POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY STEVIE CAMERON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Sorry, this is a bizarre piece.
First, no one has forgotten these horrors, and outfits like CBC spend time every year playing the record again.
Second, the world is so filled with horrors - a million killed in Iraq, two million refugees, tens of thousands killed in Afghanistan, American torture and assassination, Israel's running an endless gulag for millions of innocent people, Africa a vast continent of brutality and mass murder - that the Canadian cases almost do not stand out.
Third, it is the normal brain's function to forget savage events and try to resume normal life.
Fourth, we have a lumbering, destructive Harper government owing to the majority not getting its act together. The man slashes and burns on the support of thirty-odd percent of Canadians.
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"Great article. The truth stings for some. Rape as a war crime in Darfur, Congo etc. The subjugation of women in countries around the world (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia to name just a few), the denial of education to girls in some countries - just what are men afraid of in education? Power perhaps?"
The complete ignorance shown in postings like that is itself a serious danger to society.
If we proceed in our affairs out of ignorance, we get nowhere.
Rape in war has been a constant of history. As the Soviets entered Berlin at the end of WW II, there was an orgy of rape, not typically discussed in history texts. Literally hundreds of thousands of German women were raped, often gang-raped.
And what about the “comfort women” for the Imperial Japanese Army in WWII? And the orgies of rape and murder in places like Nanking? Tens of thousands killed and countless rapes.
And just what does the writer of that nonsense think is behind the words, read countless times in ancient history, "and the city was sacked with all the men put to the sword."
You read of the horrors of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, but we know from the world’s greatest investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, that in fact the worst stuff has been suppressed, pictures and recordings of boys being raped.
Indeed, some of our soldiers in that hellhole of Afghanistan have seen boys being raped, to the point of blood running down their legs, by those assisting us as translators and guides. It is a common practice in such repressive and backward societies, just as it is in prisons.
Such events only tell us that war is stupid and savage beyond telling, for war is just a time when sick people get to carry out whatever twisted and savage dreams they have with impunity.
After all, likely a quarter of us is mentally ill, as clearly M. Levine was. You just need the right conditions to set them off.
Because men are in general physically stronger and loaded with hormones promoting aggression, they are the perpetrators by a ratio of about 10:1 compared to women.
We need to stop promoting war, and we need to treat people in normal society who are unbalanced. Those are the real lessons here.
The denial of education to girls? God, American propaganda for the Afghan War.
Go look at countless millions of boys in India and Africa and other places who get virtually no education. Boys go to work in places like India or Pakistan doing things like sewing soccer balls or working on carpets as young as seven years old.
And in Afghanistan, are you telling me that the men of the Northern Alliance or the Taleban are educated? The entire society is unbelievably backward and poor. Even if you got a good education in Afghanistan, there would likely be no place to use it. You would have to emigrate unless you were very fortunate.
Think before you write, and go seek some knowledge before you even think.
