Memories of the 28th Century

Genocide: the policy of deliberately killing a nationality or ethnic group.

As a follow-up to my post about ethnic cleansing I want to look at genocide. I started by looking at definitions, such as the one from dictionary.com that makes up the title. Then there’s: Genocide is the systematic destruction of all or part of a racial, ethnic, religious or national group via the (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately ...

Nasty though humans often are, they aren’t very efficient when it comes to getting rid of enemies or others who are in the way. I don’t recall what brought it to mind, perhaps Amherst and the Indians again, but I started trying to think of examples of ethnic cleansing or genocide that did anything positive for anyone. Typically, ethnic cleansings have resulted in some, or most, of one people being chucked out of one area, while the people who did the chucking gained the eternal hatred of those who ...

Just because everyone thinks something happened is not a good reason to think that it did occur.. For decades I had believed that Lord Jeffrey Amherst had spread smallpox among American Indians by giving them smallpox infested blankets in an effort to reduce their numbers. I don’t remember when I first encountered that story; it might have been in elementary school. But I never bothered to look into the matter until recently, when an acquaintance, who is not the most credible person I have ever ...

The current unpleasantness in Ukraine has caught my attention to a slight degree, especially in light of the Winter Olympics having been held nearby. The location of the Olympics gave me a hint as to the best way to handle the matter. As I am sure you know, Sochi was the principal city of Circassia before the Russians conquered that country to go along with the rest of their conquests South and East of Russia proper. I can understand the conquest of the Crimean Peninsula, which the Russians took ...