Duly noted. I'll study up.Originally Posted by Cael
Duly noted. I'll study up.Originally Posted by Cael
White Horse, just on the point of needing farm workers. By the 19C a large percentage of the Irish population were superfluous to Britain's food production needs. As with the Highland Clearances, superfluous natives were exterminated by starvation or forced into exile.
I think these words from Dr. Séamus Metress sums up genocide as well as words can:
"The Irish were denied by British colonial policies the right to raise their children as their ancestors did, the right to continue their linguistic traditions and the right to be free to establish an economic base that would assure humane level of a quality existence."
Originally Posted by Cael
![]()
![]()
Cael, I've tried to ignore the rubbish you continue to spout here, but this is getting ridiculous. The words of Dr Seamus Metress DO NOT "sum up genocide as well as words can". They sum up aspects of colonial oppression - thats what they sum up. Now whether you like it or not, the widely accepted view of genocide per se is that it must at least involve the deliberate and direct killing of an awful lot of people - and I don't see any reference even to accidental death or manslaughter, never mind mass killing, in "the words of Dr Seamus Metress". Now I'm not gonna sift through the array of Lemkin opinions, paraded as fact, that you're now gonna parade in front of us - so don't waste your own time. But I'll ask you again a question that I asked you earlier, and for once in your life try and answer it -
"If you went out onto the street, and asked 100, or 1,000, or 1,000,000 people whether genocide can be genocide if it doesn't at least involve the killing of a lot of people, what percentage do you think would agree with you?"
And spare us all the preaching crap, just answer the question for once.
"Elite - a small superior group; esp one that has a power out of proportion to its size." (Oxford English Dictionary)
The majority cannot therefore be the elite.
I asked a guy called Lemkin and this is what he said:
“By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of an ethnic group . . . . Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups . . ..
“Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and colonization of the area by the oppressor’s own nationals.”
If I ever get around to doing a survey on the street I will let you know. I imagine a street in D4 will probably give me a very different answer to one in West Belfast.
Sounds a bit like what has been tried and is planned for the Northern Protestant .... And what happened in the 26 Counties to Unionist/Protestant people. That wasn't genocide - which proves Cael is talking nonsense,.Originally Posted by Cael
I really am convinced that Mise Eire and Hiding Behind a Poster are two aspects of the same individual. What are the chances of both of them turning up in the early hours of tuesday morning to talk the same crap. Is it a case of half intellegent cop and complete idiot cop?
Cael, I thought it only fair to note your wish for more quotes. So here are some. I note your point about interpretation and opinion as against fact, but seeing as your entire thesis is built upon your unique interpretations and opinions I'm sure you'll respect the validity of others who take a different view:
First off I would recommend you go to here which is the project run by UCC about the Famine. It gives an excellent overview of the area of Famine studies and a brief synopsis of different viewpoints. I really like it.
Here are some interesting quotes from the History Department of the University of Maryland which sum up excellently the current state of play regarding Famine cause analysis.
"[It is proposed that] clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnic and racial group commonly known as the Irish People.... Therefore, during the years 1845 to 1850 the British government knowingly pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland that constituted acts of genocide against the Irish people within the meaning of Article II (c) of the 1948 [Hague] Genocide Convention. (5)
Although this account has long been the orthodoxy of Irish nationalism in both the 19th and 20th centuries, only one modern Irish historian, Cecil Woodham-Smith, can be said to have endorsed this position. (6) Most historians find it impossible to sustain the charge of deliberate genocide, since there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the famine was planned or deliberately prolonged by the British with the intent of destroying the Irish population." "However, more recent "post-revisionist" scholarship has again lent support to the charge against the British, if not of deliberate genocide, then at the very least of culpable neglect: that the famine was due to centuries of deliberate civil and economic repression of the Irish, designed to strip the population of land and power in their own country, culminating in a disastrous, arguably even willful, failure to provide sufficient aid at the height of a crisis brought about partly of their misrule. The laissez-faire economic ideology which others have treated as an "external" constraint on English relief policy, is now interpreted as a dogmatic effort to rationalize English refusal to help the Irish...Historians' explanations for this criminal neglect vary, with older explanations based on religious and cultural prejudice now being supplanted by those which stress the element of English racism towards the Irish. (9)"
Dr. Dan Ritschel, Dept. of History, University of Maryland.
