Email Query to the Genocide Heads

Dear Friends,

I know it is a trope to link genocide to economic turmoil, as most recently seen in journalism surrounding the rising ride of xenophobia in the European Union against the Roma.

But is it really true? Has anybody done a survey of economic turmoil to see if genocide is significantly and statistically related?

I am painfully aware of the way the common wisdom, the necessities of national myth and so on severely deform the study of genocide. I am wondering if this connection is also part of the common wisdom which real scholarship would show to be just plain not true.

I am perfectly willing for it to be true, but it seems to be one of those motives for genocide -- in which races are conflated with their capital, for example, the Sino-Khmer or the Jews as richies, and African Americans and the Roma as poories -- which is exculpatory.

With thanks, and etc
PJ

From the NYT/4/2/00

Europe talks much of common aspirations and a continental identity. But the 1990's made clear that Europe's most virulent problem remains prejudice toward minorities and their exclusion from a full range of democratic rights.

The Yugoslav civil wars focused attention on the dangers of a militant nationalism, but in a misleading way. When most of Europe goes to war with a small corner of the continent to defend the rights of an oppressed people in Kosovo, it can seem as if Europeans have learned the lesson of tolerance and are simply disciplining an outmoded recalcitrant, Slobodan Milosevic.

But the worsening plight of the Roma and the increasing intolerance in central and eastern Europe after 1989 are bracing antidotes to smugness about the post-Communist spread of shared values.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/02/weekinreview/ideas-trend-no-room-for-gypsies-across-new-europe-people-deemed-unfit-for.html?scp=1&sq=no%20room%20for%20gypsies&st=cse

Tarantulas Tienen Almas: Animal Abuse by Off-Grid and Urban Farmstead Growers

In fulfillment of producer certification for the local public access TV station, I've produced the standard free speech PSA. The end has been truncated, but the kicker is, apropos the hissing, La expresion es para todos. Free speech is for everybody.

My views on the proper care of animals by so-called "off grid" and "urban farmstead" growers may be deduced from this clip. If you can't afford to fence predators out, and your goats/pigs/poultry in, without tethering them, you should not be keeping animals. If you can't afford a sufficiency of good fresh pasture, and protect your neighbors' cash crop trees from being girdled by foraging livestock -- trees which are often poison to the livestock -- you should not be keeping animals. If you can't afford to build a shelter which is predator/fly/thief and weather proof, you should not be keeping animals. If you can't afford to feed them the right mix of grain and grass, if you can't afford to take them to the vet when they get sick from what you permit them to forage, then you should not be keeping animals. If you can't afford to dip, deworm and delouse them and their quarters, you should not be keeping animals. If you fail properly to disinfect their udders and anuses, their feeding utensils, clean their fur, feathers, ears, teeth and hoofs, or dispose of their disease-spreading manure, especially in urban or village settings, then you should not be keeping animals. We bring them into the world and we need to take loving care of them until their deaths. If you can't do that, don't keep animals.

And realize I will report you to the animal welfare authorities every time.

No matter where you are.

Emma Chambers Rocks the Vicar of Dibley