RODA NYAJIECH JUCH, wearing a white and purple dress with a gold band on her ring finger, can’t stop wringing her hands as she tells me about eight students killed near Jebel Checkpoint, a neighborhood in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
It was December 16, 2013, just hours into a civil war pitting President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, the largest tribe in the country, against Riek Machar, his former vice president and a Nuer, the second largest tribe. The war has defied ceasefires and continues to this day despite a peace deal signed in August.
Juch says she watched from her home across the street as a military vehicle rolled up and opened fire with a machine gun, killing a group of youths whose names she ticks off for me: Kuong Gatpan, Puok Thichot, Kam Machak, Puok Wiech, Leklek Kai, and three brothers, Kai Thoan, Gatkoi Thoan, and Dak Thoan.
In the years since — which have seen war victims forced by soldiers to eat the flesh of their neighbors, the emergence of “rape camps,” boys killed by castration, and young girls sexually assaulted and burned alive — no one has counted the dead. No government office or nongovernmental organization has kept a tally of the names of those killed by government forces, rebels, and other armed groups.
But in a country in which automatic weapons are more plentiful than civil rights, and local journalists are regularly under assault, a tiny civil society group is trying to step into the breach by naming all of the names.
A Nuer family, who fled their home, erects a shelter inside a U.N. facility on the outskirts of Juba, South Sudan in 2013.
Photo: James Akena/Reuter/Landov
It began on the first anniversary of the civil war’s outbreak, when a small group of volunteers unveiled a list of 568 names of the people — from toddlers to centenarians — killed in the war to that point. Naming the Ones We Lost was a first step in what the organizers knew would be a long journey to grapple with the immense loss of South Sudanese life over the previous year. Today, the project goes by a slightly different name, Remembering the Ones We Lost, and has a radically expanded mission with a recently launched website.
The goal of the website is nothing short of remarkable — it aims to name all victims of conflict and armed violence in South Sudan since 1955.
“This public memorial hopes to … bring attention to the shared suffering of South Sudanese, giving additional meaning to cries for peace, and be a tool for understanding and reconciliation,” said Daud Gideon, a co-founder of the site, at a ceremony in Juba last month that brought together religious leaders and activists to formally unveil the new project on the war’s second anniversary.
Jehanne Henry, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Africa division and an expert on South Sudan, noted the significance of a memorial that reaches back to the 1950s: “It says, ‘Look, these conflicts are linked together. What happened in December 2013 did not happen in isolation, it’s linked with the failure to deal with many decades of horrific violence in South Sudan.’”
Even so, almost 98 percent of the more than 4,300 names on the website are of those killed during the current conflict. According to Anyieth D’Awol, a former U.N. human rights officer and one of the project’s organizers, some names were gathered from news articles and human rights reports. Many more come from eyewitness testimony, says Edmund Yakani, another organizer and the executive director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), a civil society group.
Last year, when I visited his office, a nondescript beige building near the Kenyan Embassy in Juba, Yakani hauled out a stuffed binder filled with “South Sudan Eyewitness Declaration Forms,” a multipage questionnaire designed to gather data for the project. I read through one form after another, each recounting heinous crimes: men assaulted or killed, women raped, looting, forced cannibalism. It’s the same type of testimony I heard while interviewing scores of war victims around the country, the same sorts of crimes recounted to United Nations and Human Rights Watch investigators. Yakani says there are around 10 more binders like it, a veritable encyclopedia of horrors.
A map shows the clusters of war victims.
Map: Remembering the Lost Ones
A map on the Remembering the Ones We Lost homepage suggests that most of the current victims in the group’s database are clustered around Juba and Bor, a town to the north in which thousands of Dinka civilians were killed by forces under Machar in 1991 during the prior civil war — and in a repeat of the slaughter in early 2014 when forces allied with Machar again devastated the town. “A lot of killings happened in those places, but a lot of killings happened in other places as well,” D’Awol tells me. “We just don’t have that data.”
The new website is designed with this dearth of information in mind, specifically the inclusion of a page that allows the public to provide new names, testimony, and even photos — which can also be submitted via text message, Twitter, and email. The submitted names will be researched and vetted by the project’s volunteers.
I don’t see the names given to me by Juch, but perhaps one day they will be added, along with the thousands of women, children, and men killed in Bor, Malakal, and Bentiu, as well as the many bomas (villages) about which little information has yet surfaced.
