01x03 - k*lling at a Distance or...How I Thoroughly Enjoyed the Outing

[bunniefuu]

Since its first appearance

in East Africa,

the human species has been

on a long migration first to Asia

and then to central Europe.

This process, lasting for multiple

thousands of years,

can be considered as the premise

of globalization.

On these roads,

the circulation of the most vital

and decisive commodities would permit

the survival of the human race

and its adaptation on the planet.

And along these roads,

for better or worse,

silk of course would circulate,

but also religion, language, refugees,

artists, technology and pandemics.

People create families, tribes,

nations.

Sometimes, they need

to protect the family,

defend the tribe,

increase the nation's resources.

Sometimes it's just about surviving.

Other times,

it's for the wrong reasons.

But, whether for protection

or conquest,

for preservation or profit,

these acts might require being armed.

And over the centuries,

we lost our purpose,

and then our bearings.

EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES

Part III

k*lling AT A DISTANCE

OR

HOW I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED

THE OUTING

At the beginning,

the very powerful Moguls,

whose empire was founded

in 1526, in India,

were more developed

than any European state.

But they had no ships able

to withstand a*tillery fire

or carry heavy g*ns.

Instead of building up their own fleet,

the Moguls chose to purchase defense

services from these European states.

This extremely lucrative commerce

would lead to the creation

of the first multinational

corporations ever.

The British East India Company

and The Dutch East India Company.

Meanwhile the Chinese

had already discovered gunpowder

and had already cast the first cannon

in the mid thirteenth century.

But they felt so safe in their part

of the world

that they refrained from participating

in the naval arms race.

So, the backward and poorly resourced

Europe of the sixteenth century

would acquire a monopoly

on ocean-traveling ships

with g*ns capable of spreading

death and destruction

across huge distances.

Europeans became the masters

of cannons that k*lled

long before the weapons of their

opponents could reach them.

The art of k*lling at a distance

became a European specialty.

Meanwhile,

in the so-called Third World,

small arms were still able

to measure up to those in Europe.

The standard weapon

was a muzzle-loaded,

smooth-bored flintlock musket,

which was also manufactured

by village blacksmiths in Africa.

But these weapons were slow

and difficult to handle.

They emitted puffs of smoke, that

revealed where the marksman was.

To say nothing of the fact that he also

had to stand up while reloading.

The musket was

a frightening weapon

for those who heard it

for the first time.

But its range was only a hundred yards.

So the colonial wars of the first half

of the nineteenth century

were lengthy and expensive.

Prussia replaced its muzzle loaders

with the breech-loaded Dreyse r*fle.

This was tested for the first time

in 1866

in the Austro-Prussian w*r

over hegemony in Germany.

In 1884,

Hiram Stevens Maxim,

who also invented the mouse trap,

manufactured an automatic weapon

that was light to carry and fired

nine rounds per second.

It was used by the Germans

in East Africa in 1888

and by the British in 1893

during the first Matabele w*r.

At the same time,

steel had become so cheap,

it could be used for the manufacture

of arms on a large scale.

In Africa and Asia local smiths

could no longer make copies

of the new weapons as they did

not have access

to industrially-manufactured steel.

At the end of the 1890s, the revolution

of the r*fle was complete.

All European infantrymen could now

fire lying down without being spotted,

in all weathers, fifteen shots

in as many seconds,

at targets up to a distance

of a thousand yards,

confirming the myth

of the white man's invincibility.

Unfortunately, their b*ll*ts

were not always efficient

against "the savages

and fanatical tribesmen",

as they called them, for they

often continued their charges

even after being hit four

or five times.

The answer was the dumdum b*llet,

or expanding b*llet,

named after the factory

in Dum Dum outside Calcutta.

The lead core of the dumdum b*llet

explodes the casing,

causing large painful wounds

that do not heal well.

The use of dumdum b*ll*ts

between "civilized states"

would soon be prohibited.

They were to be reserved

for big-game hunting

and non-white unarmed populations

in colonial wars.

