean government are being accused of negligence in the affair, but once more we should look inwards to find the people responsible for tragedies of this magnitude. Our desire for gold and diamonds leads people in poor countries to play with their lives just to scrape a living. Once again, we are guilty.
Monday, August 30, 2010
La purification ethnique
(Paris, France)
Over recent weeks President Sarkozy of France has ordered that the Roma people living in his country be sent home. It is unclear where a nomadic people should be sent to, but M Sarkozy has opted for Romania and Bulgaria. It is also unclear why they should have been forced out of their homes in France, although a French government statement declared their homes to be "sources of illegal trafficking, of profoundly shocking living standards, of exploitation of children for begging, of prostitution and crime", leaving no doubt that they believe poverty to be the fault of the people.
France has a history of sending people away to wherever they were supposed to have come from. The Jews were expelled in 1182, and in 1306 and again in 1394. The Protestants known as the Huguenots were evicted in the seventeenth century.
Of course the French response to Jews was part of a Europe-wide Semitic pogrom, and their response to the Protestants was another facet of the Catholic persecution of “heresy” from the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth century. The Inquisition in its various forms killed hundreds of thousands of people; the crusade against the Jews killed millions.
The Romani people also suffered in the Holocaust, and it is clear that this latest episode in anti-ziganism is simply another chapter in a long book of persecution and murder dating back to the earliest appearance of this people in Europe. It is ethnic cleansing – there are no gas chambers this time, but Sarkozy is making sure that hatred of the Roma is fuelled and that they are expelled from rich countries and sent to poor countries where they cannot bother “decent” people.
Nothing will happen to Sarkozy – white male leaders of rich Western countries are never brought to book for their crimes against the people. Perhaps worse than that is that nothing will happen to prevent the French government from doing what it wants to the Roma – rich Western countries hate immigrants, nomads, gypsies, poor people and anyone else who does not conform to our own racial and social type. We are all guilty.
Over recent weeks President Sarkozy of France has ordered that the Roma people living in his country be sent home. It is unclear where a nomadic people should be sent to, but M Sarkozy has opted for Romania and Bulgaria. It is also unclear why they should have been forced out of their homes in France, although a French government statement declared their homes to be "sources of illegal trafficking, of profoundly shocking living standards, of exploitation of children for begging, of prostitution and crime", leaving no doubt that they believe poverty to be the fault of the people.
France has a history of sending people away to wherever they were supposed to have come from. The Jews were expelled in 1182, and in 1306 and again in 1394. The Protestants known as the Huguenots were evicted in the seventeenth century.
Of course the French response to Jews was part of a Europe-wide Semitic pogrom, and their response to the Protestants was another facet of the Catholic persecution of “heresy” from the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth century. The Inquisition in its various forms killed hundreds of thousands of people; the crusade against the Jews killed millions.
The Romani people also suffered in the Holocaust, and it is clear that this latest episode in anti-ziganism is simply another chapter in a long book of persecution and murder dating back to the earliest appearance of this people in Europe. It is ethnic cleansing – there are no gas chambers this time, but Sarkozy is making sure that hatred of the Roma is fuelled and that they are expelled from rich countries and sent to poor countries where they cannot bother “decent” people.
Nothing will happen to Sarkozy – white male leaders of rich Western countries are never brought to book for their crimes against the people. Perhaps worse than that is that nothing will happen to prevent the French government from doing what it wants to the Roma – rich Western countries hate immigrants, nomads, gypsies, poor people and anyone else who does not conform to our own racial and social type. We are all guilty.
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