“As we honor our loved ones lost since 1955, we are hoping for peace, peaceful coexistence, reconciliation among communities, and for forgiveness among South Sudanese everywhere,” said Gideon as he ended his remarks on the war’s second anniversary. “Never again do we want to see lives lost in such a way.”
This article was reported with support from Lannan Foundation.
OUR country did the same thing, Mr. Nick, for its soldiers that fell in Vietnam’s American War. Put all those names on big-ass monument we did, to their lives being so wasted. Somehow though, the names of the millions of Southeast Asian people that died because of this country’s false flag escalation there – will be lost forever.
Some of us once hoped that monument might help OUR country remember the shame and folly and complete waste of resources that’s war just for the sake of war, or even for others’ resources. But instead, I’ve come to believe the empire’s secret motto is, “Profits have no memory.”
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2008-02/truth-about-tonkin
Black smoke in the dying embers
Agonized death cries pierce the dark
Rain mercifully tilling the seared earth
My mother’s voice beckons
Come her my love
I shout back
But she cannot hear me
Shattered to silence
Take me I plead to our village
Of gently flowing water
In my head
I hear father’s laugh
My teacher’s sweet words
Grandma’s pleading:
Stay and do not gaze afar
The world she says is brown, white and red savagery
But I anxiously awaited the journey before me
Winding roads strewn with pearls of hope
Momma take me home
There are not enough tears
To fill the pain
Soldiers yell in the hell of gushing blood
A knife slits my temple
I fall to a sleep
From which I can’t awaken
Goodbye
In the Silence
Black smoke in the dying embers
Agonized death cries pierce the dark
Rain mercifully tilling the seared earth
My mother’s voice beckons
Come her my love
I shout back
But she cannot hear me
Shattered to silence
Take me I plead to our village
Of gently flowing water
In my head
I hear father’s laugh
My teacher’s sweet words
Grandma’s pleading:
Stay and do not gaze afar
The world she says is brown, white and red savagery
But I anxiously awaited the journey before me
Winding roads strewn with pearls of hope
Momma take me home
There are not enough tears
To fill the pain
Soldiers yell in the hell of gushing blood
A knife slits my temple
I fall to a sleep
From which I can’t awaken
Goodbye
Surely this must be General Gordon’s fault?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Gordon_Pasha.jpg
Thanks, Nick, for the story. The approach of listing the victims is reminiscent of what Alexandr Solzhenitsyn did in writing the Gulag Archipelago. It is one of the few positive things that the powerless can do in the fact of absolute brutality.
The British, and their acolytes such as Susan Rice, should be held responsible for the bloodshed and chaos. They were hell-bent on dismembering Sudan (their standard response to uppity former colonies), regardless of the human cost.
It would however be fair to assert that a sizable public opinion in South Sudan acknowledges that a significant contributory factor in the escalation of the turmoil that ushered in the harrowing development in the country is manifestly the handiwork of the Jieeng Council of Elders (JCE) alongside some opportunistic South Sudanese individual elements, accommodated on government’s pay list and who may or may not necessarily be aligned to the JCE.
This incontrovertible assertion is premised on the perceptible unconstructive practices and unconscionable conduct of this tribal entity in its plain role as the de facto Parliament and government of South Sudan.
A closer retrospective shift and analysis of the reprehensible mayhem that occurred in Juba on the 15 December 2013 and the consequent poignant sagas that coalesced into the civil war in the entire South Sudan reveals a clandestine calculation of the JCE whose preoccupation is to entirely dominate and subjugate the people of South Sudan and rule them via a tribal iron fist.
Those innocent souls that have paid the ultimate price at the massacres and genocide in Juba in 2013 will indelibly be remembered for handing out the highest ransom in exchange for nothing other than their affiliation to Nuer ethnic group.
The JCE’s twisted logic seems to suggest that as long as a Dinka is involved in crimes against humanity, justice would not be permitted to take its natural course.
Ironically, the butchery in South Sudan has never held compassion in the hearts of those tyrannical and despotic JCE assemblages because those suffering are non-Dinka who should be forcibly dispossessed via an orchestrated policy of land grab.
Today, if anyone utters a word about accountability for those systematic murders conducted by the government with JCE blessings they are instantly castigated and threatened with further severe repercussions.
I am quite conscious that the point I make will be completely lost in the miasma of outrage, however, for any South Sudanese to have done nothing by way of exposing the subterranean façade of this malevolent Jieeng tribal outfit in such woeful settings in a country awash with misery is morally reprehensible.