At Omdurman, in 1898,

the whole new European arsenal

was tested

against a numerically superior

and very determined enemy.

One of the most cheerful

depicters of w*r,

Winston Churchill, later winner

of the Nobel Prize for Literature,

was the w*r correspondent

of The Morning Post.

"Nothing like the battle of Omdurman

will ever be seen again,"

wrote Churchill in a book published

after the experience.

"It was the last link in the long chain

of those spectacular conflicts"

"whose vivid and majestic splendor

has done so much to invest w*r"

"with glamour."

"This kind of w*r was full

of fascinating thrills", he wrote.

"The morning of September 2, 1898,

the following occurred."

"The white flags were nearly

over the crest."

"In another minute, they would

become visible to the batteries."

"Did they realize

what would come to meet them?"

"They were in a dense mass,"

"2800 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."

"They topped the crest and drew out

into full view of the whole army."

"Their white banners made them

conspicuous above all."

"As they saw the camp

of their enemies,"

"they discharged their r*fles

with a great roar of musketry"

"and quickened their pace."

"It was a terrible sight"

"for as yet

they had not hurt us at all,"

"and it seemed an unfair advantage

to strike thus cruelly"

"when they could not reply."

Churchill found the enemy's plan

of attack wise and well thought-out,

except for one vital point.

It was based on a fatal underestimation

of the effectiveness

of modern weapons.

Within the space of five hours,

the strongest and best-armed 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

over barbarians, wrote Churchill.

At Omdurman, no British soldier

expected to be k*lled,

for this was only a sporting element

in a splendid game.

The industrial development of firearms

was playing an important role

in US colonization as well.

As a w*r president, George

Washington thought it unreasonable

to rely on foreign weapons.

With generous start-up funds,

lucrative long term contracts,

and heavy tariffs on foreign imports,

he literally jump-started

the US arms industry

into becoming

the world's first arms manufacturer.

The very first corporation established

by the United States

was the Springfield Armory

in western Massachusetts,

founded in 1777.

It soon introduced standardized,

interchangeable parts

and assembly-line production,

key factors in the takeoff

of the industrial revolution in the US

and its establishment

as 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 bonanza,

in a totally incestuous relationship

between military industry

and governments.

The so-called Monroe Doctrine

became the order of the day.

At its core, in 1850,

it was a mere commitment

to keep the Americas North

and South safe

from European colonizing ambitions.

Over the years, from President

Theodore Roosevelt

to John F. Kennedy

and Ronald Reagan,

the doctrine came to cover

any perceived threat

to US interests around the world.

Overseas domination became

the goal.

As reverend Josiah Strong argued

in 1885

in his best-selling book "Our Country",

"as a superior race, the US had

a divine responsibility"

"to control the world."

There is something

we need to talk about,

something that keeps bothering me

and that we cannot leave

out of the present story.

Especially because it represents,

in a troublesome way,

the symbol of all evil.

It is something odd,

hidden deep behind two words:

Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

It was said that it was a w*r

against fascism.

It was said that 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 other 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 deaths will provide

the collateral.

Shock and awe.

A m*ssacre determined

by an algorithm.

It came at 8 o'clock

on August 6th 1945.

Nobody was expecting it.

They were pawns in a sordid game.

k*lling at a distance had just

taken on a new meaning.

No explanation required.

No cries tolerated.

No pity.

Surrender or death at best.

An endless wasteland of dead people.

For it is a m*ssacre,

not a heroic act.

Why wasn't it ever called

a w*r crime?

Is it because those

who dropped the bombs

are those who got to name the deed?

Naming is power, said Trouillot.

Two days after the bombing

of Nagasaki, President Truman said:

"The only language they seem

to understand"

"is the one we used to b*mb them."

"When dealing with an animal,

treat it like an animal."

"It's totally unfortunate,

but it's still the truth."

Indeed, there is no more to say.

