First a Frappucino, then a lethal injection

Mark Silva,

Assume for discussion KSM was waterboarded with a mocha frapuchino with sprinkles. Is it still considered torture?

Are there any CIA operatives qualified to do it? Or did a specialist from Seattle need to be brought in?

Just wondering...

Hang 'em high!!! I'll even buy the rope, tie the noose, and pull the lever. It worked for President Andrew Jackson & it works for us!!!

Waterboard all politicians when investigating a scandal.
We might find out where this administration put the 14 Billion dollars in Oil For Food money that disappeared.

Pat....the 14 Billion Oil for Food was a France and friends thing...not US..Sorry can't stick that on your favorite scapgoat.

In order to save money how bout injection those terrorists WITH mocha frapuchino !!!! Kind of eliminate the middleman

Hanging is too quick and easy for these nasty fellas! Instead, make them watch Paris Hilton's latest movie "The Hottie and The Nottie" over and over....that'll fix their wagon !!

Pat, Pat, Pat,
When are you going to give up and take that Kerry/Edwards sign off your front lawn?

Serve them their last cup of coffee, then kill em all. Let God sort them out.

I would certainly confess if I had to start my day with Starbucks. That is some over-priced swill.
And where are the pink hearted socialist/liberals in this discussion? Surely they will step up and condemn this latest torture technique that is being applied to one of their special select groups.

You are all slaves of "Skull and Bones" Secret Sociaty you american ignorants.

If the lib's had their way, they'd have offered the Starbucks much earlier, without any interrogation or captivity whatsoever, trying to befriend these fiends in hopes that they would decide to like us.

Mark Silva,

I fail to see any reason here for your flip humor.

The topic is torture and the death penalty.

These charges will be the ultimate disgrace of Guantanamo, already a disgusting blot on America's human rights record.

Men held illegally for years, with no rights and no lawyers.

Men tortured.

Then charged with capital crimes on the basis of their torture-induced testimony.

Any fair-minded judge in the world would throw such charges out immediately.

Everything that America claims to embrace is violated in these proceedings.

But then the reality of America hardly lives up to the advertising, does it?

It's just one more school-yard bully, albeit an atomic-powered one.

John Chuckman of Canada what's wrong with you?

How can you stand to live near such a terrible country?

Go were it won't that foul for you!!!!

You and Canada and the rest...
Easy to sit back and say what should or shouldn't be done...easy to be a Monday morning quarterback...

How about you guys get into with internatioinal terrorist and show us HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE

Yeah .. Just as I thought... Now you got nothing....

Every problem I can think off the U.S. steps up and tries to fix/help/correct and you and yours sit back on your pompous butts and tell us what should have been done

Those animals being held in Gitmo are not American Citizens and they are not protected by The Constitution of The United States of America.

These animals declared war on us in 1979, since then the animals have killed thousands of American Citizens. They wear no uniforms. They should be considered to be like captured spies, no rights, no mercy for them. Kill them all like they want to kill us all

John Chuckman, Are you suggesting that as a campaign theme this fall? "The reality of America hardly lives up to the advertising." Great stuff. Tell your friends.

Serve them their last cup of coffee, then kill em all. Let God sort them out.

Posted by: Billius Maximus | February 14, 2008 10:49 AM

Go back to your Roman Coliseum.

I agree with letting "God sort them out".

That is exactly why we should not use the death penalty.

Liberals have the faith in God that He will deliver the proper final judgement for all of us.

Conservatives obviously do not have faith in God. They always feel it is up to them to judge and punish. Only God has the authority over life and death. For all of us. Honest citizens and murderers alike.

God did make the rule of "Thou shall not kill", but that goes for the death penalty, too.

Don't hang them... Let them Rot... If you kill them they become MARTYRS. This is what they want!!! and will further their cause!

Line them up one by one and I will be happy to pull the twigger of those twerribly pweople.

"America's human rights record".. there's and oxymoron if I ever heard one. Our human rights record starts back in the 1600's as we started slaughtering our aboriginals. Nothing's ever changed in this hypocritical slough of a country.

And the really funny thing is, the people clamoring loudest for death and torture are the religious nuts. Bah.

The comments seem evenly split between people who would shoot their kids for coming home late and those that would ground them.

