>I'm asserting what I believe to be the normal international
>_common_ usage (as opposed, e.g. to the UN's rather open and legalistic
>notion). If the annihilation of culture, as terrible as it is, is defined as
>genocide, then I think we tend towards a situation whereby the --- always
>traumatic --- transition from pre-modern to modern societies, everywhere,
>always included an element of "genocide".
You are deliberately asserting a falsehood. Again. Deliberate elimination of a people's entire cultural heritage is not at all the same thing as natural social change. The latter of course usually involves incorporation and adaption of pre-existing knowledge and social customs. Which is quite a different matter from simply trashing them without leaving a trace.
>BTW, although I accept that words change in usage over time, when Raphael
>Lemkin coined the word in 1944, he defined genocide as "a coordinated plan
>of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of
>the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups
>themselves." Which it seems to me is not nearly as widely applicable as the
>UN definition,
But then you are intent on deliberately mis-representing the UN definition, which you know is not nearly so broad as you make it out to be. So your statement is meaningless. Oh what a twisted web we weave...
> and also strongly implies mass murder.
It would be easier to just say "mass murder" if that is what it meant. Mass murder doesn't amount to genocide though, any more than genocide necessarily involves mass murder. Both definitions of genocide are about purposeful destruction of particular groups, by whatever means. Neither definition implies that an absence of mass murder implies an absence of genocidal intent.
Genocide is not about means, it is about intention. It is only you that pretends otherwise, or pretends that more sensible and acceptable definitions mean something other than what they clearly say. But I think the dictionary definition will survive your lone campaign to talk the concept of genocide out of existence.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas