Tamil protest trumps Holocaust Memorial Day

[Dave_ON]

no the scale is supposedly the REASON why we are forced to remember. It'd be kinda hard to get people to sob and mourn 100 dead Jews, in the midst of the tens of millions dead in the war...

And of course, anyone acquainted with recent history, knows that the holocaust HAS BEEN repeated... In china, Russia, East Europe after the war, South East Asia, Rwanda etc... and it WILL happen again.

so apparently the lesson did'nt work and the "let's remember so it never happens again" argument is moot.

Again you're quite incorrect in your assumptions sir. Even you can concede that the number of dead far exceeded 100 and it was not only Jews that were taken. Anyone who is at all acquainted with the holocaust is fully aware that Gypsies, Gays and various other undesirables among society were also sent there. These people were not the casualties of war, these were state murders. War has its casualties absolutely, but that is to be expected, there will always be loss of combatants on either side. These were not soldiers, they were regular people like you and I that were rounded up and slaughtered because the powers that be didn't like who they were.

The fact that it has happened again does not give us license to forget what happen, nor does it mean we should attempt to prevent it from happening again. If we don't learn from history then we will invariably repeat it. I would postulate that the argument that because it has and will happen again is immaterial. Remembering won't stop this from occurring all over the world that's true, but to forget and do nothing when history starts to repeat itself is little better than enabling those who would commit such crimes to do so. Apathy certainly isn't the answer. This is nothing more than a revisionist excuse to try and sweep a human tragedy under the rug or at the very least try and reduce its significance and impact to obscurity.

[DogOnPorch]

the kurds where systemically persecuted in many regions in the middle east and levant... as where the Roma... as where the Kulaks in Ukraine during the Holodomor Genocide... as where the bourgeois class in China...

anyways..

Not on the same industrial scale as seen in the 3rd Reich. Nor was ROMA written on shop doors and such. Crystal Night, for example, was a Nazi-Jewish affair. With the Nazis, it was like...well, we're already locking-up and killing Jews. Why not get rid of the other 'troublemakers' at the same time? That the Nazis found shooting their victims too expensive to maintain shows the extent of the affair.

Stalin does come close in some ways. The Great Purge in particular. But, even in the Ukraine with its millions starved, it was more the absolute failure of collectivization in the area that did the 'deed' rather than any particular hatred Stalin held towards the Ukrainians. He hated everyone in the Soviet Union equally it seems. My lot in the old Soviet Union (Volga Germans) were all sent to the camps during WW2 as traitors least they cooperate with the advancing Germans. Never to be seen again, etc.

Mao would be the next on the list I suppose before and during the Cultural Revolution. But again, the reasons for being singled out were vague. Was it that you were educated or used that education to spread lies about the government? Or perhaps it was because you owned a cat...who knows?

The Khmers were more like a bad nighmare that came and went without much sense or reason as to the killings. Nothing in particular singled their victims out that I can see other than not being KR.

Kurds and Armenians no doubt have suffered. But hardcore facts on both sides of the equation prevent us (for now) from really knowing the extent of these events. Sort of like those old battles where historians of the time estimated troop numbers in the hundreds of thousands when they could be much less...or much more. Not many census takers in the area...

[Borg]

The numbers murdered during The Holocaust are always 'in doubt' because while Germans kept excellent records, they were also pretty good at covering their tracks when faced with defeat after 1943. At Babi Yar, the SS went back and tried to dig up every stinking corpse from the last two years...burn them and crush-up the bones. Well...the SS didn't do the digging, of course. The remaining ashes and bone dust was then spread over near-by farmland. Cabbages, apparently.

How many died at Babi Yar? Nobody knows. Many.

But, one gets a pretty good idea about the extent of the (Jewish) Holocaust by looking at the pre-war and post-war population of Poland.

Re: Tamils protesting.

They came to Canada to flee their problems now they want Canada to fight the fight they should be fighting? Pu-leaze. Get a job. I know I can't afford to sit on Parliment Hill for weeks on end. How can they?

Your tax dollars at work - and they are so very grateful to you and the other tax payers who feed and clothe them

Borg

[DogOnPorch]

Your tax dollars at work - and they are so very grateful to you and the other tax payers who feed and clothe them

Borg

I'm getting used to 'the love' they take.

It's easier than 'the love' we make...

[tango]

So ... life is only about money?

I am disturbed by people who equate the Tamils in Canada with the Tamil Tigers.

Clearly, from their own message, they are not terrorists. Rather, they are civilians who were at one time trapped in the fighting and escaped to safety. However, they are very concerned about their fellow Tamils still caught in the firing line between Sri Lankan and LTTE forces, being used as human shields by the LTTE. Also clearly, they demand that LTTE stop forced recruiting.

They are committed enough to protecting their countrymen to amass over 30,000 for the protest on Parliament Hill.

Also, if you googled once you could learn that despite recency of immigration, the Tamil population is doing quite well economically in Canada, owning homes, businesses, and with an unemployment rate only slightly higher than our own.

I see no rationale for the ignorance and disrespect heaped upon them by some posters here, who should be ashamed of themselves, imo.

Edited April 22, 2009 by tango

[CANADIEN]

Re: Tamils protesting.

They came to Canada to flee their problems now they want Canada to fight the fight they should be fighting? Pu-leaze. Get a job. I know I can't afford to sit on Parliment Hill for weeks on end. How can they?

Interesting... so you know that everybody at that protest is there all the time, that no one has a job, etc. Could it be that you're there watching them?

[CANADIEN]

It was only peaceful as a tactic this week. Last week they were blocking half the streets downtown, along with the transitway, waving proterrorist signs, and threatening people who complained.

You mean like white truckers do at Queen's Park two three times a year?

And you got yet another opportuinty to say something stupid and inane.

And instead, I pointed to the stupidity and inannity of your opinions. Edited April 23, 2009 by CANADIEN

[CANADIEN]

I would have thought that YOU of all people, would by now have come to understand my contempt is directed at people I consider to be sub-literate cretins whose behaviour, attitude, culture and intellectual abilities mark than as distinctly inferior to what I'd consider an acceptable norm.

And clearly, that has no causal relationship with skin pigmentation.

Although I freely admit that a majority of the world's barbarians do indeed have a darker skin pigmentation.

It's nothing to do with skin colour, or place of origin, or religion for that matter.

But most of the inferiors are not white. and the examples are almost always taken from non-white.

Don't be surprised if I smile while watching you digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole/

[CANADIEN]

You think literacy exempts people from being described as savages?

Would you object if someone were to describe Hitler and his Nazis, Mao and his communist zealots, or Pol Pot and his utopian murderers as savages?

But nobody describes white Europeans as savages because of Hitler.

[Hydraboss]

So ... life is only about money?

Yes, it is.

Also, if you googled once you could learn that despite recency of immigration, the Tamil population is doing quite well economically in Canada, owning homes, businesses, and with an unemployment rate only slightly higher than our own.

Just a question. How come people can pull "stats" on how well the Tamils (or any other identifiable group) are doing in Canada, but we can't find numbers on their contribution to crime, etc? "We don't keep crime statistics based on race or ethnicity" or some BS like that, unless the point is to prove that they're "good" for Canada.

[CANADIEN]

deleted

Edited April 24, 2009 by CANADIEN