If you trouble yourself to visit History Ireland magazine (incidentally true story, I recall in 1987 in Portrush at USI conference ago having a very interesting drunken, if heated, conversation with the fine editor of that journal, who at the time was a member of the CPI-ML (pro-Albanian Stalinists) about the morality of attacking off-duty UDR men living along the border. One of us saw this as epitome of a revolutionary act, one of saw it as the antithesis of a principled revolutionary act, I will leave you to guess which side of the debate each of us was on) there's an excellent article by Peter Gray from 1995.
As he notes:
"The allocation of responsibility for actions a century and half ago poses serious problems. Historians risk falling into gross anachronism in attempting to pass judgement on long-dead individuals...The question then arises whether intentions or consequences should be the criteria for judgement. Any neglect of the adverse consequences of policy may be treated as culpable, if it can be shown that these were public knowledge...yet it is the active intentions of policy-makers that may be considered more reprehensible. An evaluation of responsibility thus requires an understanding of the debates of the time, and the existence of feasible alternative policies."
"The charge of culpable neglect of the consequences of policies leading to mass starvation is indisputable. That a conscious choice to pursue moral or economic objectives at the expense of human life was made by several ministers can also be demonstrated."
"Yet to single out the government alone for blame is to oversimplify. What ruled out alternative policies was the strength of the British public opinion manifested in parliament...thus the ideas of moralism, supported by Providentialism and a Manchester-school reading of classical economics, proved the most potent of British interpretations of the Irish Famine.'
And crucially,
"What these led to was not a policy of deliberate genocide, but a dogmatic refusal to recognise that measures intended ‘to encourage industry, to do battle with sloth and despair; to awake a manly feeling of inward confidence and reliance on the justice of Heaven’ (in the words of Anthony Trollope), were based on false premises, and in the Irish conditions of the later 1840s amounted to a sentence of death on hundreds of thousands of people."
available here
A fine book on the subject is The Great Irish Famine (drawn from the Thomas Davis Lecture series) which has essays by various historians on the subject. None pull their punches. Kevin Whelan notes that one cannot overlook the concentration on the potato, but that this too influenced British thinking 'the response of the UK govt. to this devastating crisis was dominated by its perception of the potato as literally the root of all Irish evil...these viewpoints shared by senior politicians, key administrators and influential journalists, encouraged an extreme reluctance to intervene in Ireland; the British establishment could and did argue that in doing so, it was simply acting in accordance with God's plan. In a society increasing soaked in evagelicalism, this argument was decisive in carrying the dominant strand of British public opinion with it in its view that Ireland should be let starve for its own good. That viewpoint hardened even more in the aftermath the 1848 rebellion, interpreted as a sneaky stab in the back of the empire'. Yet Whelan is willing to note 'A certain amount of iron entered the Irish soul in the Famine holocaust'.
A point you don't mention is the response of the Repeal Party and O'Connell. They twisted in the wind to some degree. O'Connell sought to ban exports, but at the same time as S.J. Connelley notes 'none of this translated into a coherent political strategy to prevent mass starvation. Throughout 1845-6 the Repealer remained highly critical of what were to seem in retrospect Peel's relatively successful efforts to cope with a limited crop failure...'. In fact the Repealers supported the Liberals post-47 despite the growing evidence of their inability or indifference to the situation on the island. Now, that intrigues me. The leading political expression of Irish independence was unable to handle the specific nature of the crisis, indeed was blind to it to some degree.
There is a stunning essay by E Margaret Crawford on food and the famine which demonstrates how even well intended govt. measures such as the import of Indian meal backfired because of a lack of facilities on the ground to cook it, and an initial aversion to eating it (which was in any case a problem because if not cooked properly it penetrated the intestinal wall). She notes the public controversy over the nature of the soup given out through relief - up to 3 million meals daily - an incredible figure. Still, she notes that regarding the question of whether the Famine could have been avoided, 'in the sense that its immediate cause was a fungus that all but obliterated the basic food of the bottom third of the population, the Famine was a 'visitation of God'. The British govt's reaction was tardy and trite, though in fairness, it was dealing with a catastrophe outside its normal experience'.