The crucial question is: For how long is Equatoria going to be humiliated? The cases of Dr. Onek and that of Bakasoro are Equatorian cases and they must not be allowed to go on like what has happened to Peter Sule.
If the system has a case against Dr. Onek and Bakasoro, they must be brought to open court and let them have their day in court. It is just unacceptable that people are abused and oppressed to satisfy the ego of the JCE, because they are Equatorians.
This challenge demands the so-called Equatorian Front in SPLM-IO to do something about it because of their unique position as partner of President Kiir in the peace agreement.
If General Alfred Ladu Gore is an Equatorian leader as is claimed, he needs to speak out and ensure that Professor Onek and Bakasoro are safe and released immediately.
This is very important for three reasons. Firstly, this is because it is an act of solidarity. Secondly, it is an act to protect Equatoria, and thirdly and crucially it is an act of self protection – ensuring he does not fall in the same trap.
Equatoria community need to realize that their unity is a must if this predatory politics of the JCE is to be stopped once and for all.
So the Equatoria community in the country needs to write to the trio (President Festos Mogae, President Salva Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar) demanding the release of Professor Onek and Bakasoro together with an inquiry on why Dr Onek was abducted and Bakasoro detained. This very piece should serve the same purpose.
Finally in the larger context, the survival of Equatoria depends on the extent to which the people of the region (a third of the population of South Sudan) are prepared to resist in self defence.
President Kiir and JCE’s terror directed to Equatoria leaders and the people must be brought to a halt through a concerted multi-prong action.
If Equatoria wants its sons and daughters to stand for it, it in turn has to protect them by whatever means available. Otherwise the future of Equatoria is bleak in a system run by people who hold deep unfounded grudges against it for no rational reason.
The attack on Equatoria is evidenced by the series of abductions, detentions and killings of Equatorians in South Sudan and neighboring countries. The recent abduction and detention of Dr. Leonzio Angole Onek demonstrates this calculated attack to eliminate Equatoria leadership in South Sudan, as a means to render Equatoria leaderless, so as to be subject to control and abuse by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Jieng Council of Elders (JCE).
The objective of the JCE and The SPLM to destroy Equatoria is being recorded in contemporary history where a series of Equatorian leaders are presently unaccounted for, such as the elimination of Joseph Oduho, the elimination of Martin Kejivura, the elimination of Cecilia Oba Towongo, the elimination of John Nambu, the elimination of Equatorian police officers, the mysterious death of Dr. Wani Tombe, the unexplained disappearance of Justice Peter Sule and General Elias Lino Jada and many others.
Presently, this regime is actively terrorizing Joseph Bakasoro, the former Governor of Western Equatoria state. As I write he is being subjected to arbitrary detention afflicted with physical and emotional abuse.
If terror and death could extinguish the will for freedom and the ideas that go with it, South Sudan would not have been freed and born as a sovereign state; for the ideas and proclamations made by the pioneers of South Sudan liberation such as Emilio Tafeng, Paul Ali Gbatala, Joseph Oduho, Ezboni Mondiri, Fr. Santurlino Ohure, etc, would have atrophied with them.
However, their words and deeds became the fuel that ran the struggle against Khartoum for over half a century.
With the present oppression of Equatoria by the Jieng, the words of Peter Sule, Dr Wani Tombe etc.. will be the fuel that runs the emerging Equatoria resistance to the Jieng regime. Just listen to some of these words in this YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIcJ6IQw-SI
The abduction of Dr. Onek similar to the detention of Joseph Bakasoro further highlights the undeclared decapitation policy that the Jieng Council of Elders is promoting to destroy Equatoria. This Jieng’s policy eventually will intensify the resolve of the people of Equatoria to double their energies and efforts to assert their right.
The weakness pulling Equatoria down is the division that the SPLM has planted in its midst via vulnerable Equatorians, who are intimidated and bought with government posts. In addition to this the SPLM sets one tribe against the other.
Dr John Garang was the first to device the fragmentation of Equatoria by instituting a policy that any person wishing to join the SPLM must come as an individual. This policy that appeared simple and harmless on face value ensured that Equatorian leaders were stripped of their leadership and subsequently their following.
This was the initial process of decapitation of Equatoria. Please see, ‘The marginalisation of Equatoria’ http://southsudannation.com/opinion/articles/the-marginalisation-of-equatoria
The other SPLM factions similarly use the same intrigues to keep the Equatorians out of positions of power and influence; of all these techniques, the real problem lies in the pitting of one tribe against the other.