We know now what the task truly is,

for Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's

"Heart of Darkness",

as well as at the battle

of Omdurman:

"Exterminate all the brutes."

Take the cup!

OK, great!

Why don't you take off your shirt?

Not you, Henry! The young man.

Can you translate for him?

Good. Make him look more natural.

Yeah, native, blending in.

You know what I mean?

Okay. Change position.

Really?

You want to just lay down like this?

Well, at least take the cigar.

Take the cigar!

Okay. Boy!

Hey you, boy!

Look at him!

Mira lo, por favor!

Of course, I know

he doesn't speak Spanish.

Put a hand on your hip.

Like this.

You see? Perfect!

Change position.

Both of you stand up.

Pick up the r*fles. Him too.

One each. Okay, and put the g*n

on your shoulder.

Well, help him with it! Henry

Don't tell him, show him!

No. You know what?

Put it on the other side.

Yeah. Now, Henry,

look at the distance,

you are looking at the Nile river

over there.

Be inspired, show some passion.

The whole world has been waiting

for you.

That's it! Awesome!

Yep. Classic Stanley.

He tends to over-dramatize

every so often. Can't help it.

The man changed my name

from Ndugu M'hali to Kalulu,

because it sounded better.

I have never told him

how I enjoy his company sometimes.

But occasionally,

he can be quite a bully too.

He brought me with him to Europe

and America, as his butler, officially.

But when alone, we were just friends.

Go figure.

The fearless explorer

and the "Noble savage".

That in the press he called me

his "infant cannibal",

should've tipped me off.

I have been a good soldier all my life.

The perfectly well-educated pupil

of a Western humanistic civilization.

I thought that to be mature was

to be knowledgeable,

smart, sophisticated, and gracious.

I was educated to believe that some

types of behavior were acceptable,

and others were not.

And that when I had done wrong,

I had to learn from that experience.

My parents taught me that,

as a black person,

I should never find myself

on the wrong side of the tracks.

I learned to behave.

I learned to be sociable,

presentable, congenial.

I had to negotiate daily with an

intimate, unnamed, and vulgar enemy,

infatuated with a superiority complex,

let's say, like Frank T.J. Mackey.

I will not apologize

for what I need.

Or Jordan Belfort.

I have been a good soldier

and a good learner.

But I could never really fathom

what it actually means

to be "superior",

logically degrading everybody else

as "inferior".

A singular assumption,

to say the least.

Visiting Europe, I discovered people

who genuinely thought

and were naively convinced that

they embodied the world.

The whole world.

And in that world, I was assigned

the role of a footnote.

Or at best, like in most Hollywood

movies, a supporting role

with guarantied death and careless

disposal by some wild beast,

sometime before the third act.

Go back!

Back across the log!

Get Jimmy outta here!

- No!

- Gotta run, Jimmy!

Run!

Joseph Conrad's book

"Heart of Darkness" was influenced

by the battle of Omdurman.

Conrad starts the novel

with what has been called

the toolbox of imperialism,

which involves

the ship's g*ns that fire

on a continent,

the railway that facilitates

the plundering of the continent,

the river steamer that carries

Europeans and their weapons

into the heart of the continent.

This new era in the history

of imperialism also became

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 anymore.

Please, look over here!

You there!

Could you move a bit to the right?

And you! Not you! Don't move.

You, a little to the left.

Now, give him a hand.

No! You give him "A" hand, I said!

Well, then, you take another hand

and you, this one, hand and hand.

Excellent! OK, so the big guy,

with the towel head,

you can just move back a bit.

Perfect.

Excellent. I think that's it.

I like that.

Can you just uncross

your arms, please?

- Why?

- You want to know why?

It makes you look defiant.

That's why.

I'm just saying.

Keep it that way, for all I care.

"Does the West have the will

to survive?", asked a US president.

The question itself is perplexing.

Clearly, I am not included

in his concept of the West.

Unquestionably, to belong

to the "right civilization" does bear

some entitlements.

