Western powers were divided over how or whether to intervene. ibid.
The war had already ripped apart a nation. It would go on to threaten the credibility of Nato and the UN. It would force foreign powers into secret and unsavoury alliances. And it would lead to the worst act of genocide in Europe since the Holocaust. ibid.
‘Yugoslavia had succeeded against all the odds in reconciling most of these nationalities roughly into a state. When Tito died, it fell apart and that natural quilt – that patchwork quilt of nationalities – became a source of great instability.’ ibid. Michael Clarke, military specialist
The Federation splintered along national and ethnic lines … Bosnia & Hertzegovina was the most diverse of the Yugoslav republics. ibid.
On 3rd March 1992 the Bosnia parliament in Sarajevo formally declared the country’s independence. ibid.
A plan directed from Belgrade by [Radovan] Karadzic’s key ally – Slobodan Milosevic posed as a strong man. The President of the Serbian republic, he had seized power on a wave of nationalism. Now he sought to carve out a greater Serbia from the remains of Yugoslavia. ibid.
What would the rest of the world do about it? ibid.
In the early days of the war the Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniacs were allies against the Bosnian Serbs … They began fighting each other instead. ibid.
A secret weapons conduit was developed to try to bolster the Bosnian government. Donations from the Middle East were used to buy weapons from Hungary, Argentina, the former USSR and Pakistan … The investigation was a whitewash. ibid.
The people of Bosnia were the ones to suffer. The cost of that international indecision was about to become horrifyingly clear. ibid.
Bosnian Serbs seized 400 UN troops and held them hostage as human shields. ibid.
Peace talks began and a ceasefire was declared. ibid.
There are three words that summarise the whole history of humanity: civilisation, colonisation, extermination … between colonists and colonised … Entire civilisations in the western hemisphere were wantonly destroyed, setting the western world on a path of greed and destruction. Exterminate All the Brutes I: The Disturbing Confidence of Ignorance, Sky Documentaries 2021
In Sweden, one of the most tolerant countries in Europe, like everywhere else in the world, hate is on the rise again. ibid.
America was born as a colonial power … it bears the fatal capacity to destruct the core story we have been told all these years and the very foundation of this country … A story of survival and violence. ibid.
Kurtz [Heart of Darkness]: Exterminate all the brutes ... It simply tells the truth we try to forget. ibid.
Renowned industrialist Henry Ford gave the Nazi party all the profits from cars sold in Germany. And every year an additional $350,000 was allocated for Hitler’s birthday. ibid.
The charge of genocide when applied to the United States has been unacceptable for a very long time. But the evidence leaves no other choice today. ibid.
It is about how African bodies became properties and source of labour. ibid.
The demand for rubber exploded: this would carry incalculable consequences for the villagers of the Congo. ibid.
The history of America is being written in a world where few little boys want to be Indians. In 1492 neither Europe as we know it nor Whiteness as we now experience it existed as such. Exterminate All the Brutes II: Who the Fuck is Columbus
The great majority of these people did not die in battle; most died of disease, hunger, and inhuman labour conditions because their social organisation had been wrecked by the white conquerors. ibid.
Trading human beings: what sick mind thought of this first? Brought by force and pushed to death: slavery, or the trade as they referred to it euphemistically. ibid.
The silencing of the Haitian revolution is part of a narrative of global domination; nevertheless, the revolution played a central role in the collapse of the entire system of slavery and in the liberation of the land in America. Haiti created the possible. ibid.
During the sixteenth century, England began its brutal conquest of Ireland, and declared half a million acres of land in the north open to settlement. Under British colonial rule, the Irish were regarded as a lower species and naturally inferior. They were descendants of apes. ibid.
Methods of genocide: massacre, sterilization, mutilation, destruction of cultural symbols, deportation, starvation, forceful conversion, separation of families, slavery. ibid.