Presently, albeit the Equatorians are agreed that the current system in the country is their worst nightmare, they still operate as divided, with each tribe supporting their own in the ranks of the opposition.
For example, each tribe will collect material and monetary contributions to support the cause for their tribe. In this, the Equatorians have failed to see that without coming together under a clear objective and working as one there will be no headway.
Nimule, Wonduruba, Mundri, and Yambio will continue to burn and the other areas will follow too. This is the reality.
Politics, as Niccolo Machiavelli, the Italian thinker and author of the influential book “The Prince,” argues is about power, and getting power involves nasty things like those taking place in the mentioned towns in Equatoria. This is what is called realpolitik.
It is simply pragmatism and it has nothing to do with emotions and civility. Bari on their own means nothing, Moru on their own means nothing, Kuku on their own means nothing, Pojulu on their own means nothing, and Zande on their own means nothing etc.
Because Equatoria is fragmented the way it is, its enemies confidently find it easy to pick on them one by one.
For example, when President Kiir and the JCE abused Peter Sule, they did so, knowing that he did not have group support behind him. They are now abusing Dr Onek and Bakasoro knowing that there is a lack of regional group support.
The behaviour of President Kiir and the JCE is typical of predators preying on their quarry.
If Equatoria wants to regain its lost strength in order to be protective of its people, its people must discard short-sighted approaches and work as one, or Equatoria’s future in the jungle that is called South Sudan is bleak.
This is the first time for me to read a most resonable comments with a sincere judgment to the root cause of our tragedy.This is an overdue thinking n is desperately needed for any way forward.Be assured you will not be alone with your good thinking in RSS.There is a need for every one of us to recognize n accept one’s part among the mistakes that lead to the crisis.The fellow citizens that we have lost,the destruction n suffering that have been inflicted will never be made back to the state of things before December 15,2013.What I find so unfortunate is the political dimension of the tragedy.The nuer n the dinkas are our fellow citizens who fought among themselves since time imemorable but still found ways to manage reconciliation among themselves.That’s why they survived not only the danger of their inter communal violence but also the external aggressions.Our history teaches us that among the highest objectives of the Turkey’s conquest of sudan was to enslave a large numbers of black men for Othman Emire army.No mistake the men to be enslaved were the nilotics among whom were nuers n dinkas.Why?Becouse they were known every where on earth as the best fighters n therefore they were the man power needed to built a strongest army in the world.Ofcourse the turks were naive.They didn’t expect a resistance.So even before seeing how dinka or nuer looked like,arriving in shulluk kingdom,the shilluks taught them a lesson they had never learned before killing them thoroughly n forcing them back to Khartoum.Our history is like that.Every one of us belongs here.We must abandon political objectives in favor of rational human objectives.Every one of us deserves to live n our place is south sudan.So we must accept dialogue n be ready to promote opportunities for reconciliation n peace among us.The sooner,the better.But opportunities for such dialogue should not be allowed to be preconditioned by the wishes of Juba nor by those of the SPLM-IO and the G11.We deserve to interact among ourselves simply as ordinary citizens.Neutral grounds may be where God has hidden peace n reconciliation for us.
Wikipedia mentions this conflict in the 1820s, but certainly it could benefit by having people who know the history summarize some sources that may not be readily available in American libraries! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilluk_Kingdom for what is presently there.
20,000 innocent Nuer civilians including women, elderly and children were summarily executed by their President, in cold blood. My own mother died too in this conflict. She was innocently and had to die because she was denied access to medical attention. My uncles and nephews summarily executed simply because they were Nuer
They were considered enemy of the State because of their ethnicity. The African Union’s Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan’s Conflict Report rightly put it that the massacre of 20,000 Nuer civilians was a “state policy” sanctioned to erase one ethnic group the map of South Sudan.
Because of this poorly thought out policy, my people, people of South Sudan were ruthlessly murdered in their houses on a door –to –door search killing sphere in Juba and across South Sudan. They died bravely and with humility because they were not armed and did no provocation or had no political agenda but had to be executed because they were Nuer.
Their killers foolishly thought destroying their souls was an affliction on the Nuer Nation. Yes, immediately it was and as a result I will never see my uncles, nephews and mother again. However, because of this twisted foresight thinking and exhortation of righteousness, South Sudan went in flame. Across this young nation, almost everyone is in anguish of sort.
