more on "ethnic cleansing"

[Dan Goncharoff]

The official definition of "ethnic cleansing" is "a purposeful policy
designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and
terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or
religious group from certain geographic areas". No deaths required.

DanG

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      more on "ethnic cleansing"
>
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>
> Even this is becoming blandly propagandistic. And considering the
> pretensions of the book it's in, disturbingly so:
>
> 2009 Ishmael Reed in Greil Marcus & Werner Sollors, eds. _A New Literary
> History of America_ (Cambridge: Harvard U.P.) 384:
> The late Rick James asked an interviewer why there was more interest in
> Michael Jackson's trial for child molesting than in the war in Iraq, where
> the American occupation was causing ethnic cleansing and the deaths of tens
> of thousands.
>
> Prof. Reed, of course, is a noted surrealist novelist and poet, author,
> among many other works, of _Mumbo Jumbo_.
>
> The presence of "and" makes the claim (asserted as fact, by the way) even
> more absurd, since it implies a methodical campaign even beyond the "deaths
> of tens of thousands."  (If Reed meant to say that various Iraqi factions
> were trying to kill and "cleanse" each other, he carefully avoided saying
> it.)
>
>
> JL
>
> JL
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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