Christine Kinealy notes writing about the Poor Law and it's (atrocious) application with regard to the progress of the Famine, that 'after 1847, ideological and fiscal concerns, combined with a zealous determination to use the calamity to bring about long-term improvements in the economy of Ireland, took priority over the immediate needs of the distressed poor. The consequence was a breakdown in the provision of relief...whilst the much desired economic transformation continued to be elusive'.
Mary Daly, who I'm presuming you've never heard of since she has been one of Ireland's leading economic historians and will naturally discount her opinon, writes that 'If we wish to criticise government relief measures, their inaction after 1847 offers perhaps the most obvious target. By comparison the crisis in the Autumn of 1846 was unexpected and unprecedented in scale, no govt however humane and enlightened could have coped adequately. More could have been done to save more lives...but responsibility does not lie solely with the govt: greater humanity and activity on the part of landlords and land agents would have helped. Farmers should have shown greater sympathy to their starving cottiers; clergy could have been more proactive and grain traders less greedy. Politicians such as O'Connell and Young Irelander could have devoted less time to squabbling over political issues and more attention to the condition of the people. It is easy to be wise after the event'.
Irene Whelan talks about the stigma of souperism, a dynamic where (understandably) those starving for long periods refused relief because in the superheated moral environment it reflected personal and moral failure.
James Donnelly Jr. addresses the issue of genocide head on in relation to land clearance. He notes that 'revisionist historians have tended to minimise the role of British govt. responsibility...this essay is deliberately intended as a challenge to the revisionist historiography of the Famine, in which [John] Mitchel (of 'the Almighty sent the blight, but the English created the Famine') and other nationalist propagandists are dismissed as the creators of the baseless myth of genocide. My contention is that the idea of genocide took root long before Mitchel published his work. And it is also my contention that while genocide was not in fact committed, what happened during and as a result of the clearances had the look of genocide to a great many Irish contemporaries'.
Cormac O Grada writes about the Famine and other Famines and notes that in the 1840s in the Netherlands there was a Famine which saw much the same official neglect and indifference, something he contends was borne (as in Ireland) from a class and religious perspective moreso than a racial aspect which was reflected in official attitudes to 'relief', one which saw it as the thin edge of an immoral wedge. He notes the unique aspect of the Famine that it happened in the 'backyard' of the Empire, but also notes the conditions of the poor within that society. He also notes that the pain of the event was often forgotten or ignored because it was the 'pain of the poor' in our society.
There's more, but you see the way the trend goes. Not one contributor agrees with the contention that the Famine was a genocide.
They see it as an event which was greatly exacerbated by willful neglect on the part of the British government and other agents within the process. They tend towards a view that this neglect was the result of economic, religious and political ideologies which were prevalent within the society at the time. They note the importance of 'class' something you ignore. They do research, they've gone through the archives. Etc. etc. etc.
Incidentally an interesting document can be accessed at here
which provides a curriculum for Famine studies. This is endorsed by the Irish National Archives. It makes the point that:
"A highly contentious political debate is over whether the government of Great Britain consciously pursued genocidal policies designed to depopulate Ireland through death and emigration. Explaining the causes of the famine and analyzing the impact of British policy have been complicated by continuing conflict over whether the six counties of Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom. While we do not believe that British policies during the Great Irish Famine meet the criteria for genocide established by the United Nations (1951) in a treaty signed by the United States, we believe it is a legitimate subject for
discussion."
Finally The Irish Famine by Colm Tóibín and Diarmaid Ferriter (one of Irelands' leading young(ish) historians). In the introduction to the extensive array of documents collected from the period there are some interesting points made such as this:
'...the fact that the British govt and Irish landlords wanted land clearance on a vast scale, then the obvious question arises: could it be that, on the one hand, there were these attitudes and ambitions and, ont he other, there was a famine, but that the two are not necessarily connected, or not connected enough to constitute cause and effect?
