USA and genocide

I fully agree with your comments reproduced below. I only tried to limit
myself to the subject matter presented by the article "Happy Birthday Mr.
Jefferson," but I appreciate your widening the issue.

I am fully aware of the plight of the Palestinians and the role played in
it by USA. Although I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian, in the early 1970s
I used to belong to a club of Jewish-Palestinian friendship consisting
mostly of progressive Jews and Palestinians who were trying to educate the
North American public about the basic issues, but without any success. When
I tried to bring myself the problem to the attention of my Jewish academic
colleagues, I was met with antagonism and veiled suggestions of being "one
of those." It is therefore encouraging that finally a sizeable section of
the American Jewish community is now recognizing the true nature of the
problem, and that even the mainstream media are reporting on it. Of course,
it should not have taken more than half a century of oppression of the
Palestinians and their untold suffering to reach this stage.

One minor point: the huge majority of Americans living today have not
"forgotten" about the genocide of the native population; they are simply
not aware of it, due to what I call "brainstuffing."

This is a real problem, and anybody who knows and is sympathetic with the
plight of the pitiful remnants of what once used to be proud people and
nations should try to make Americans aware of the true facts whenever given
the chance - publicly or privately. I have been loaning my copy of
Stannard's AMERICAN HOLOCAUST to whoever was ready to listen and learn, and
the reaction from many highly "educated" professionals ignorant of the
problem was largely positive.

However, systematic "brainstuffing" of the North American public is a truly
virulent problem. Education is supposed to countermand it, but as I know
from first-hand experience in American and Canadian universities, that is
not the case: students are trained for a profession rather than educated in
a fundamental sense of expanding their horizons.

This one of the reasons I wrote the utopian/dystopian novel MEMOIRS OF THE
FUTURE to which I refer to in my original message "Jefferson and genocide."
However, there are many other ways of countermanding brainstuffing - such
as taking advantage of the Internet. As I describe in both in that novel,
and in its sequel DAWN OF THE NEW MAN: A FUTURISTIC NOVEL OF SOCIAL CHANGE,
future versions of the Internet can become a major tool in guiding human
evolution towards a better and more enlightened society, since the Internet
by its very nature is not as easily controlled by powerful special
interests as the other media.

Unfortunately, the general state of humanity is at present largely
controlled by US power circles, and the US silent majority remains silent.
However, although the situation is desperate, it is not entirely hopeless.

As one decent and alert member of the human race to another, I wish to
thank you for your reply and your observations,

Eduard Prugovecki

_______________________________________

On April 16, 2002 "Carl H.A. Dassbach" <dassbach@mtu.edu> wrote:

