Smarty Pants sent me this link (the video is horrible, so be warned), about the Russian plan that essentially killed Ukrainians by starvation (a quarter of the population of Ukraine starved to death in 2 years). It made me think about how effective starvation is at killing people and making them accept your terms. The Russians starved the Ukrainians; the Germans starved the Jews; everybody’s starving everybody else in Africa.
The American government cut the Aboriginal population off from their main food source, then prevented them from hunting what little there was left. The British government, who’d had a long and bold history of starving people to colonise their land, watched the Native population here dying. The Irish people lost 25% of their population the same way over a span of 7 years.
What I don’t understand is how you can watch someone treat other people this way. How could you look at a child so near death, or a man so weak he cannot stand…how could you look at them and know “I did this”, and not be filled with self-loathing?
It has to be more than propaganda. Just because I tell you “don’t feed the Indians/Irish/Ukrainians/Tutsis/Mennonites/Jews/Japanese/Homosexuals, even if they’re pretending to be hungry, because they’re not really people” doesn’t mean you should believe me. How can we still be doing this to each other? How could we have let it happen at all?
What’s *wrong* with us?
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.