Dan Koenig writes:
>Bill, this is a Chomsky list serve and Chomsky is a linguist. The word
>genocide
>is derived from genos (Gr) for race (or gens for a people) and caedere (Lt)
>meaning to kill. You seem to recognize this in qualifying your example of
>Australian aborigines as "at least cultural genocide". However, I think
>that as
>you recount the situation of Tasmanian aborigines actual genocide took place,
>though partly by indirection. This, however, is not what has been
>happening in
>Kosovo, as horrific as what has been happening is. This is what I
>pointed out,
>but you seem to have missed the point. If you don't see the difference,
>you are
>welcome to your view, wrong and linguistically incorrect though I think it
>may
>be. Regardless, there is nothing to be gained by responding further on this
>point..
Nice try, but no cigar. This is the actual definition of "genocide" as it
is defined in international law:
"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:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
If what is happening in Kosovo doesn't fit under this definition, I don't
know what does.
_____________
Tresy Kilbourne
Seattle WA
PGP Keys <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
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