Max wrote: I think this war over terminology -- was it genocide, or what -- is political in an unconstructive sense. Calling the treatment of native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide" is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root. That doesn't mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that its political context often -- especially on PEN-L -- makes its use tendentious. People are not arguing about history for its own sake -- they are trying to prop up problematic arguments and political precepts, and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero political impact from any left political standpoint you care to espouse. Max, I'm sorry but it really hurts to see something like this. Genocide is indeed a present not just past reality all over the world for Indigenous Peoples. I use the term genocide on the basis of the definition of genocidal acts contained in Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide: Article II "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the 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 seerious 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 transfering children of the group to another group. All of the above and a lot more have been done and are being done on systematic, calculated and mass levels to Indigenous Peoples all over the world. Indeed Indigenous People have been systematically murdered with intent to destroy whole peoples by various versions of Einsatzgruppen (execution squads) specifically commissioned to hunt down and execute Indigenous Peoples in order to destroy whole peoples. Indeed, Indigenous Peoples have been subject to bacteriological and chemical agents designed to destroy them as peoples (e.g. smallpoz infected blankets, putting children without TB next to children with TB). Indeed Indigenous Peoples have been used for medical experimentation including by "former" nazi doctors (Canada and US are several documented cases). Indeed Indigenous Peoples are subject to special racial identification/certification by non-Indigenous Agencies of Governments that have shown themselves intent on destroying Indigenous Peoples. Indeed Indigenous Peoples have been subject to wholesale rape, slavery, use by sexual predators and use by conquering soldiers. The term Genocide when used in reference to Indigenous Peoples and African-Americans is hardly a rhetorical device unless the term genocide has no meaning in which case it does not apply to Jews, Gypsies, Slavic Peoples or others either; which of course it most certainly does. The US Government is still not a full signatory to the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide which it did not sign until 1988 and then with a Lugar/Helms/Hatch "Sovereignty Amendment" (that said US Law trumps International Law and Conventions which says if genocide is an American thing, US law trumps--exactly what the nazis said). In fact my own research and that of Ward Churchill and others shows Senate and House debates in which it was repeatedly mentioned that Jim Crow Laws and past/present-day treatment of Indians would make the US liable under the 1948 UN Convention and therefore the US should not sign it. Just like you Max, my blood boils when I see Historical Revisionsts attempt to deny the reality, the full magnitude, nature and clear intentions of the nazi genocide/murders against Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Disabled Peoples, POWs, Slavic Peoples, Communists, Socialists, "Righteous Gentiles" and all those targeted by the nazis. In fact, as some of my signature trailers have noted, according to John Toland, Hitler's concepts for lebensraum and systematic expermination (as revealed in the infamous Hossbach Memorandum) came from the British camps for Boers in South Africa and from the US experience in dealing with Indians. Further, as one of my other signature trailers noted, from a leaked document from the BIA, the BIA put in the 25% blood quantum rule specifically to eliminate the "Indian Problem" by letting redefinition (by non-Indians), Intermarriage and early deaths take care of the "Indian Problem" by eliminating Indians. If that isn't intent to destroy a People as a People I don't know what is. So as someone who lives daily in Indian Country, I can say without equivocation or duplicity that GENOCIDE is the only appropriate term for the past and present-day realities of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world and it is not a rhetorical device or even rhetoric in the classical sense (persuasion) to use that term when applied to Indigenous Peoples and African-Americans in the US. Take care, Ni-Kso-Ko-Wa (We are all related) Jim
