Posts
Aleppo will now be added
to the long list of senseless terror and rampant destruction. Terror and
destruction are obviously integral parts of the human race and its history, the
Swedes included.
Swedish commander and
Swedish units were involved in the 30-year war abuses, during which 30 percent
of the adult male population in Europe were killed. The worst bestialities were
executed by the imperial army under Generals Tilly and Papenheim in the city of
Magdeburg, south of Berlin in 1531. The city was devastated, looted, raped.
Berlin was bombed to rubble 1944-45. The British head of the bombers, General Harris created a furious bomb aviation attack on the defenseless city of Dresden on February 18, 1945. The old cultural city was reduced to a mass grave after the massive air raid that completely lacked military strategic importance.
Terror against the public is well known throughout history. The bloodshed, such as the Bartolomei Night massacre of the Huguenots, the Lutherans in Paris in 1571 or 200 Spaniards/conquistadors’ slaughter of 200,000 Incas in 1533. There is a link between the conquerors' genocide and the modern American extinction of the Indians of the plains and the final massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.
Parallel in time, the British General Gordon mowed the Egyptians and Arabs at the Battle of Khartoum. A brand new weapon, the machine gun, was introduced to the sword swinging "savages". Winston Churchill participated in a cavalry charge, one of the very last of its kind. The machine gun, an English invention, then paved the way for the First World War, the death machinery in which helpless soldiers rushed up and out of the trenches as they had done during the old-fashioned cavalry charges.
The Spanish fascist terrorists bombed in 1937 the small town of Guernica, whose suffering was immortalized by Pablo Picasso. The same year the Japanese spread horrors of terror in China including the seizure of the old town of Nan King.
But all this was just the running-up to the so far worst crime in human history: the Holocaust of Europe's Jews. The German and Japanese violent waves gave birth to a still greater force: the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But does the story end there? No.
MyLai 1968, Rwanda 1992, Srebrenitza 1995, Ghaza 2012 - and now Aleppo in 2016.
The UN has failed. The Security Council is dominated by great power interests. They do not strive for stability and moderation. They strive to build on and maintain their positions of power. Therefore, the world continues to live in political instability and fear of the power of horrors.
Aleppo and its poor population is but one in a series. Who's next?
Bo Ekman
(published in Dalarnas Tidningar 2016-10-17)
Berlin was bombed to rubble 1944-45. The British head of the bombers, General Harris created a furious bomb aviation attack on the defenseless city of Dresden on February 18, 1945. The old cultural city was reduced to a mass grave after the massive air raid that completely lacked military strategic importance.
Terror against the public is well known throughout history. The bloodshed, such as the Bartolomei Night massacre of the Huguenots, the Lutherans in Paris in 1571 or 200 Spaniards/conquistadors’ slaughter of 200,000 Incas in 1533. There is a link between the conquerors' genocide and the modern American extinction of the Indians of the plains and the final massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.
Parallel in time, the British General Gordon mowed the Egyptians and Arabs at the Battle of Khartoum. A brand new weapon, the machine gun, was introduced to the sword swinging "savages". Winston Churchill participated in a cavalry charge, one of the very last of its kind. The machine gun, an English invention, then paved the way for the First World War, the death machinery in which helpless soldiers rushed up and out of the trenches as they had done during the old-fashioned cavalry charges.
The Spanish fascist terrorists bombed in 1937 the small town of Guernica, whose suffering was immortalized by Pablo Picasso. The same year the Japanese spread horrors of terror in China including the seizure of the old town of Nan King.
But all this was just the running-up to the so far worst crime in human history: the Holocaust of Europe's Jews. The German and Japanese violent waves gave birth to a still greater force: the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But does the story end there? No.
MyLai 1968, Rwanda 1992, Srebrenitza 1995, Ghaza 2012 - and now Aleppo in 2016.
The UN has failed. The Security Council is dominated by great power interests. They do not strive for stability and moderation. They strive to build on and maintain their positions of power. Therefore, the world continues to live in political instability and fear of the power of horrors.
Aleppo and its poor population is but one in a series. Who's next?
Bo Ekman
(published in Dalarnas Tidningar 2016-10-17)