However much I believe those who plotted and assisted in the attack on 9/11 deserve the death penalty, I have to go with Dustin this time. If we kill them, we would make them martyrs in the Arab street and give OBL fuel for a massive propaganda campaign/recruiting drive.

If, on the other hand, we sent them to the SuperMax or Leavenworth for life at hard labor, we would blunt the propaganda value their deaths would bring.

There is one other consideration involved here too. The death penalty, as disliked as it is in many places in the world, is viewed with even more contempt when executed after an unfair trial. However fair the trial might turn out to be, I believe there will be lingering doubts about this one. There is simply no way to erase the perception that any statements taken from these men, even by a “clean team,” will have been unduly influenced by any “rough treatment” the men previously received.

Rita:

You are ignorant and self-righteous. If you hate this country as much as your words say you do, then leave. Many of us are fed up with the gospel of guilt and self-loathing based on your brand of revisionist history.

Steve34:

God, who said "Thou shalt not kill," also prescribed the death penalty for the murder (see Leviticus 24: 17, 21; and Numbers 35:16-20), as well as for a variety of other wrongs (see e.g. Leviticus 20.). Thus, you are simply wrong on this point. You seem to read the Bible the way pseudo-liberals read the constitution: you make it say anything you want it to say.

Your comment that “Liberals have the faith in God that He will deliver the proper final judgment for all of us” would be humorous were it not so tragically false. Many liberals, or more correctly pseudo-liberals, are rabidly opposed to anything having to do with religion. Even the non-rabid brand of pseudo-liberals believe that NOTHING in government ought to be animated by a reverence for God or deference toward his laws. If any Democrat in government explicitly tried to base any legislation on God or religion, the ACLU, a variety of left-wing, anti-religion groups and other Democrats would be on him/her like flies on cow poop. It would be a rare event, indeed, to see any Democrat rise on the floor of any State legislature or Congress to decry the death penalty based on their faith in God.

And just as a historical point, Bill Clinton supported the death penalty. He saw that it was carried out when he was Governor of Arkansas, and as President of the United States. In 1972, Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia signed into law legislation to re-authorize the death penalty for murder, rape and other offenses (although he later flipped over to the anti-death penalty side). The late Ann Richards, Democratic (and sometimes liberal) Governor of Texas, was also good at carrying out the death penalty. On her watch, Texas executed Johnny Frank Garrett who was extremely mentally impaired, chronically psychotic and brain-damaged. These FACTS kind of trash your theory that “liberals” are generally opposed to the death penalty. I’ll admit there are some opposed to the death penalty, but I don’t think your generalization is true.

Finally, I think it is entirely unfair to characterize conservatives as being faithless for their support of the death penalty. I will grant there is a difference between religion and faith, and that some conservatives may have the former without the latter. Yet, like most other generalizations, yours is not generally true. Many conservatives conscientiously believe that governments are ordained by God, and that they exist to provide order and peace in society. The death penalty, in their view, contributes to that order by providing both social retribution for heinous crimes and a deterrent for those who might otherwise contemplate such offenses. Whether they are right or wrong in their estimation is another matter. The fact is that they believe this to be the case, and they know from a careful reading of the Bible that the death penalty is not prohibited to worldly governments.

John W, do you deny that the United States for a long portion of it's history did NOT slaughter the aboriginal peoples?

Do you deny the genocide of the Native Americans?

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/11/12/sandcreekmassacre.ap/

http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

http://www.aaanativearts.com/article287.html

http://www.logoi.com/notes/long_walk.html

Just a few of far, far, too many examples.

One can love ones country without denying it's history and it's faults.

Posted by: John W. | February 14, 2008 4:50 PM

I apologize for the generalization. The death penalty is an issue I'm passionate about an sometimes I type faster than I think. One of the reasons I hate blogs. You are one of the more reasoned voices of republican bloggers, I did not mean to insult anyone.

Now, in the Leviticus chapter you mention, I think sometimes the problem is when the Bilble is taken too literally. By that account, if I cut someones arm off, I should have my arm cut off. If I blind someone, I should be made blind. That's what it says in that same chapter. The death penalty is also the punishment for Blasphemy. Shall we follow God's instructions regarding that as well.
Should we stone someone on Michigan Ave. if we heard them say G-D.

I went to a Catholic grade school and Jesuit high school and college. I don't hold myself out as a Biblical scholar, but I've studied my faith all my life. I looked up the passages you mentioned to get a better idea of where you are coming from. And from a Bible I have here at home, I didn't just get it off the internet.