As a result, the foundation of our nation is now challenged, wobbly to the core risking free fall at any time. On a personal note, at the onset of this conflict, I promised my nation and my people that “I’ m alive not dead.” I promised I will use my talents to reverse the course of these horrific crimes.
I promised my dead mother that I will write about your innocent demise to ensure that your blood and spirits will not go in vain. My goal was to expose and hold those who committed these crimes to account and do away with impunity. Others and I took this noble task with humility. We have written articles to inform the world that you were innocently murdered, with no apparent cause.
To some extent, we have made a head way given the African Union’s Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan’s Conflict Report, but I must state that there is must more to be done, which still required our collective actions.
President Salva Kiir and his thugs, militia allies from Bul Nuer, Darfur and SPLA -North rebels have committed horrific atrocities across Nuer Nation against innocent civilians. Crimes punishable by death when one is found alive or dead!
Therefore, I need not to remind you that Nuer women, young girls and elderly women were raped and burned alive after rape. I need not to mention that young Nuer boys were castrated and young Nuer girls had their breasts cut off and left for dead. And I need not to say to you that elderly men in Unity State and Juba were forced to eat and drink the blood of their dead relatives and killed afterward. Finally, with gruesome brutalities, Nuer women were subjected to jump on fire for show and gang raped with sharp objects and allowed to blood to death. These are heinous crimes committed by South Sudanese against their own fellow citizens.
It’s true that the scene of everlasting tragedy is set. To ease this tragic precedent, I call on all South Sudanese both at home and in Diaspora to commemorate December 15th of the Nuer massacre together as one people and condemn the wrong and those who took part committing these heinous crimes against our nation and our fellow countrymen and men.
It’s worth quoting the original report – http://www.peaceau.org/uploads/auciss.final.report.pdf :
Some white trashes have been writing a load of propaganda about the war in South Sudan, but they do not know that they are wasting a lot their time writing those load of rubbishes. The Nuers are biggest liars on earth. Their Riek Machar demigod even told the BBC Hard-talk program in 2014 that 20,000 Nuers were killed in Juba! Other times the Nuers say that 50,000 Nuers were killed in Juba.
Yani, how many Nuers were in Juba in the first place? For all l know, not more than 2000 Nuers were killed in Juba and most them were the coup plotters. The Nuers and their backers in the US, the UK and some lowly criminals in the UN can lie through their teeth. But South Sudanese people know what really happened than these Nuers lies.
The Nuers have not told the South Sudanese people as to why they came and started their revenge killing in Bor, Akoba, Anasir, Baliet, Malakal or Bentiu. And not in Warrap and Northern Bhar el Gazelles states, where they (the Nuers) believed president Salva Kiir body guards that they accused to have murdered them in Juba hailed from.
The US, the UK and their UN and some sleazy criminals have been siding with the Nuers all along, because their end game is to regime change the government of South Sudan. But that will be a tall order as far as we are concerned.
The evil white Americans, the British and some of their sleazy criminals in between must watch out. if we get you fellows with your subversive activities in our country, then you will dead.
The evil corporate America sponsored a coup against an elected government and it doesn’t want to even acknowledge it subversive crime against South Sudan and the South Sudanese people. In coups people die and the US should know better.
Anyway, the evil white Americans, British and their UN must be very careful some of these days in my home state of Jonglei and other states because they are our number two enemies after their Riek Machar puppet/stooge and are on our cross-hairs for take-down.
It is really good to have someone close to the situation share their views. I don’t know much about South Sudan … but don’t the Chinese have a large role in the mineral extraction? My impression is that their power is growing in West Africa. How much do they side with groups responsible for the violence, in order to get access to these resources?
acccch, I mean East Africa. I’m not that geographically clueless, honest … I just have a terrible tendency to mix up left and right when thinking about the area.
Two examples of arrogance and its consequences that come forth revolve around the recently formed country called South Sudan. Despite helping to create the this new nation and installing its government, Washington is now supporting a rebel force trying to overthrow that entity. Meanwhile China is supporting the government once considered Washington’s ally. Important to both outside nations is the oil underneath the surface of South Sudan. In discussing this situation, Turse raises the question of the role economic competition plays in the military buildup that is the topic of the book. Just as it has been for centuries, the continent of Africa remains a source of raw materials and cheap labor. From Turse’s telling, this would seem to be Washington’s primary motivation for its increasing presence there. Indeed, articles in military publications have compared the current US military involvement in Africa to the Banana Wars in Latin America in the twentieth century. China, on the other hand, also understands that with economic development will come an expanded market for finished goods as well. Consequently, Beijing is tailoring its involvement towards development that provides education, health and education. While both nations desire the resources abundant on the continent, Beijing’s approach curries more favor than Washington’s militaristic one. This isn’t to say that China has no military involvement. As Turse points out, the fact that China has become more capitalist has caused it to expand its economic reach to satisfy the needs of its economy. It has also committed military troops to defend its investments. However, its mission is not primarily military like Washington’s.