>But the systematic, relentless extermination of the native people is only
>one of the great atrocities of American history, there are more such as the
>enslavement of Africans and the Black holocaust of the late 19th and early
>20th c., the herding Japanese Americans into concentration camps during
>World War II, or the fact that 8 to 10 million people in the "richest
>country in the world" go to bed hungry and 30 million lack adequate health
>insurance.
>
>National memories are selective and nations try to forget, excuse or ignore
>their atrocities.  If you are a powerful nation, forgetting is more
>successful than in the case of weaker nations who have their pasts "rubbed
>in their face."
>
>Even today, the US is the main accomplice in one of the greatest atrocities
>of the 20th and 21st century, the systematic extermination of the
>Palestinian people.
>--------------------------------------
>Carl H.A.  Dassbach
>
>Member of the Human Race,
>Planet Earth, Sol System, Milky Way Galaxy
>Dept. of Social Sciences
>Michigan Tech. Univ.
>Houghton,  MI  49931
>(906)487-2115
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <prugovecki@laguna.com.mx>
>To: <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
>Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 5:55 PM
>Subject: Jefferson and genocide
>
>
>> In the April 14, 2002 WSN communication "Jefferson and USA" Seyed Javad
>> <seyedjavad@hotmail.com> reproduces the article "Happy Birthday Mr.
>> Jefferson" by Thomas L. Krannawitter. In it Thomas Jefferson is described
>> as a great humanitarian. Thus, in the beginning of this article it is
>> stated that
>>
>> "[N]o one in human history has done more [than Thomas Jefferson] to
>advance
>> the cause of human freedom."
>>
>> The article ends with the following statement:
>>
>> "If America is ever to truly get beyond race -- if Americans are ever to
>> view one another simply as fellow citizens and friends -- we will do so
>> only by embracing the color-blind and universal principles of Thomas
>> Jefferson."
>>
>> One arives, however, at a totally different impression of Thomas Jefferson
>> by reading AMERICAN HOLOCAUST (Oxford University Press, 1992) by David E.
>> Stannard (a University of Hawaii Professor of American Studies). On its p.
>> 120 one can find the following passage:
>>
>> "Jefferson's writings on Indians are filled with the straightforward
>> assertion that the natives are to be given a simple choice - to be
>> 'extirpate[d] from the earth' or to remove themselves out of the American
>> way. Had the same words been enunciated by a German leader in 1939, and
>> directed at European Jews, they would be engraved in modern history."
>>
>> Later, on p. 240 of the same book, while comparing Bolivar (who believed
>> that the native Indians are the "legitimate owners" of the South American
>> continent) to Jefferson, Stannard writes:
>>
>> "... Jefferson would later write of the remaining Indians in America that
>> the government was obliged 'now to pursue them to extermination, or drive
>> them to new seats beyond our reach.'"
>>
>> This Jeffersonian policy was very successful. After I purchased my 1967
>> copy of ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA and read the cold statistics on pp. 75 -
>79
>> of its vol. 12, dealing with the North American Indian, I realized that the
>> greatest genocide in human history had been carried out right here, in
>> North America. Thus on p. 77 of that volume it is stated:
>>
>> "[E]vents [in USA] gave currency to the concept of the Indian as 'The
>> Vanishing American.' The decision of 1871 to discontinue treaty-making and
>> the Allotment act of 1887 were both founded on the belief that the Indians
>> would not survive."
>>
>> And yet none of my academic colleagues at Princeton, University of
>Alberta,
>> University of Toronto, and elsewhere, seemed to be aware of these facts -
>> never mind the average American or Canadian! However, well-documented
>books
>> like AMERICAN HOLOCAUST by David E. Stannard and STOLEN CONTINENTS by
>> Ronald Wright, published in the 1990s, eventually substantiated even
>> further my conclusion.
>>
>> The indifference and/or ignorance of the North American public about these
>> and other basic historical facts prompted me in part to write the
>> utopian/dystopian novel MEMOIRS OF THE FUTURE (Cross Cultural
>Publications,
>> Notre Dame, 2001), in which the docile population of one of its featured
>> imaginary countries, called FWF (Free World Federation), is systematically
>> "brainstuffed" by its media, which has built a political virtual reality
>> into which each "Freeworlder" is immersed from the moment of birth. (Note:
>> As opposed to "brainwashing," by definition "brainstuffing" takes place
>> from the moment of birth, so that its victims never even realize that
>their
>> brains have been "stuffed" with false or misleading information.)
>>
>> Assuming that there have not been two presidents of USA named Thomas
>> Jefferson (perhaps coexisting in parallel universes!?), it would be hard
>to
>> find a better example of the way "brainstuffing" is carried out than the
>> one provided by the above cited article "Happy Birthday Mr. Jefferson."
>>
>> But brainstuffing can be more subtle than that! Thus the article on Thomas
>> Jefferson on pp. 985-989 of the earlier cited volume 12 of ENCYCLOPEDIA
>> BRITANNICA makes absolutely no mention of Jefferson's writings which
>> condemned entire native nations and peoples in North America to
>extinction.
>> However, in explaining his high-level "moral sense" it states:
>>
>> "Right and wrong differed in different societies, and the criterion which
>> Jefferson accepted was the utility for a given society."
>>
>> It might be very interesting to view Hitler's philosophy and genocidal
>> policies from this utilitarian point of view.
>>
>> All I can add in conclusion is that FWF, which can be dubbed "utopia for
>> the rich," is being realized much faster than I had expected when I wrote
>> the first draft of MEMOIRS OF THE FUTURE in 1974. However, not the same
>can
>> be said of my other imaginary country named Terra, which deserves only the
>> more prosaic name of "everybody's utopia."
>>
>> Eduard Prugovecki
>> Professor Emeritus
>> University of Toronto
>>