Dear members of "european-sociologist" list,
I think, David Wainwright gave an exhaustive answer to Mr. Teanor about the
Subj. and has closed the discussion and I can not add something more to it.
But let me say something about the way Paul is expressing his ideas.
When I was reading his message I was trying to remember, where have I heard
something similar. Well, in Moscow there is small place near the Historical
Museum (former Museum of Lenin) where different kinds of psychos -
communists, nationalists are meeting, selling their literature etc - it is
the great place for sociologists who study subcultural groups, deviant
behaviour and so on (and for psychiatrists, of course). Such groups can be
found in each country, only words they speak are different.
That people in Moscow speak about "horrible regime of Yeltsin", "murders in
Kremlin", "global conspiracy of freemasons and zionists", "f....g
democrats" and "genocide of russian nation". The last idea is very, very
popular among them - the birth rate in the last 50 years really was falling
(from 23,2 births per 1000 of people in 1960 to 8,8 in the 1998) and the
mortality was growing (from 7,4 to 13,6). They don't want to hear, that
this situation continues for the last 40-50 years. They take the statistics
for the last 10 years and get "the evidence of the genocide of russian
nation, made by murders in Kremlin". They don't listen, that this situation
is because the Worl War II, when about 25 millions of people in Soviet
Union died, the horrible impact of the industry (first of all, military
industry) on the ecology etc. For them "murders in Kremlin" / "Yeltsin's
gang" / "Mossad and global conspiracy of zionists" / "democrats" are
guilty. If you will give them Internet access and will replace "Russia"
with "UK", "Yeltsin" with "Thatcher", "Kremlin" with "UK Government" - you
will get that, what we have in our "Incoming mail".
I am terribly sorry to see, that "european-sociologist" becomes an usual
"hate group" because of Mr. Teanor, who doesn't understand, that being a
sociologist requires some responsibility for what you say (and the fact,
that he hasn' t left his "physical" address in the bottom of the message
shows me that I am right). I know, that you, dear colleagues, may wish to
answer to Paul's message and say something. Please, ignore his message,
like people in Moscow ignore that group near Historical museum. This is the
best response. We have lots of more interesting subjects to discuss - let
us spend the time for it, not for responding to people, which we will newer
bring round.
Sincerely yours,
Alexandre Bougakov <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sociological faculty of the Higher School of Economics (http://www.hse.ru),
Moscow, Russian Federation
My website is http://SocioLink.narod.ru/ (thousands of sociology related
links on the Web)
My PGP key ID is 0x97F20C99, Key Fingerprint is C83C 5998 F43A BEB7 70DF
B8FC CC5E 960E 97F2 0C99 (PGP version is 6.0.2i)
P.S. Please forgive my bad English.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Wainwright [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2000 4:19 PM
To: 'Paul Treanor'; [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: David Irving, the BSA, and Holocaust denial.
This is absolute nonsense, of the 'Citizen Smith' variety. First, the idea
that British sociology has overlooked the health inequalities issue is
particularly ill founded, since a great many medical sociologists in
Britain have spent their entire careers compiling evidence on this topic,
developing explanatory frameworks, and lobbying for government action.
Ellen Annandale's (1998) The Sociology of Health & Medicine: a critical
introduction spends 70 pages outlining medical sociology's contribution
to understanding class, gender, and race inequalities in health.
Secondly, the suggestion that Thatcher is personally responsible for
differential mortality rates is also extremely foolish. Arguably the most
important contribution to the health inequalities debate was the Black
Report of 1980, published just after Thatcher came into office, but based
on evidence of widening health inequalities throughout the post-war period.
Moreover, whilst health inequalities widened sharply during the 1980s,
absolute mortality rates continued to fall, as they had done throughout the
20th century.
Thirdly, if sociology has achieved anything in this area, it has been the
demonstration that health inequalities are deeply embedded in social and
economic relations, and that their amelioration requires radical structural
change. Thatcher did nothing to implement such change, but nor has any
other British government. Calling for Thatcher's head on a plate rather
misses the point. You might as well accuse the RAC of being mass murderers
for their failure to curb death on the roads!
David
Dr David Wainwright
Research Fellow
Centre for Health Services Studies
George Allen Wing
University of Kent
Canterbury
Kent
United Kingdom
Tel. 01227 827963 (direct line)
e-mail. [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Treanor [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 12 April 2000 12:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: David Irving, the BSA, and Holocaust denial.
Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet set to to kill the poor, they killed the
poor, and they got away with it.
---
In England in the 1980's, unemployed males aged 16-70 had 1,24 times the
death
risk of employed males from the top three socio-economic groups. Unemployed
females aged 16-70 had 1,48 times the death risk of employed females from
the
top three socio-economic groups.
In England in the 1980's males (16-70) living in rented housing without car
access had 1,54 times the death rate of males living in privately-owned
housing with car access. For females the extra risk was similar: 1,56.
In the 1980's, living in the North of England reduced male life expectancy
after 25 by 1,8 years. In the 1980's, living in the North of England
reduced
female life expectancy after 25 by 1,3 years.
[Andrew Sloggett and Heather Joshi. Higher mortality in deprived areas:
community or personal disadvantage? British Medical Journal 309 (1994):
1470-1474]
---
The actions of the Thatcher government are, in historical perspective, mass
murders. They are a historical fact, of major importance in post-war
British
society. Yet they are almost totally ignored by British sociology. This
silence constitutes a de facto complicity. The BSA as the professional
association has a clear institutional guilt in this matter.
It is interesting to compare the attitudes of British sociology to those of
the now well-publicised Holocaust deniers. In this case it is the
establishment that is the Holocaust denier: those who speak of Thatcher's
murders are socially, politically and academically marginalised. I would be
surprised if any single member of the BSA is prepared to publicly call
Thatcher a mass murderer.
Some of the strategies used by the profession are those of Holocaust
deniers
such as David Irving. They include...
- treating it as 'crankish', 'loony', or 'hysterical' to talk of mass
murders,
or even of differential death rates.
- the insistence on proof of malicious intent by specified persons, and
insistence on judicial standards of proof for all individuals in
large-scale
historical events. These are favourite tactics of Holocaust deniers such as
Irving (who makes much of the fact that Hitler apparently never gave a
direct
order for the Holocaust).
- questioning the statistical evidence out of existence
- claims that some (or all) of the victims died a natural death.
In addition there is a direct censorship within the academic world. For
instance, I would expect refusal to publish any article using terms such as
'mass murder' or 'mass killing', in relation to class differentials in
death
rates under Thatcher.
Imagine a world in which 99% of academics were clones of David Irving, and
the
difficulty of discussing the Holocaust under circumstances. Yet that is an
exact parallel of the situation which now exists, with regard to the
Thatcher
cabinet's mass murders.
---
Paul Treanor
How many people did Thatcher kill?
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/thatcher.html
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