I might be wary of white institutions

in general,

and of the religious ones

in particular,

but for some reasons I was attracted

to the idea of joining the Boy Scouts.

My best friend and neighbor

in Leopoldville,

the son of a French doctor,

was a boy scout.

Robert knew all the regulatory moves.

He even had a code name, Red Raven.

Because he had red hair.

He taught me the signs, the knots,

and even tightly kept secrets.

The idea of a brotherhood

of the like-minded captivated me.

But not as much as the idea of owning

a multi-task pocket knife

and being allowed to dare make

unsafe fires in the woods.

Baden-Powell is the founder

of the Boy Scouts.

During the 2nd Ashanti w*r

in 1896,

two days march away

from the capital, Kumasi,

as the commander

of the advance troop,

he received an envoy offering

unconditional surrender.

To his disappointment, he did not have

to fire a single shot at the natives.

To get hostilities going,

the British then planned

extreme provocations.

They arrested the king of Ashanti,

King Prempeh,

together with his whole family.

The king and his mother were forced

to crawl on all fours

up to the British officers sitting

on crates of biscuit tins,

to demonstrate their subjugation.

But still, this time as well,

the British unfortunately found

no use for their weapons.

Baden-Powell writes to his mother:

"I thoroughly enjoyed the outing,"

"except for the want of a fight,"

"which I fear will preclude our getting

any medals or decoration."

This is young and ambitious

Georges Cuvier.

On January 27, 1796,

Georges has just arrived in Paris

to hold his first lecture at the newly

opened Institut National de France.

He is 26.

Cuvier was sensational.

He spoke of the mammoth

and the mastodon.

Remnants of these huge elephantine

animals had recently been found

in Siberia and North America.

Cuvier demonstrated that they did not

belong to the same species

as either the Indian

or the African elephant,

but constituted species

of their own, now extinct.

Now extinct.

Those were the two words

that horrified the listeners.

Because in the eighteenth century,

people still believed

in a ready-made universe

to which nothing could be added.

And perhaps even more important

to mankind's peace of mind,

nothing could be subtracted from it.

All of God's creatures, once created,

could not disappear

from his universe.

"What then was the explanation

for these gigantic bones"

"and strange animal-like stones that

had puzzled man since antiquity",

asked Cuvier.

Cuvier's idea, that there could

be species that had died out,

gave rise to such resistance

that it took over a hundred years

to become accepted.

But how they had died out and why,

he did not explain.

In 1850, the great liberal philosopher

Herbert Spencer,

yes, that Spencer, wrote:

"Imperialism has served civilization"

"by clearing the inferior races

off the Earth."

"The forces which are working out the

great scheme of perfect happiness,"

"taking no account

of incidental suffering,"

"exterminate such sections

of mankind as stand in their way."

"Be he human or be he brute,

the hindrance must be got rid of."

Here the human being was expressly

placed on an equal footing

with the animal,

as an object for extermination.

One could take Spencer's fantasies

of annihilation

as personal eccentricities,

explained perhaps by the fact that

all Spencer's siblings had died

when he was a child.

A calm and comforting conclusion.

Enter Robert Knox.

Knox had studied comparative

anatomy with Cuvier in Paris.

He was a Scot, had served

as an army doctor in South Africa,

and had founded a school

of anatomy in Edinburgh.

Can the dark races

become civilized?

"I should say not," says Knox.

"All we know, is that since

the beginning of history,"

"the dark races have been the sl*ves

of those lighter-skinned."

Of course, what he meant exactly

by "dark race" is not easy to answer.

Are the Jews a dark race?

The Gypsies?

The Chinese? One could ask.

"I feel disposed to think

that there must be a physical,"

"and consequently, a psychological

inferiority in the dark races",

asserted Knox.

"The texture of the brain is, I think,

generally darker,"

"and the white part

more strongly fibrous,"

"but I speak from

extremely limited experience."

Indeed, Knox says

that he had done an autopsy

on only one colored person,

which somehow does demonstrate

the limitations of his experiments.

