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Beautiful isles! beneath the sunset skies tall, silver-shafted palm-trees rise, between full orange-trees that shade the living colonade.

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Philip Gourevitch

In 1933-34, the Belgians conducted a census in order to issue ‘ethnic’ identity cards, which labelled every Rwandan as either Hutu (85%) of Tutsi (14%) or Twa (1%). The identity cards made it virtually impossible for Hutus to become Tutsis, and permitted the Belgians to perfect the administration of an apartheid system rooted in the myth of Tutsi superiority… Whatever Hutu and Tutsi identity may have stood for in the pre-colonial state no longer mattered; the Belgians had made ‘ethnicity’ the defining feature of Rwandan existence.

Belgians, Defining, Ethnic, Ethnicity, Issues, Order
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The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

Cry, Evil, Genocide, Good, Holocaust, Memories

Denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

Cry, Denouncing, Evil, Social Justice, Tyrants

I'm not pro-war. But I think war has been the dominant condition of humankind, and peace has been the anomaly - certainly sustained periods of peace that profit great masses of people - and I think war has worked, even awful hellish wars: worked to staunch fascist aggression in Europe, worked to preserve the Union after secession in the United States, etc. Not always, maybe not often, but to say never is to reject history in favor of a wishful unreality.

Europe, Favor, Preserve, Thinking, War, Worked

What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime.

Claim, Ideas, People, Political, Wanting

A serious pacifist approach can't win wars against enemies whose only program is violence. That doesn't mean I think the US has fought terrorists so wisely most of the time since 9
11. But there are some enemies that need to be destroyed by force lest they destroy much much more.

Approach, Mean, Program, War, Winning, Wisely
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