...
In fact, nobody is suggesting that the administration actually caused the Famine. The suggestion is that, impelled by their contempt for Ireland and their interest in land reform, the administration caused many people to die. This is the possibility some historians are afraid to approach and others, who come to wildly different conclusions are only too ready to entertain.'
Now, you can, and no doubt will, dispute all these historians but to what point? The issue you raise re: genocide is not new. You're merely reinventing a certain spoke in a wheel. Many of the texts above date back into the 1990s and further back - certainly true of Joe Lee and FSL Lyons. They are experts in their various fields which are wide ranging from agricultural history, food and biology, sociology and so on.
"I like you. You're all right. Actually, I like you better meeting you than if somebody had just given me your record."
Joey Ramone
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Jaysus Cael. Look what you started.Originally Posted by Worldbystorm
Interesting quotes Worldbystorm. If I might presume to go through some of them and comment. I will have to do it in a fairly haphazard way as there is a lot of material. I will just put your initials above some sentences. readers can view your post to get the full quotations. Not a very scholarly way to do things I know but ...........
wbs
The allocation of responsibility for actions a century and half ago poses serious problems. Historians risk falling into gross anachronism in attempting to pass judgement on long-dead individuals
c
There is a big difference between allocating responsibility for actions and attempting to pass judgement - if by passing judgement our author means some kind of moral judgement. We know that actions took place in history and that someone or some group was responsible for them.
wbs
...The question then arises whether intentions or consequences should be the criteria for judgement. Any neglect of the adverse consequences of policy may be treated as culpable, if it can be shown that these were public knowledge...yet it is the active intentions of policy-makers that may be considered more reprehensible. An evaluation of responsibility thus requires an understanding of the debates of the time, and the existence of feasible alternative policies.
c
again we seem to be talking of a kind of moral responsibility or guilt rather than simply the fact of being the one who carried out an act. What does public knowledge mean? The British government were well aware of the effects of their policies in Ireland - but the general British public may not have been so aware. There are alway feasible alternatives to genocide.
wbs
"The charge of culpable neglect of the consequences of policies leading to mass starvation is indisputable. That a conscious choice to pursue moral or economic objectives at the expense of human life was made by several ministers can also be demonstrated."
c
Combine this statement with the fact that these policies were directed at a nation, ethnic and religious group and you have genocide.
wbs
"Yet to single out the government alone for blame is to oversimplify. What ruled out alternative policies was the strength of the British public opinion manifested in parliament...thus the ideas of moralism, supported by Providentialism and a Manchester-school reading of classical economics, proved the most potent of British interpretations of the Irish Famine.'
c
This would hardly be a good defence in the ICC. Maybe if Hitler had been put on trial he could have said sorry but I had no other choice, all my friends and supporters were Nazis.
wbs
"What these led to was not a policy of deliberate genocide, but a dogmatic refusal to recognise that measures intended ‘to encourage industry, to do battle with sloth and despair; to awake a manly feeling of inward confidence and reliance on the justice of Heaven’ (in the words of Anthony Trollope), were based on false premises, and in the Irish conditions of the later 1840s amounted to a sentence of death on hundreds of thousands of people."
c
There would be some reason in this statement if it had not been the British government itself which caused most of the despair and crushed "the manly feeling of inward confidence." The sentance of death for hundreds of thousands was inflicted on the Gaelic nation from at least the sixteenth century. The death toll grew higher and higher over what Ellis has calculated as twenty nine famines from 1720 to 1880. And what encouragement to Industry? Most British laws uptil the mid nineteenth century had been to discourage Irish industry. Any incouragement was so small that it would not have adversely effected anyone.