I believe God had "tougher rules" during the Old Testament. He needed to be stricter with the Israelites to make sure they thrived in the Holy Land. Then, when he sent his only son to die for our sins, he changed things. He sent his son to show us how to live now. The instructions of Christ is what "civilized" society is to follow. The most important of these can be found in Matthew 6, 38-48. This, now, disallows the death penalty. Forgiveness and compassion now reign the world, not retribution.

That's just how I "interpret" it. I'm sure you disagree. But to me the death penalty is just pure revenge. It is not justice. And it is no way for a civilized society to act.

Oh and I was aware that Clinton was in favor of the death penalty, and I disagreed with him as well.

Luke:

First, read the following:

“‘America's human rights record’.. there's and oxymoron if I ever heard one. Our human rights record starts back in the 1600's as we started slaughtering our aboriginals. Nothing's ever changed in this hypocritical slough of a country.

Now show me, in these words, where Rita expressed “love” for her country. Where is it? I don’t see it. I see abject hatred and contempt. More than that, her comments denigrate all those who have devoted their lives to making this country live up to its ideals of liberty and justice. I, personally, spent 20 years of my adult life defending the homeless and defenseless. So, please pardon me while I resent the S*** out of what she wrote. Her condemnation is despicable.

Second, Rita misrepresented what happened in this country from the 1600’s forward. Contrary to what she wrote, English settlers did not come here simply to start “slaughtering our aboriginals.” Nor, for that matter, were the Native Indians anything like the peaceful, nature-loving people as they are falsely portrayed in today’s mythology. To the contrary many of the major Indian-Settler conflicts were caused by acts of violence by the Indians against settlers.

Such was the case in the Pequot War, where the Indians massacred three different groups of unarmed settlers – men, women, and children - before the people of Hartford and surrounding areas took up arms. The same was true of the wars between the Jamestown Colony and the Powhatan tribe in Virginia. The first was triggered by the killing of a group of colonists, including its leader; the second by a massacre that killed one third of the Jamestown inhabitants. Another settlement along the James river, once located at the current site of Newport News, Virginia, had to abandon operations and return to England because of Indian predations. The same was true of “King Phillips War,” fought between the Wampanoag associated tribes and the English settlers in Massachusetts. The Wampanoag and English co-existed peacefully for fifty years, during which time they traded and developed a military alliance against other tribes hostile to the Wampanoag. However, with the rise of a new tribal leader who mistrusted the English, the Natives resorted to war to settle their differences, regardless of the English efforts to sue for peace. The resulting conflict was proportionally one of the bloodiest wars in American history to both the Indians and settlers. And this was just the 17h century.

The 18th Century wasn’t much better. Many Indian tribes maintained the dismal habit of taking sides against us in war. They took sides with the French against the English and their American settlers in the French and Indian War (with the exception of the Iroquois); most of them sided with the British against the American Colonists in the American Revolution; and they took the opportunity to wage war against the American settlers in the Western Frontier while the U.S. fought the British in the War of 1812. It was precisely because of all-the-above that the United States opted for the policy of removal (discussed below).

This is why I said Rita’s history is “revisionist.” One thinks of a “slaughter,” as she put it, as one-sided, unprovoked and unjustified killing. Much more often that not, such was simply not the case. When the killing results from justifiable defense against predations that turn into mutual hostility, it is called a “war.” (Make a note of that, Rita.) The Indians often waged war against us, making it rather absurd to call the resulting killing a “slaughter.”

Third, and finally, “genocide” is far too strong a word to describe what the U.S. has done to Native American Indians. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an entire people who belong to one racial, political, cultural or religious group – or the substantial, but failed attempt to do the same. Native American Indians are still with us, and there is a reason for it. The reason is that the United States never engaged in a deliberate policy of exterminating them. English Colonists, as noted above, never set out to exterminate the Native American Indians either. Once the U.S. gained independence from England, the policy of the U.S. Government through the end of the “Indian Wars” of the 19th Century was one of forced pacification. The U.S. sought to remove the Indians to locations where they couldn’t pose a threat to U.S. interests because the government determined that attempts at assimilation weren’t working. Under the 19th Century policy, Indians could avoid confrontations with the U.S. Army by voluntarily relocating to designated reservation lands. There was no policy, deliberate or otherwise, to kill them if they complied. Were this not the case, we would no longer have any Native American Indians with us.