Thomas Jefferson found it

inconceivable

that one single species

could disappear from nature.

But nevertheless, more than 99 percent

of all species have already died out.

Most of them in a few catastrophes

that came close to wiping out all life.

This is the scope of our story.

As a young student, Charles Darwin,

regarded as the father

of evolutionary biology,

heard Knox's controversial lectures.

In his book "On the Origins

of the Species," published in 1859,

he would demonstrate

that all species adapt

to their environment

through natural selection.

Darwin argued in favor of a common

origin of all human races.

Although his thesis as such neither

confirmed nor denied Knox's

and others' ideas regarding

any hierarchy within mankind,

his theory of evolution

was clearly useful to the racists.

After Darwin, race became the decisive

explanation in far wider circles.

Racism was accepted and became

a central element

in British imperial ideology.

After Darwin, it also became accepted

to shrug your shoulders at genocide.

If you were upset, you were just

showing your lack of education.

Genocide began to be regarded

as the inevitable byproduct

of progress.

And prejudice against alien peoples,

which had always existed,

was now given organized form

and apparent scientific validation.

"Meanwhile," added Darwin,

"regarding future life, each person

will have to judge for himself."

In just a few years the surface

of the Earth will be quite changed.

A new era is dawning that will

multiply the undertakings of man.

Light is consuming the darkness.

Let me introduce to you now,

my dear colleague Dr. Frederic Farrar,

who has been recently elected

a fellow at the Royal Society.

In his major book "Systema Naturae",

the great Swedish botanist

Carl Linnaeus discriminates,

with his usual acuteness,

the intellectual

and moral characteristics

of four great human families.

The h*m* Americanus,

the h*m* Europeus,

the h*m* Asiaticus,

the h*m* Afer.

Yet, we believe that these

and all other races

may be reduced

to three great classes or divisions.

Savage, semi civilized and civilized.

Only two races, the Aryan

and the Semitic, were civilized.

The Chinese belong

to the semi civilized,

as they had once been brilliant,

but suffered

from "arrested development".

The savage races have always lived

in the same ignorance

and wretchedness.

They are without a past

and without a future,

doomed, as races infinitely nobler

have been before them,

to a rapid, and inevitable extinction.

Out of all their teeming myriads,

never have they produced

one single man

whose name is of the slightest

importance to the history of our race.

History starts

when man starts to write.

Take a specimen

from the hundred million of Africans,

not one of the most degenerates

such as the Hottentots,

but a real, pure-blooded n*gro.

What hope was there

that he could be civilized?

How dare you think your heritage

is better than mine? as*h*le!

The great majority of Negroes

will go under in a decline

from which only a few can be saved.

- Many races have disappeared.

- You are insane!

Please, gentlemen, ladies,

let's be civil.

Show some respect.

After all, it's just science.

f*ck you. f*ck you. Two times.

These races, the lowest types

of humanity

and presenting

its most hideous features

of moral and intellectual degradation,

were doomed to go under.

And I call them irreclaimable savages.

Irreclaimable savages!

Irreclaimable savages!

What did actually happen

when knowledge, industry,

and enlightenment exterminated

the inferior races?

Darwin, who had traveled to South

America in his younger years, knew.

He had seen General Rosas' men

in Argentina,

butchering Indians, smothered

in blood and vomit.

He knew how eyes were gouged out

when an Indian had sunk his teeth

into a thumb and refused to let go,

how women were k*lled,

and prisoners made to talk.

He had a name for it. He called it

the "struggle for life".

- Last name?

- Trouillot.

- First name?

- Rolph-Michel.

- Ready?

- Sure.

Like Roxanne, Michel-Rolph

and Sven,

I too have my nightmares as well.

Churchill said after the w*r:

"We are in the presence

of a crime without a name."

But Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer

of Polish-Jewish descent,

had already created that name

in 1943.

Combining the ancient Greek "genos",

which means race,

tribe, clan and the latin "cide",

which expresses the notion of k*lling,

Lemkin invented the word genocide.

