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My 6th Year with Hopper11 months ago
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3 comments:
Switzerland is a good place. I am happy to read what you have written here. I am a very lucky man to be living in such a country with its direct democracy and absence of kings and queens.
I am pleased to read your eloquent statement here. It is indeed a statement and told with force and certainty. I think this is good.
I must of course admit a certain naivite when it comes to the issues relating to the conflict in the middle east and must also declare a certain distance since I was born aboriginal canadian. On the other hand the behaviour of M. Chavez and Bolivia seem to indicate that some indigenous peoples, whose only relationship to israel would have been through the catholic church, have somehow declared their affiliation. I on the other hand am well read on things so innocence is more of a defence than a truth.
With regard to the Shoah, I know even less. People sometime try to stimulate a response from me by raising the question, "whose genocide was worse?." That of the Jewish People or that of the American Indians or that of etc. etc. I suspect that this is an effort to minimize and to obfuscate and I do not enter the game. When I was younger, and being a very large rugby sort of fellow, I have rather heated discussions outside of barrooms. But that was another life. To be honest, I frankly do not know what physically happened to my ancestors who are from the aboriginals of the americas since there is not a lot of evidence and there has been a lot of succesful effort to deny such a thing, some of it by people since made saints, so I simply do not know. But I know that things were not that good back then. I can say that for immediacy the horror of what happened in the world not that long ago was something that I can never comprehend. These things are so ghastly that to be touched by such things even from a a mysterious past twists up my feelings. I dislike being a victim and I feel diminished I suppose so that is in some way evidence in and of itself.
I must also say that as an aboriginal canadian, I have never been targetted for death in a systematic way. I can say that certain elements in the canadian population did not like me very much because of my race. In the end however we were never terribly important and were viewed as savages and the genocide that happened to us was incidental if such a horror could be incidental. Clearing away the vermin I suppose. I think the question raised now however is different and has always been different. The Jewish people I think have always been seen as a danger. Equals if not superior in many ways and a threat. I suspect that the specter of genocide remains real and events can sometimes be seen as a simple postponement. I for one have not I think confused the palestinian issue with the questions that still hang in the air about existence.
Genocide is genocide no matter how many people were murdered or how long ago it happened. It doesn't matter if the excuse is religion, ethnicity, power or land. It's all just a twisted expression of hate and fear.
Eventually, history has a way of ending the story.
I am thinking of Greece in the time of Tallyrand and of their struggle to exist outside of the Ottoman Empire. Is that story done?
"May you be born in interesting times" is relevant. I missed these. You have not.
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