Let me be clear on a few points. I am not trying to justify the conduct of the U.S. Government. I believe many of the U.S. policies regarding Native Indians were (and are) totally unjust. Nor do I deny that, over the years, certain citizens and elements of the United States Army committed a number of deliberate atrocities – as you have well documented. All I am telling you is that there was no deliberate, official policy in Washington to massacre Indians, and that atrocities committed against the Indians were not so widespread and systematic as to constitute genocide, as you have claimed. Ward Churchill’s exaggerated claims of genocide, to the same effect, were wrong for the same reasons. [And I am glad that hate-monger was finally fired, too.]

Steve34:

You have no reason to apologize. We are just in a lively debate, and the give and take can get a little tough sometimes. It happens around here.

I don’t read the passage from Leviticus the way you do. Even if I did, there is no way to bypass the unequivocal language of the passage of Numbers to that effect. Nor can one ignore the numbers of instances in the Bible where the People of Israel were commanded to execute certain wrongdoers. Consider also the admonition of the Apostle Paul to Christians to obey their government. This was made at a time when Rome was in control of the entire region. Not only did the Romans have a death penalty, the used it quite often and quite summarily. The only thing I was trying to say about the Bible is that it does not serve as an unequivocal source for the claim that the death penalty runs contrary to God’s laws.

I don’t fault you for your passionate opposition to the death penalty. I was once equally opposed to it. However, while reading cases, I began coming across murder cases where the defendants were convicted of outrageously cruel and heartless offenses, some of which involved multiple victims. These led me to doubt whether the death penalty was such a bad idea in all cases.

And I know this might sound a bit trite, but watching airplanes slamming into New York skyscrapers, thereby sending thousands to a horrible death, prompted such revulsion in me (at least) that I changed my mind. From that point on, for me, there were crimes for which the perpetrators lost their right to breathe, and the sooner the better. It is only now, after nearly seven years of reflecting on the matter, that I can suggest that we ought to spare the lives of those accused of masterminding and facilitating that attack - in order to deprive our enemies of martyrs and propaganda tools.

I still have trouble with the death penalty, not because of the fact that it involves retribution. I have a problem with it because the legal procedures employed are not sufficiently conducive to accurate fact finding to avoid either unjust convictions or unwarranted death sentences. To the contrary, some of the procedures involved in death penalty cases actually tip the scales in favor of erroneous convictions. If the death penalty is to be reserved for truly heinous crimes, it should be applied only to the perpetrator. It certainly has no place being applied to someone wrongfully convicted. Thus, I, too, will struggle with the death penalty until, at least, a way can be had to make the whole process a lot fairer.

John, did the Native Anmericans have the right to defend their lands against invaders? Did they not have the soveriegn right to protect the lands that had held for generations from intruders? Or did the europeans have superior rights to the lands?

Read some history of the Indian wars. They alsmost all start with a variant of:

1. A tribe makes an agreement with the Europeans.

2. Individual European settlers cross over the set boundries to take advantage of resources on the Native side of the line (Land, hunting, gold, etc.)

3. The Native tribes respond, often violently, to defend their lands.

4. The Europeans cast the natives as "savages" for their response and start a full scale war.

"Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an entire people who belong to one racial, political, cultural or religious group – or the substantial, but failed attempt to do the same."

And John that's precisely what happened. There are a great many tribes of Native peoples that no longer exist. Unique, valuable cultures wiped from the face of the earth.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5088/is_200010/ai_n18488269

http://www.trivia-library.com/c/extinct-ancient-societies-yahi-american-indians.htm

Genocide.

Luke:

You said:

“Read some history of the Indian wars. They almost all start with a variant of:
1. A tribe makes an agreement with the Europeans.
2. Individual European settlers cross over the set boundaries to take advantage of resources on the Native side of the line (Land, hunting, gold, etc.)
3. The Native tribes respond, often violently, to defend their lands.
4. The Europeans cast the natives as "savages" for their response and start a full scale war.”

To which I reply:

I have read history. If you had read my last post a little more carefully, you would have seen where I spoke in specifics, and not generalizations.

