<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: [lbo-talk] Genocide, Holocaust</title></head><body> <div>At 11:49 AM +0800 2/6/03, Grant Lee wrote:</div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Hi Thiago<br> <br> > If you think a genocide requires killing, that's fair enough, though it is<br> > at odds with the Geneva Convention:<br> ></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>> http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html#Article%202.5<br> <br> My problem with that definition  is that it is so broad as to render</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>genocide meaningless, i.e. "(b.) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>members of the group." That could mean almost anything. (Don't these</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>legalistic liberals know how to be specific?)</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>You are willfully misrepresenting what it says, by quoting the phrase out of context. The context clearly is doing those things "...<font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000"> with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group</font>". You might pretend that it doesn't say that, you might even convince yourself of it, but the context is there in black and white.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Any moron can see that it doesn't intend to say that "... Causing serious bodily or mental harm" to members of a group is genocide, only doing so with *intent to destroy* that group.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Don't be so obtuse. Here it is, read it properly:</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000">Article 2</font></blockquote> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000">In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:</font></blockquote> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000"><br></font></blockquote> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000">    * (a) Killing members of the group;</font></blockquote> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000">    * (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;</font></blockquote> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000">    * (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;</font></blockquote> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000">    * (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;</font></blockquote> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000">* (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.</font></blockquote> <blockquote><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000"><br></font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>In my opinion the "Stolen Generations" was the same kind of crime that was<br> committed against the thousands of British "orphans" sent to settler<br> colonies during the very same period and with the very same intent --- to<br> make them obedient and capitalist-productive workers, in a society with a</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>labour market with a long term, structural dearth of unskilled labour.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I suspect your "opinion" is based on deliberate, willful, ignorance of the different context of the respective examples. Clearly the British "orphans" transported to the "colonies" suffered much the fate as aboriginals taken from their families. But equally clearly, the motivation and intent behind the transportation of the British "orphans" could not have been the destruction of a national or ethnic group.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Incidently, the fate of the British orphans was also the fate of many illegitimate children born of white Australians. It was certainly awful what was done to these people, but there can be no question it was genocide, because there was not intention to destroy an ethnic group.</div> <div><br></div> <div>But there are many indications that it was the motivation behind removal of aboriginal children from their parents. You would be entitled to dispute this of course, but you are not entitled to misrepresent the official definition of genocide.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Bill Bartlett</div> <div>Bracknell Tas</div> </body> </html>