At the New York Public Library,

in the Raphael Lemkin collection,

in Reel 3, Box 2, Folder 1,

there is a list of the world's

genocides throughout history.

"Some things are so evil that it's

enough that they simply happened,"

said the man.

"They don't need to be given a second

existence by being retold."

He took a drag on his cigarette.

"That's what I think on some days,

anyway," he went on.

"Other days, I think the opposite."

The past has a future we never expect.

One of the fundamental ideas

of the nineteenth century

was that there are races, peoples,

nations and tribes

that are in the process of dying out.

Or as the Prime Minister of England,

Lord Salisbury expressed it

in his famous speech, in Albert Hall,

on May 4th, 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

will fraudulently encroach"

"on the territory of the dying".

He spoke the truth.

During the nineteenth century,

Europeans had encroached

on vast territories around the world.

The word genocide

had not yet been invented.

But the matter existed.

Joseph Conrad may not have heard

Lord Salisbury's speech.

He had no need to.

Conrad could no more avoid hearing

of the ceaseless genocide

that marked his century than any

of his contemporaries could.

It is we who have suppressed it.

We do not want to remember.

We would prefer for genocide to have

begun and ended with Nazism.

This would indeed be most comforting.

For sure the nine-year-old Adolf Hitler

was not in Albert Hall either

when Lord Salisbury was speaking.

He had no need to.

He knew it already.

The air Hitler and all other Western

people in his childhood breathed

was soaked in the conviction

that imperialism is a biologically

necessary process which,

according to the laws of nature,

leads to the inevitable destruction

of the lower races.

It was a conviction that had already

cost millions of human lives

before Hitler provided

his highly personal application.

But in the mid-nineteenth century,

the Germans had still not exterminated

any people.

So they were able to look more

critically on the phenomenon

than other Europeans did.

In Southwest Africa in 1904,

the Germans demonstrated that

they too could master an art

that Americans, British, and other

Europeans had exercised

all through the nineteenth century,

the art of hastening the extermination

of a people of "inferior culture".

Following the North American example,

the Herero people were banished

to reservations

and their grazing lands were handed

over to German immigrants

and colonial companies.

For over two decades, their leader,

Samuel Maherero,

had signed one treaty after another

with the Germans

and ceded large areas of land

to avoid w*r.

But just as the Americans

did not feel bound

by their treaties with the Indians,

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,

General Adolf Lebrecht von Trotha

ordered their extermination.

Every Herero found within the German

borders, with or without weapons,

was to be shot.

But most of them died

without direct violence.

The Germans simply drove them into

the desert and sealed off the border.

One didn't yet talk

about "the final solution",

but that was what one had in mind.

In the official account of the w*r,

the German officers wrote:

"The army earned the gratitude

of the whole fatherland."

"The sentence had been carried out,"

"and the Hereros had ceased

to be an independent people."

Eighty thousand human beings died

in the desert.

The few thousand left were sentenced

to hard labor

in concentration camps.

A new concept of incarceration

invented in 1896

by the Spaniards in Cuba,

anglicized by the Americans,

entered German language

and politics.

Paul Rohrbach wrote in his best-seller

"German Thought in the World",

published in 1912 that:

"Existences, be they of peoples

or individuals who do not produce"

"anything of value, cannot make

any claim to the right to exist."

We believe that married people

who have transmissible diseases

should not have children.

No couple who has the disease

of feeble-mindedness or insanity

or epilepsy should have children.

The over infatuation

with genetic purity

An impressive amount of energy put

into the classification of people

A pathological obsession

for the concept of race

that scientifically does not exist.

Despite the careful staging,

one gesture, an unexpected gesture

of irritation,

not foreseen by the director

of this strange display,

will betray the masquerade

and restore dignity.

What is sure, is that

their way of life is threatened.

Has he indeed any right to exist?

Does she?

Do they?

But after all we know now,

indeed, who is to judge?

To be continued