Furthermore, of the four examples I gave (above) only one even remotely resembled the scenario you laid out. In the case of the Wampanoag associated tribes, the English did overstep land use limitations. However, the English governors tried to rein in their own people, going as far as punishing them for exceeding agreed-upon boundaries. Moreover, the English pleaded with the Wampanoag to settle the matter peacefully in consideration of their lengthy, friendly relations. However, the Wampanoag had just come under new management (Metacom, a.k.a. “King Phillip”) and he refused to listen. He needlessly started a very bloody war. I might add that other Indians, like the Nauset tribe - fought against King Phillip on the side of the English.

The situation was also entirely contrary to your scenario in Connecticut. The settlers were not opposed by the Pequots or other tribes when they arrived. The Pequots established peaceful relations and trade with them. Prior to that time, they Indians had peaceful trade with the Dutch. The Indians even “sold” the settlers land upon which to live and grow crops. Then the Indians had a change of heart. This was not because of anything the settlers did. They simply decided they had made a mistake in allowing the settlers in because they believed the settler’s operations threatened their economy.

So, what did the Pequot tribe do? Did they approach the English and say, “We made a mistake, you should leave”? No. Did they offer to buy back the land they sold? No. Did they even give any warning of hostile intentions? No. They began killing unarmed bands of settlers, including women and children. They did so on three occasions. Then, after the Connecticut settlers demanded they turn over the murderers, the Pequots feigned compliance and sued for peace. That unraveled when they then treacherously killed an English trader who came to them to buy and sell. Only then did the English settlers of Connecticut elect to take up arms and go to war. I might add, again, that other Indian tribes fought on the side of the English against the Pequots. In other words, the facts were almost the exact opposite of what you claim was the usual situation.

The same was true of the Indians and settlers in Virginia. Even after the Indians and settlers made peace with each other, the peace was broken by a change in Indian leadership. In the case of the Powhatan tribe, the peace ended solely because the Chief died, and his brother took over. The new Chief disagreed with his dead brother’s policy toward the English and proceeded to massacre them. In one place, alone, they massacred one third of the Jamestown Colony settlers. None of this violence and war had to do with broken promises by the English or overstepping boundaries to take advantage of resources, as you suggest. It was pure treachery prompted by an arbitrary change of heart.

The reason I began this discussion with events of the 17th Century, is that the foregoing events were the strongest factors in shaping the English settlers’ views toward the Native Indians. The 18th Century and 19th Century – when the Indians continued to take up arms against Americans in the continental wars (French and Indian, Revolution, War of 1812, & the Civil War) – merely galvanized the mind-set of Americans into one of believing that Indians could not be trusted to peacefully co-exist. That, in turn, translated into the removal policy which characterized the rest of the 19th Century “Indian Wars.”

The foregoing examples also illustrate that your generalization is false. There may have been instances of violence erupting from the scenario you outlined. There were also many other factors involved, such as the breach of treaties on one or both sides. But your scenario was not, by far, the general rule. For every instance you can fork up where your scenario is true, I can find at least one where Indians attacked and killed people who lived in peace simply because they were breathing. As such, I stand by my original point that Rita’s generalization of the U.S. treatment of the Indians as a “slaughter” (i.e. unjustified brutality against peaceful people) was and is false, revisionist history.

Finally, with regard to the articles you cited to support your claim of “genocide” – you need to do a better job. One of them is about how Students at Montana State University honored “extinct” tribes. This merely begs the question of why they were “extinct.” The tribes mentioned – i.e. the “Purupuru, Quaqua, Pulacuam” were not victims of U.S. genocide. Two of them (e.g. the Purupuru and Quaqua) lived in South America, meaning they had been misidentified as North American Indians. The third tribe, the Pulacuam, were reduced by change in lifestyle, disease, and the attacks of hostile tribes. We have to remember that many Indians died tragically from the new diseases brought by Europeans, to which the Indians had no prior exposure or built up immunity. But that’s not evidence of U.S. genocide. The second article about the Yahi fares little better. The Yahi, as the article relates, were reduced by civilians, and not the U.S. government. Thus, however tragic and evil the events were (and they WERE both evil and tragic), their demise was not part of an overarching, intentional or systematic plan to eliminate Indians. In addition, the article doesn’t state with any certainty that the Yahi were entirely unrelated by blood, custom, tradition or tongue to any other group of Indians.

John, were the Jews of europe "entirely unrelated by blood, custom, tradition or tongue to any other group of Europeans"?