Although it seems fair to state that the US military presence in Africa would have increased no matter who was in the White House the past seven years, it is interesting to note that it has seen its greatest expansion while an African-American man sat in the Oval Office. Of course, at one time Africans sold other Africans into slavery. Tomorrow’s Battlefield provides a fairly detailed introduction to what Washington is up to in the countries of the African continent. Unfortunately, if Turse is correct, it is only the first of many such books with a similar focus.
no one should mistake the attention to this particular incident by the “journalists” at the Intercept to be anything other than political opportunism. It has little to do with humanitarian concerns, the killing of innocent civilians or that a hospital was probably attacked purposely. Most other countries could have done the same and it would not have even been considered by Greenwald or the Intercept as a story. These kinds of stories are directed almost strictly at the US and allies (especially Israel). It’s advocacy journalism at its worst always couched in human rights.
There have been no stories concerning Russian, Iranian and Lebanese/Hezbollah supplying weapons, manpower, air power or intelligence to Assad accused of using barrel bombs, chemical weapons and chlorine gas on civilians in the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today. As many as 300,000 people have died in a war started by Assad to crush a political rights movement. The only two stories to date (that I am aware of) are how Putin controls the Internet (in Russia) and US support for so-called “fascists” in Ukraine. There have been no stories about Russian (Iran and Hezbollah) complicity in propping up the brutal dictator, Assad – accused of numerous war crimes by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN.
The mission statement of the Intercept states:
“……The Intercept, launched in 2014 by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, is dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism. We believe journalism should bring transparency and accountability to powerful governmental and corporate institutions, and our journalists have the editorial freedom and legal support to pursue this mission…..”
This is a fabrication on South Sudan because the Intercept is only focused on the US and allies. Most “powerful governmental institutions are given a free pass (like the Russian government). The Intercept could care less about humanitarian issues and concerns outside of US conflicts and allies. Even worse, Greenwald has defended the actions of Russia quoting an anti-Jewish bigot. The mission statement is a lie and this should be corrected. As it stands right now, the Intercept is no better than a subsidiary of RT – and little more. Do your homework hippies Nick Turse.
American government is not powerful enough for you that you want the intercept to report on russian gov? Reporting on the atrocities of US’s enemies can make us americans feel good about ourselves. When the intercept reports, we are forced to look into the mirror. That is what disturbs you.
Thank you for this. I can’t imagine it was an easy investigation.
What now, I wonder? Any democratic process around whether this country goes to war, with whom, how it conducts itself in the process is so eroded. And since it can be conducted without a large human presence (troops), the impetus for many citizens to pay attention is disappearing as well.
The international courts are helpless.
It won’t stop without a huge outcry, and I don’t know if it will happen.
Keep exposing it, though. Without any knowledge of this, we have no chance of changing it at all.
While these young boys may have no Port Huron statement, no manifesto, and no coordinated actions (that we know of), they are a legitimate radical faction that may have one-upped the violent Weather Underground and the revolutionary Abbie Hoffman. These boys have truly embraced “revolution for the hell of it,” maybe better than Abbie ever did. The randomness of their “non-campaign” may be the ultimate expression of “rage against the machine,” ripping into the system, as it were, at its most vulnerable and fundamental level, perhaps more so than Weatherman’s bombing of the U.S. Capitol.
While these school-age killers have no Vietnam War to protest, and may be criticized by former hippies for having no cause for which to fight, I contend that the struggle in which these boys are engaged may be as fundamentally important as ending the war in Vietnam (or imperialism, or racism, etc.) was to the hippies, Yippies, Diggers, and Panthers of the bygone era. These children, while they do not articulate the sentiment or may not even realize it, are fighting a system as insidious as the military-industrial complex was to their 1960s counterparts. They are fighting the American educational system and, by extension, the so-called American way of life. – Nick Turse on the Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold