Crimes Against Humanity

[Stormig]

I would like to, as time and circumstances may permit, share what I know and am learning about major crimes against humanity (including genocide), unless it is strictly objected to for me to mention this here.

Today I would like to start off with an article relatively recent.

 

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?int...intcategoryid=2

 

New study questions values

taught in Croatia’s textbooks

By Vlasta Kovac

 

ZAGREB, Croatia, Dec. 17 (JTA) — Croatian textbooks are teaching violence and intolerance.

This was the conclusion drawn by Natasha Jovicich, who initiated a study of 23 textbooks used in Croatian elementary schools.

 

Jovicich is the new director of the museum at Jasenovac, the concentration camp operated by Croatia’s wartime Ustashe fascist regime. She initiated the study to draw attention to the basic values being taught to Croatian children.

 

The textbooks were analyzed by a group of high school teachers, with special emphasis on subjects like history and literature.

 

The results, which Jovicich called “shocking,” appeared in the latest edition of the Croatian weekly magazine Globus. Among the findings:

 

• In a history book for eighth graders, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is ridiculed by being depicted as a bulldog sitting on the British flag.

 

• On the same page, there is a photograph of a yellow Star of David, and a caption saying, “The Jews had to wear a special mark, the Star of David. This is a six-pointed star. It consists of two triangles, which symbolize the sky and the earth.” There is no mention of the discrimination suffered by those forced to wear the symbol.

 

• The same history book shows the picture of Croatian wartime leader Ante Pavelic. The accompanying caption describes him as “a jurist, politician and the founder of the Ustashe movement,” but makes no mention of the war crimes committed under his rule.

 

“This textbook is a dangerous manipulation of history,” professor Rosana Ratkovchich, one of those conducting the study, wrote in her conclusion.

 

The book was guilty of “relativizing” fascism and the antifascist struggle to the point of rendering them morally indistinguishable, she wrote.

 

A caption that appears under a photo of Normandy Beach on D-Day, she wrote, creates the impression that the German army had moral superiority during the war.

 

Jovicich was quoted in Globus as saying that there is a “direct connection with the kind of intolerance that we find in these textbooks and the growing violence manifested by young people.”

 

A recent concert in the Croatian coastal town of Split, for example, attracted some 40,000 young people to the soccer stadium. Many of them wore the Ustashe insignia and waved Nazi flags.

 

The incident prompted some Croatian legislators to sponsor a bill that would criminalize the glorification of Nazi ideology.

 

The bill is still being debated in Parliament.

 

Until recently, Jovicich worked in Croatia’s Ministry of Education, where she initiated several pilot programs to introduce Holocaust education into Croatian schools.

 

In October, she proposed that Croatia join an international task force dedicated to promoting Holocaust education.

 

Croatia is now being monitored by four members of the task force — the United States, Israel, France and Argentina — to see what will come out of plans to introduce Holocaust education in Croatian schools.

 

Meanwhile, the Jewish community of Zagreb, which has been promised $20,000 from the Claims Conference to train educators to teach about the Holocaust, reached an agreement with the Adam Institute in Jerusalem to organize a seminar on the topic.

 

About 16 instructors are planning to attend the seminar next month. Later, they will organize workshops and train others to teach the subject.

[Stormig]

Genocide & Cultural Genocide: Ethnic History and Oppression

 

Although history is full of wars for cultural dominance, certain "tried and true" methods for victory seem to be used over and over again. If you wish to win the culture war you can:

Kill all your enemy. Women and children too. Sometimes even the livestock and property is destroyed. Eliminate any possible rebirth of the culture you crushed. This is genocide.

Eliminate cultural traditions, by force if necessary. After a few generations, the childrens childrens children will no longer remember that their ancestors were once members of a culture bitterly opposed to the dominate culture. This is called cultural genocide. Technically, no one even has to be murdered for this to be effective.

Provide and require government schooling. Values, norms, and 'history' taught to children will take care of the problem. It is a very sneaky way to defeat a culture without ever firing a shot. Education can be and is used as a tool for cultural genocide.

From the above it can be seen that to destroy a culture one must only destroy cultural memory. But if you fail to succeed completely, your enemy may in time grow even stronger and eventually topple you. Consider these examples:

The Babylonians attempted cultural genocide on the Jews. From this era, powerful traditions were forged which have worked to hold the Jewish people together as an ethnicity for thousands of years . For centurys the Irish have had to contend with various efforts by the British Empire to eradicate Irish traditions, Catholicism, and wealth. Never quite succeeding, the Irish have been (and continue to be) a major thorn in Britian's political, economic, and ideological arenas. African-Americans are currently developing traditions which are helping to create an increasingly powerful ethnic culture.

 

Oppressive (dominate) cultures all use some form of above techniques. But shared oppression tends to bond the survivors together. Thus oppression breeds ethnic identity and resistance to loss of ethnic identity. Anything less than total genocide or cultural genocide ends up welding the oppressed together.