I guess they just don't like my posts. I've posted two posts - one yesterday and one the day before - and neither have come through.

What gives.

Well Luke,

Looks like I have to give you the short answer to your question.

Yes, the Jews were and are entirely unrelated "to any other group of Europeans" with regard to those factors. They aren't even of European origin. They are Semitic. That means they share no common gene pool with indigenous Europeans, and their orthodox religion forbids marrying outside their race. They have three languages peculiar to their culture (Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino) which no other people speak as a daily language. Their traditions and customs, which are based on their religion, are quite unique to them. So much so, in fact, that no one would have practiced those customs or traditions had the Nazis been successful.

I hope this was just a trivia challenge. I would be shocked - shocked I tell you – to learn that you thought the answer was anything other than what I just gave.

John, the Jews of Germany shared language (BTW yiddish is a German dialect), customs, traditions and blood (One only needed to have two Jewish grandparent to be defined as a Jew under the Nuremburg laws, or even just be married to a Jew) with the greater German (and european) populace. They did intermarry extensively with the gentile German population, but that didn't protect them either.

You are simply wrong in your characterization. The Jews were not some alien entity within German society and European society in general. It's really quite shocking how far off the mark you are ion this one. Where have you been getting your information?

They were no more different from their European neighbors than the Yahi were from their native american ones.

Luke,

Your answer is stunning and bold. I am only left to calculate how much of it was audacity and how much was outright bulls***.

The fact the Jews integrated themselves into European culture, learned European languages and (sometimes) intermarried did not erase those factors which made them quite distinct from their European neighbors in ethnicity, culture, tradition or tongue. Your suggestion to the contrary is a bad case of the tail wagging the dog.

That they lived and intermarried on occasion with Europeans did not obliterate the fact they are not indigenous to Europe and shared no common gene pool with Europeans prior to migration. Most importantly, as far as their ethnicity goes, their integration into Europe and its cultures did not obliterate their distinct identity as Jews. It was in large part because of their identifiable ethnicity that the Nazis could, in fact, single them out for persecution. While there may have been those who had intermarried and, after generations, were no longer identifiable as Jews, the Nazi’s didn’t have the means of detecting or persecuting those people. It was the only those who remained identifiable as Jews who were the subject matter of the Nazi efforts at genocide.

Your reliance on the Nuremberg Laws is astoundingly dumb. First of all, contrary to your claims, the Nuremburg law never specified that anyone married to a Jew was a Jew. In fact, it declared VOID any marriages between Jews and non-Jews. In the second place, even if it did say so (which it didn’t), it would have been incorrect. The designation “Jew” is an ethnic one (even to Jews), and it only applies to those who are descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (their original Hebrew patriarchs) – which (again, contrary to the Nuremberg Law) only takes ONE ancestor to establish. It is, nevertheless, not a distinction one acquires other than by birth. Moreover, while marrying outside the race was not (and is not) unheard of, neither is ostracism and loss of identity for doing so – especially among those Jews who practice Orthodox Judaism. Thus, a non-Jew who marries a Jew is not made a Jew by that union.

Similarly, your dismissal of Yiddish as a “dialect” of German is so grossly inaccurate that it borders on intentional deception. Yiddish is a medieval dialect of German that is difficult, if not impossible, for most German speakers to readily understand. It has a number of Slavic, Hebrew and Aramaic words which makes mutual intelligibility with German all the more difficult. In addition, there are different dialects of Yiddish, some of which never modernized in some parts of Europe. Its eastern European dialects, for example, use much older words and paradigms, making them even less mutually intelligible to modern German speakers. On top of this, written Yiddish is impossible for the average German speaker to comprehend for reasons I will let you discover on your own. Not only was Yiddish a cultural and ethnic rallying point for European Jews, it was a manner of speech that Germans avoided so as not to be confused with Jews. Thus, Yiddish was hardly a language Jews “shared” with Europeans during the modern era.

In any event, even if Yiddish was an example of a shared language, the same cannot be said for Hebrew. Hebrew is spoken as a daily language by Jews. It had been revived in the 19th Century and was becoming more common for daily speech, as well as for ritual and religious purposes among Jews, by the time the Nazis came to power. Outside of Jewish culture, however, no-one spoke Hebrew as a daily language. Europeans generally do not, and did not, learn it other than in the limited confines of academic studies. Of all the languages peculiar to Jews, Hebrew is entirely native to Jewish culture. As such, the regular use of Hebrew is clearly a cultural and traditional distinction which differentiates Jews from all other Europeans.

