Hey, Dan's kindly hosing my PowerPoints. 'Cause I don't know how to and stuff. The first one is up. It's the short PowerPoint that accompanied my thesis paper. Dan says I should warn you-all about graphic content. But I'm not going to warn you. I figure that after reading here for years, reading of the, heh, carnage and heartbreak of chicken farming, graphic content shouldn't bother you.
I'll try to get the second one up soon. I hesitate, because number one, PowerPoints aren't my best medium, and number two, the next one, my WS final project ppt, is something I still am not completely pleased with...Oh well.
http://www.machinesoflovinggrace.net/c/tssog.ppt
I'll try to get the second one up soon. I hesitate, because number one, PowerPoints aren't my best medium, and number two, the next one, my WS final project ppt, is something I still am not completely pleased with...Oh well.
http://www.
Truly excellent powerpoint, in a horrible kind of way. As always, I'm in awe of your writing.
A gross oversimplification of a remarkably complex and twisted story. I'm astonished that anyone would even try to use so blunt a tool as PowerPoint to tell the story of the Biafran civil war.
I wonder at your use of so emotionally-charged a word as 'genocide' in this context. I suppose it depends on what your definition of 'genocide' is...
If by 'genocide' you mean that "a bunch of culturally similar people all died at the same time," then yeah, maybe.
But most of the deaths in Biafra were caused by starvation and disease that were a result of Nigeria's economic blockade of a region in rebellion. To suggest that the Nigerian government was engaged in the systematic murder of the Igbo people - a la Auschwitz - is not only intellectually dishonest, but demonstrably untrue.
It could equally well be argued that the Igbo people (at least, an educated handful of them) were responsible for starting the whole mess in the first place, with the failed coup d’état in 1966 and Biafra's subsequent ill-conceived declaration of independence. No, the Igbo didn't deserve what happened to them, but you leave out a LOT of important historical background.
I also wonder about your fixation on America's lack of involvement in the tragedy. Why is so much of your criticism for non-involvement reserved for the United States?
True, the United States wasn't particularly active in stopping the Biafran tragedy, but neither was anybody else. Nation-states are notoriously reluctant to involve themselves in each others' civil wars. (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in Spain being conspicuous exceptions) And remember, the US was sort of preoccupied at the time... what with one thing after another in southeast Asia...
Gross oversimplification is kinda my forte.
The ppt accompanied a ten-page thesis that, by virtue of its ten-pagedness, argued my points in the way a ppt could not.
And of course it was a genocide. And of course most of the world stood by and did nothing. And of course this was fucked up and something for which the United States should feel guilty.