One point of this course is to demonstrate that almost all Americans belong to ethnic cultures that have been oppressed. Traditions are built to remember these times and remember overcoming them. Tradition is one place where history, culture, and social structure come together.

 

http://www.ethnic-america.com/Handouts/Genocide.htm

[Loreley]

Thanks for sharing those articles. There is so much work to do in this world to eradicate all the injustice, violence that exists in the world. The dominant groups keep the oppress groups divided, and consequently, it is easier for them to keep oppressing these groups. A lot of people care and a lot of people don't care (don't even want to know what is happening to other people), so sometimes I wonder, will domination and oppression always exists?

[Stormig]

My pleasure. I will share as I refresh my memory.

[Stormig]

Non-parties to the Genocide Convention.

 

http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/gencon/...es-unmember.htm

 

(Too bad we can't paste tables.)

[Stormig]

http://www.diacritica.com/degenerate/4/pavelic0.html

 

The Original Butcher of the Balkans: Pavelic not Milosevic

by Jonathan Levy

 

For Immediate Release Jonathan Levy and Tom Easton, Attorneys

Tel. 513-528-0586

E mail: resistk@yahoo.com

www.vaticanbankclaims.com

February 16, 2002

 

The Original Butcher of the Balkans: Pavelic not Milosevic

 

Ante Pavelic was the original ‘Butcher of the Balkans." He was the leader of the Nazi puppet government of the "Independent State of Croatia" who died peacefully in Madrid in 1959. The mass murderer of 80,000 Jews, 30,000 Gypsies, and over 500,000 Serbs survived the Second World War and never faced a war crimes tribunal unlike Slobodan Milosevic whose alleged crimes pale in comparison. Instead Pavelic was offered sanctuary by the Vatican and became a security advisor to Juan and Eva Person before retiring to fascist Spain. Key to Pavelic’s survival was the so-called Croatian Treasury, really nothing more than Pavelic’s personal wealth, the plunder of concentration camps and massacres throughout the Balkans and beyond. Wherever the loyal Ustashe (Croatian Nazis) served Pavelic and Hitler, Orthodox Christian churches and Jewish synagogues were plundered and the property of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Ukrainians and others were confiscated. The crimes of Pavelic and the Ustashe were so barbaric that even hardened Nazis were disgusted by it.

 

In the final days of World War II, Pavelic and his inner circle bought and bribed their way to Rome where help was waiting at the Vatican. Pavelic committed genocide on a level far greater than any known before or since in the Balkans but he had been personally received by Pius XII during his reign of terror. The Franciscan Order and Vatican bank eagerly helped launder Pavelic’s loot the proceeds of which were used to establish the so called ratline which helped thousands of Nazis and Ustashe escape to South America.

 

Over 50 years later, a class action lawsuit was filed in Federal Court in San Francisco in 1998 seeking an accounting of the Pavelic loot. The defendants, the Vatican bank, Franciscan order, and the remaining Ustashe were asked to account for the gold, silver, and gems plundered so many years ago. A Federal judge has taken the case under submission.

 

Last month, an ex US Army intelligence official revealed that Pavelic’s body is secured at a secret location in Madrid awaiting its eventual return to the homeland. Pavelic’s followers view the current Croatian state as the successor to the Nazi inspired Independent State of Croatia, their legacy will be fulfilled only by the return of their supreme leader or in the Croatian language, Poglavnik, to lie in state in Zagreb. Tudjman, the late blood stained ruler of Croatia, was a proponent of returning Pavelic to Croatia and indeed Pavelic would be pleased to find many new public monuments to his loyal Ustashe springing up like toadstools after a spring rain in democratic Croatia.

 

Attorneys in the class action lawsuit even while awaiting the court’s ruling are opening up a second front against the Croatian Nazis in Madrid. It is thought a large portion of the Croatian treasure was secreted in Madrid and remains there yet along with Pavelic’s relatives and loyal Ustashe who maintain a vigil over their leaders grave. According to attorney Jonathan Levy, Spanish law firms have been contacted and an action of some sort in Spain is likely especially in light of the Spanish National Court’s recent interest in the Pinochet case. According to Levy, "The Spanish courts have been interested in fighting Fascism abroad but here is an even worse case at home, let’s hope they will put the principles of International Law at work on this domestic case and stop the Ustashe."

 

A ceremony presided over by Croatian Franciscan priests is thought to take place annually on Pavelic’s birthday. At such Ustashe ceremonies eternal hatred towards Serbs and others are sworn on a crucifix, knife, and a revolver. Many Ustashe returned to Croatia in 1991 and have played a role in the ongoing hostilities in Herzegovina ensuring the continuation of a cycle violence that began in 1941 with Pavelic.

 

For more information:

 

See www.vaticanbankclaims.com

Tel 513-528-0586

Jlevy1@cinci.rr.com

Jonathan Levy, Esq.

 

For more on Ante Pavlic see:

http://www.diacritica.com/degenerate/4/pavelic0.html