Ivory Towers of the Internets

[Ripley]

While "Ivory Tower" is an often erroneous insult to "eggheads" as Repubs like to say about anything and everything relating to highly educated folks...

There certainly seems to be an Ivory Tower here that is isolating.

Untested social theories that are being played out in New Orleans and in a few days, Texas.

Lock-tight assumptions that A people do certain things.
Lock-tight assumptions that B people do not do certain things.

Maybe the planet Earth is not political.

Just MAYBE the freaking blackops are not involved. Just MAYBE everyone is working as hard as hell and things still suck. Just MAYBE good people do what they can and only a few fuck it up.

The Ivory Tower that memes Genocide is making itself obsolete. And I'm sure I will piss people off with that statement.

But there are too many ways to impeach this administration already known without making up hysterical claims that do nothing but

DISTRACT and DISRUPT.

[skooooo]

1. Huh?

I'm really not sure what you're saying exactly.

[Iris]

2. yeah. What skooooo said.

I must be missing something because I only have access to 1 of the "internets."

[skooooo]

3. I think the writer...

...is saying that the cries of "genocide" are over the top.

[Ripley]

4. Okay

Yeah that is part of what is going on.

The threads around here discussing the government's role in making these hurricanes and aiming them at poor people are getting too sad.

[skooooo]

5. Honestly haven't seen any of those threads....

Sometimes the tinfoil hatters get a bit carried away. However, I do think that what happened in NO, with poor black people sitting at the Superdome and the COnvention Center is tantamount to genocide. Maybe genocide is not the right word, because it was a small portion of the poor and black community that suffered, but I do think racism was involved at several levels.

[hardrainfallin]

7. what is genocide?

I get real fucking tired of people throwing around the term "genocide" without knowing what the hell they are talking about.

Genocide, in its modern usage, was introduced to the English language by Raphael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. The definition that was adopted by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is as follows. The US is party to this convention (we signed on under Reagan, in 1986). Read the LEGAL definition and decide for yourself whether the term genocide applies to this most recent activity on the part of the US gov (and how many times the term genocide may or may not have been applicable to other actions of this gov and previous administrations of the US, domestic or international):


Article 2
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.

Article 3
The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.


http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html

[skooooo]

8. I think that is why I said...

"....is tantamount to genocide. Maybe genocide is not the right word..."

[hardrainfallin]

9. Well, I think in this case genocide is the right word

and sorry if my post seemed intended for you. It wasn't. It was more referring to the argument that using "genocide" is over the top.

Look at the LEGAL definition. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say. But looks pretty straightforward to me: yes, this is a case of genocide, according to the LEGAL definition as outlined by this UN Convention, not according to some namby-pamby, wishy-washy understanding of genocide (like the ones even most dictionaries provide), but as a legal category of crime outlined and supposedly regulated by international law.

The alarming part: no one seems to give a damn (also very typical of most cases of genocide, unless of course the targeted "national, ethnical, racial, or religious" group happens to be white).

[Ripley]

10. So, once again...

How exactly was Genocide inflicted onto the gulf coast when the "inflictor" was a hurricane?

Yeah, I know all about the FEMA fuckup. But how does that absolve the black mayor and democratic leaders in Louisiana?

Are they in on the genocide too?

[skooooo]

11. The "inflictor" was not the hurricane...

It wasn't the hurricane's fault that no one got off their asses and flew some food and water in for those people. THAT'S what people are talking about.


Honestly...

[The Magistrate]

12. You Misread The Meaning Of These Phrases, Sir

No competent body or tribunal has ever held them, or ever will hold them, to apply to situations such as you are attempting to apply them to. In all instances since the adoprion of this convention in which people have actually been put on trial under its provisions, the acts have consisted of deliberate murder organizeed on a wide scale, and the persons charged have been charged with either ordering such acts unequivocally, or carrying them out personally. It is of course possible to claim that killing even a single individual, or even causing mental distress to a single individual, since any individual is a part of a group, would suffice to call these provisions into play, but no judge will ever apply them in that manner, and that was certainly not the intention of the authors and ratifiers of the convention you have cited.

[bee]

6. the governments role in making these hurricanes?

huh? link?

[Maple]

13. Then welcome to Internet 2

http://www.internet2.edu/

[Iris]

15. Very cool! I'm already on it!

My university is part of it!

Who knew?

Thanks for the link.

[WilliamPitt]

14. I didn't get it either

[Redstone]

16. Only one quibble: While I agree with your on the "genocide" angle,

and agree that a whole lot of people are doing the best job they can, there has been an absolutely mind-boggling amount of incompetence at just about every level above that of first responder.

Any of us in your "ivory tower," and indeed the guy who sells auto parts down the street, could have acted a hell of a lot more sensibly and effectively that those "homeland security professionals" did, for the most part.

Redstone