Motivational speakers
Feb. 10th, 2009 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyIs there anything* worse than motivational speakers?
I don't think there is. Maybe mimes, but it's a tough call.
* Well, anything short of genocide**.
** And people who nitpick about the definition of genocide.
I don't think there is. Maybe mimes, but it's a tough call.
* Well, anything short of genocide**.
** And people who nitpick about the definition of genocide.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-11 12:32 am (UTC)It was actually his misguided precision. And the fact that he was wrong.
Attempt by one ethnic group to obliterate, physically or culturally, another. The UN had a pretty good definition before Canada and the U.S. fucked with it so that their genocides wouldn't count.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-11 12:07 pm (UTC)That's your definition? based on ethnicity, with no mention of state actors and intent? That's good enough for a bar fight, but not much else.
I'd like to know what you think Canada and the US had changed in the CPPCG. I don't know what the pre-exisiting drafts said. I know that the US insists that the intent must be a "specific" intent, which is a cop-out, but I think the Convention as it stands now covers its actions against its native populations, but there's a lack of will to prosecute, which is a separate problem.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-11 10:58 pm (UTC)I'd like to know what you think Canada and the US had changed in the CPPCG.
I don't have links on me right now and I don't have time to search for them, but basically they lobbied heavily to make it more specific so as to be ambiguous on the cultural end. Remind me when my brain isn't so foggy.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 01:26 am (UTC)I don't think intent can be left to implication. Much like a criminal charge of homicide against a single person who's killed another, under which the killing may be found to be negligent, justifiable, reckless, all sorts of gradations. The gravest charge is that of premeditation. We impose additional penalties and judge the accused more gravely if it was also a hate crime, another category which depends on demonstrable pre-ëxisting patterns of action. These things are not self-evident, intent must be demonstrated. So same with genocide; otherwise I don't know how genocide differs from many other human interactions in which one group wiped out another.
I actually thought about state actors more broadly as the "acknowledged authorities" of whatever group was doing the organized killing -- here I was clearly imprecise and I appreciate the correction. In the case of the Biblical record, I quite agree what the Jews did to the original inhabitants of their promised land was a form of genocide from our perspective. They kept a very explicit record of their criminal enterprise, after all. The records say that the orders came from a magical sky-fairy, but we know they came from their ruling elites. God is just a substitute state actor here :/
Anyway, I think we agree about what qualifies as instances genocide and you don't seem to want to hit me with a bottle for my habitual nit-picking (I hope!), so I remain convinced the main problem with the guy you mentioned was that he was a) nit-picking in a bar and b) being factually wrong about his nits. And probably also c) unwillingness to listen. But in your LJ you come across as much too analytical to be a true nit-pick hater ;) (or maybe I am just having a definitional problem with the term)