In the same vein, very few people practice Judaism other than Jews. Their culture and traditions are closed and derived primarily from this religion. Unlike Christians, Jews have never tried very hard to proselytize others to gain adherents to their faith. To the contrary, Jews will often discourage non-ethnic Jews from converting to Judaism. Thus, the religious features of their culture – which are quite prevalent in their daily lives – are also quite unique to them. How you could begin to say that Jews share this part of their own distinctive culture with the rest of Europe is a total mystery.

Furthermore, if what you are saying about the Jews were true, you would be proving too much. If the Jews were not sufficiently distinct in ethnicity, culture, tradition, religion or tongue from other Europeans – as you appear to claim – then killing them would amount to mass murder, but not genocide. Genocide is comprised of acts aimed at destroying an identifiable group because of the distinctive national, ethnic, racial, or religious makeup of its people. (See 18 U.S.C. § 1091, subdivision (a).) However, as we have seen (above) they did have such distinctive features that their persecution clearly targeted an identifiable ethnic, racial and religious group for destruction.

To then say the Yahi were no more distinct from their Native American neighbors is to commit the same error of reasoning twice. However, this time you have hit upon a factual truth. The Yahi were, indeed, not so distinct, so as to make their attrition the destruction of an identifiable group.

The Yahi were part of the larger Yana group of tribes, with which they shared common ancestry, tradition, culture and language. If you recall, Ishi, the last of the Yahi, was assisted by a Yana translator. [This is something I knew, which is why made mention of the fact the article you cited, “doesn’t state with any certainty that the Yahi were entirely unrelated by blood, custom, tradition or tongue to any other group of Indians.” It was a bit of an understatement.] So, the fact the Yahi tribe was reduced by local violence and eventually died off, does not mean an entire ethnic group was either targeted or lost as the result of European predations – contrary to what you seemed to indicate earlier.

In the second place, the Yahi were reduced in number by attacks from white gold-miners, cowboys, ranchers and vigilantes, often unrelated in purpose or reason, in a series of events that stretched over decades. The reasons for the attacks were as varied as the people themselves. Miners would kill the Yahi to keep them from interfering with their “claims.” Ranchers hunted them down because starving Yahi would steal and kill cattle to feed themselves and their families. Vigilantes would kill Yahi as revenge for reprisals by the Yahi against white settlers for earlier killings. Yet, however despicable or evil one considers the persecution faced by the Yahi (and I DO consider it to have been despicable and evil), the efforts against them were not in any sense “systematic.” Nor can it be said that the specific acts targeting the Yahi – were carried out pursuant to a plan to destroy them. That is to say, the ranchers, miners and cowboys did not deliberately participate in a systematic effort to exterminate the Yahi, knowing it to be so. They had their specific reasons, many of which were their own perverted ideas of justice, revenge or greed. Ergo, the historical record does not clearly show the demise of the Yahi was the product of “genocide” even if it does show it was caused by inhuman persecution. That’s what I mean when I said the word “genocide” is too strong.

You know, Luke, you put me in an uncomfortable position. I don’t ever want to appear as though I am defending the evil that people of European descent perpetrated against the Native American Indians. I have no heart to defend them. Killing that many people in so many ways is simply despicable. However, I am simply unwilling to paint the entire matter with a single color and brush like you or Rita appear eager to do. To be plain: We use the word “genocide” to describe genocide, and not actions or trends that merely resemble it in nature or effect. The latter, unfortunately, is exactly what I see you doing.

You can go ahead and have the last word. I’m not going to reply any further because we have gone too far afield, and I have many more interesting and important things to occupy my time (including other blogs).

First off I need to correct myself on the Marraige to a Jew issue in regards to the Nuremberg laws. It was one condition that could prove that a mixed background individual was a Jew. My mistake.

But the greater point stands The Jews of Europe were not entirely unrelated by blood, custom, tradition or tongue to any other group.

There is no ethnic group on the face of the earth that can meet the "entirely" standard. Every group has ties to some other. Every group's boundries bleed into that of another group.

Does that mean that attempting to kill them all isn't genocide? Clearly not, which is my point.