Human rights are one of the great tasks of our civilisation. This article discusses the importance of this task along with our personal responsibility to be involved.
This article fleshes out some of the ideas in the introduction and would be a good one to read after that.
The massacres in Rwanda were an event that touched me deeply, and taught me much about the world. Here are a couple of good summary articles about why the west should also learn from them.
It seems to me it only takes a bit of thought to realize that if wars came out of human nature, out of a spontaneous urge to kill, then why is it that governments have to go to such tremendous lengths to mobilize the populations to go to war? It seems too obvious doesn't it? They really have to work at it. They have to dredge up an enormous number of reasons.
— Howard Zinn
Eric Schlosser
Part of my attraction to this book is that I enjoyed his previous bestseller Fast Food Nation so much. I am from the generation that took the threat of nuclear annihilation more seriously. The cold war was still happening right through my formative years. We watched movies like "The Day After" and "The China Syndrome". The news was dominated by stories of conflict between the United States and the USSR. The debate between capitalism and democracy, authoritarianism and communism, was very real in our lives. Nuclear weapons and nuclear war were something we thought about often. Damocles underpinned our lives...