[link|http://users.skynet.be/yekiti/ingilizi/rightcolumn/kurdishmedia14-03-2004.htm|Giving you the backstory now for the news of the future]

Excerpt:

They started a campaign of forced Arabization and assimilation.
All Kurdish publications, schools and organizations were outlawed,
Kurdish activists jailed and tortured, hundreds of Kurdish villages forcefully depopulated from their Kurdish inhabitant and replaced by
Arabs, the Syrian government in 1963 suspended the Syrian citizenship from 200,000 Kurds and forced the Kurds to change their Kurdish names to Arabic names. The Baathest government uses fascist policies of arrest, murder, torture, discrimination and terror to keep the Kurds under control. They left the Kurdish area backward, poor and unable to support its population. Their aims are to force the Kurds to leave Kurdistan to other Syrian cities or out of Syria and to destroy the Kurdish Culture and identity.

These inhuman policies created an economic, political, social and psychological tragedy for the Kurds in Syria. It is a genocide against the Kurdish identity, culture and human dignity.

The recent news coming out of Syria on March 12-13, 2004, indicate that the attack on the Kurds in Qamishli was organized by the Baath Party Arab members and their team Fotowa (Youth). Thousands of Arab Baathests transported by buses from Dear Azoor City carrying arms and Saddam Hussein\ufffds pictures to Qamishli City. They chanted slogans against the Kurds and attacked the Kurdish population with help from the Syrian security police.

In the last two days between 22 to 50 persons were killed by the Syrian security police and more than 1500 arrested. The Kurds demonstrated all over the Kurdish cities and in Damascus the Capital of Syria demanding an immediate investigation and the Kurdish rights.

These current events of violence and oppression against the Kurdish people in Qamishli and other Kurdish cities in Syria are an indication that the Syrian government is following the steps of Saddam Hussein\ufffds policies against the Kurds.

It is time for the international community and the USA, EU, UN to protect the Kurds in Syria and stop these atrocities.

It is time to start the Democratization process of the Middle East and Syria.

I say:

Well, scratch the UN. They don't give a damn about people who don't have their own nation state. Except Palestinians, and that's only because they hate Jews. Too bad you don't hate Jews. The UN might help you out then.

And the EU don't give a damn about actual human beings at all.

USA? We'll get to you guys. Don't know when. When the election is over, we'll all have a better idea of the timeframe.

Remember when the Left could claim with a straight face to care about the oppressed peoples of the world, and not be laughed off the pulpit? Yes, it's been a while.

And wait, didn't most of those native tribes *want* to live in primitive, squalid conditions? Wasn't that the way of life they were fighting to defend? Against assimilation into a technologically progressive democracy? And didn't they get part of what they wanted in the end? Those miserable reservations are a compromise. All their inhabitants really lost was an illusion of freedom. And they passed up the opportunity to taste the real thing. Their choice.

The ones who moved on... don't count, because they don't think of themselves as native Americans anymore. They're just people. Individual human beings living in a free and prosperous society, who just happen to be descended from a particular class of primitive people (Native Americans) instead of another class of primitive people (Indo-Europeans) Or more likely, descended from both classes. But that sort of distinction only means something to a racist.

At least by ignoring these people, the Native American whiners implicitly acknowledge that it's about culture, not race. But culture is a choice. It's not who you are, it's what you choose to be. Or to settle for being. In a free society, we can choose our actions. But on planet Earth, we are never free to choose the consequences of our actions. In other words, you can have it either way you want, but you can't have it both ways. Those on the reservations made their choice to live there instead of joining the larger society. At least those of adult age have. They deserve the same consideration as those who choose to live in a hippie commune or a Kool-Aid cult compound. If it works for them, leave them to it. If it doesn't, let them deal with it.

I have a suspicion that more chose to move on than to cling to the past. But even assuming this is true, hard data are unlikely to be available in any tidy, easy-to-correctly-interpret package, because they've all been defined away into rhetorical nonexistence. The census had - shamefully - the concept of racial distinctions back then, as well as ethnic distinctions, but [link|http://www.umsystem.edu/shs/nativeam.html|not] this particular one.

Okay, Georgia treated the Cherokees shamefully. But that was the South, and the South will not rise again. You can consider that score settled. And even if it weren't, all the participants on both sides have been in their graves for quite a while now.

Meanwhile, in Syria, the Kurds say they *want* democracy and a more civilized, settled way of life. It's their oppressors that are forcing them to live lives that are nasty, brutish and short. The Baathist regime isn't interested in putting them on reservations and then leaving them to their own devices. It's interested in either ruling them or exterminating them. It was the same in Saddam's Iraq. But there the Kurds managed to create their own reservation by force. Wherein they enjoyed a quality and length of life *better* than they would have had otherwise. Even without the casino resorts. But they still had to fight to maintain it. Frankly, our Indian tribes have it soft.

I don't care about the Kurds because they're Kurds. I care about the Kurds because they want democracy, civilization, and the privilege of breathing, and there are thugs trying to deny them all these things. The ethnicity is beside the point. As it should be.

Kurds in Syria == American Indians? Only if black == white.

I say he was wrong. But I'd very much like to see you on the record.

And please, something more substantial that a "who cares" this time.

Bush was a wimp, and in my book, that's a bad thing. Oh, and he raised new taxes, too.