On these roads, the circulation of the most valuable and decisive commodities would permit the survival of the human race in its adaptation of the planet. And along these roads, for better or worse, silk of course would circulate, but also religion, language, refugees, artists, technology and pandemics. Exterminate All the Brutes s1e3: Killing at a Distance or … How I Thoroughly Enjoyed the Outing *****
Sudan 1898 colonials wars. In Omdurman in 1989 the whole European arsenal was tested against a numerically superior and very determined enemy. One of the most cheerful depicters of war was Winston Churchill, later Nobel winner for Prize for Literature. Was the war correspondent of the Morning Post. ‘Nothing like the battle of Obdurman will ever be seen again’, wrote Churchill in a book published after the experience. ibid.
128,800. An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan by Winston Spencer Churchill: ‘They were a condensed mass: 2,800 yards from the 32nd field battery and the gunboats. The ranges were known. It was a matter of machinery. The mind was fascinated by the impending horror. I could see it coming. In a few seconds swift destruction would rush on these brave men … It was based on a fatal underestimation of the effectiveness of modern weapons. Within the space of five hours, the strongest best armed and savage army yet arrayed against a modern European power had been destroyed and dispersed with hardly any difficulty, comparatively small risk and insignificant loss to the victors. Thus ended the Battle of Omdurman, the most striking triumph ever gained by the arms of science against barbarians … only a sporting element in a splendid game. ibid.
The United States, a capitalist imperialist state. And having more arms allows more expansion. More expansion means more wars. For which you then need more arms. A profitable chicken and egg would ensue in a totally incestuous relationship between military, industry and governments. ibid.
The symbol of all evil: it is something odd, hidden deep behind two words: Hiroshima, Nagasaki. It was said that it was a war against fascism. It was said it was to prevent further American deaths, but hundreds of thousands died, the accounting is irrefutable. In a chess game, the objective is to checkmate the opponent’s king. All of the pieces then become collateral. Their respective value depends on the strategic value you assign to them. In the present case the King is an emperor, and Japanese death will provide the collateral. Shock and awe. A massacre determined by an algorithm. It came at eight o’clock on August 6th 1945. Nobody was expecting it. They were pawns in a sordid game. Killing at a distance had just taken on a new meaning. No explanation required, no cries tolerated. No pity. ibid.
Joseph Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness was influenced by the Battle of Omdurman. ibid.
A new era in the history of racism. Europeans started mistaking military superiority for intellectual and even biological superiority. That’s when things turned nasty. No-one had to pretend any more. ibid.
Baden-Powell writes to his mother: ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the outing. Except for want of a fight. Which I fear will preclude our getting any medals or decoration’. ibid.
Lord Salisbury, Albert Hall 4th May 1898: ‘One can roughly divide the nations of the world into the living and the dying. The weak nations become increasingly weaker and the strong, stronger. It was in the nature of things that the living nations would fraudulently encroach on the territory of the dying.’ ibid.
The Germans did not think that as a higher race they had any need to abide by treaties they made with the natives. As in north America, the German plans for immigration presupposed that the natives were to be relieved of all land of any value. When the Hereros resisted … every Herero found within the German borders with or without weapons was to be shot … 80,000 Hereros died in the desert. ibid.
Eugenics: The over-infatuation with genetic impurity, an impressive amount of energy put into the classification of people. A pathological obsession for the concept of race that scientifically doesn’t exist. ibid.
The Myth of Pristine Wilderness: a land with no people does not exist. The idea that America was virgin land, a wilderness inhabited by non-people called savages, is a myth. Only through killing and displacement does it become uninhabited. Before the arrival of the British, north America was a continent of villages, of nations, of confederations of nations. Exterminate All the Brutes IV: The Bright Colours of Fascism
The Navy Seal team members who carried out the assassination of Osama bin Laden on May 2nd 2011 were reporting in real time to President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials in the sealed Situation Room. Following the operation, The New York Daily News commented, ‘Along with the unseen pictures of Osama bin Laden’s corpse and questions about what Pakistan knew, intelligence officials’ reasons for dubbing the Al Qaeda boss ‘Geronimo’ remain one of the biggest mysteries of the Black Ops mission.’ ibid.