wbs
A fine book on the subject is The Great Irish Famine (drawn from the Thomas Davis Lecture series) which has essays by various historians on the subject. None pull their punches. Kevin Whelan notes that one cannot overlook the concentration on the potato, but that this too influenced British thinking 'the response of the UK govt. to this devastating crisis was dominated by its perception of the potato as literally the root of all Irish evil...these viewpoints shared by senior politicians, key administrators and influential journalists, encouraged an extreme reluctance to intervene in Ireland; the British establishment could and did argue that in doing so, it was simply acting in accordance with God's plan. In a society increasing soaked in evagelicalism, this argument was decisive in carrying the dominant strand of British public opinion with it in its view that Ireland should be let starve for its own good. That viewpoint hardened even more in the aftermath the 1848 rebellion, interpreted as a sneaky stab in the back of the empire'. Yet Whelan is willing to note 'A certain amount of iron entered the Irish soul in the Famine holocaust'.
c
again this seems to be some sort of lame excuse for not helping out in one particular famine of the twenty nine famines and unrelenting endemic deprivation that British policy in Ireland caused between 1720 and 1880.
wbs
A point you don't mention is the response of the Repeal Party and O'Connell. They twisted in the wind to some degree. O'Connell sought to ban exports, but at the same time as S.J. Connelley notes 'none of this translated into a coherent political strategy to prevent mass starvation. Throughout 1845-6 the Repealer remained highly critical of what were to seem in retrospect Peel's relatively successful efforts to cope with a limited crop failure...'. In fact the Repealers supported the Liberals post-47 despite the growing evidence of their inability or indifference to the situation on the island. Now, that intrigues me. The leading political expression of Irish independence was unable to handle the specific nature of the crisis, indeed was blind to it to some degree.
c
I believe Danial O'Connell's brother thanked God he lived in a land where a man would let his children starve rather than miss his rent. Maybe that says a lot about the psychological devastation caused by colonialism.
wbs
There is a stunning essay by E Margaret Crawford on food and the famine which demonstrates how even well intended govt. measures such as the import of Indian meal backfired because of a lack of facilities on the ground to cook it, and an initial aversion to eating it (which was in any case a problem because if not cooked properly it penetrated the intestinal wall). She notes the public controversy over the nature of the soup given out through relief - up to 3 million meals daily - an incredible figure. Still, she notes that regarding the question of whether the Famine could have been avoided, 'in the sense that its immediate cause was a fungus that all but obliterated the basic food of the bottom third of the population, the Famine was a 'visitation of God'. The British govt's reaction was tardy and trite, though in fairness, it was dealing with a catastrophe outside its normal experience'.
c
Twenty nine famines between 1720 and 1880, and famine was outside its normal experience? Yes, the scale of this one was bigger, but the British were very well practiced at presiding over famine in Ireland.
You would also wonder why anyone would expect any thanks for importing cheap indian meal that the people couldnt eat, which the food removal regiments were busy taking quality Irish grain, meat, butter and whiskey (which comsumes vast quantities of grain in its production) to the tables of England.
wbs
Christine Kinealy notes writing about the Poor Law and it's (atrocious) application with regard to the progress of the Famine, that 'after 1847, ideological and fiscal concerns, combined with a zealous determination to use the calamity to bring about long-term improvements in the economy of Ireland, took priority over the immediate needs of the distressed poor. The consequence was a breakdown in the provision of relief...whilst the much desired economic transformation continued to be elusive'.
Mary Daly, who I'm presuming you've never heard of since she has been one of Ireland's leading economic historians and will naturally discount her opinon, writes that 'If we wish to criticise government relief measures, their inaction after 1847 offers perhaps the most obvious target. By comparison the crisis in the Autumn of 1846 was unexpected and unprecedented in scale, no govt however humane and enlightened could have coped adequately. More could have been done to save more lives...but responsibility does not lie solely with the govt: greater humanity and activity on the part of landlords and land agents would have helped. Farmers should have shown greater sympathy to their starving cottiers; clergy could have been more proactive and grain traders less greedy. Politicians such as O'Connell and Young Irelander could have devoted less time to squabbling over political issues and more attention to the condition of the people. It is easy to be wise after the event'.
Irene Whelan talks about the stigma of souperism, a dynamic where (understandably) those starving for long periods refused relief because in the superheated moral environment it reflected personal and moral failure.
c
I not discounting Mary Daly in all of what she says. Once the the crop failed, in the existing conditions, there were always going to be a lot of people dead. But who created the existing conditions, and for what reason? The genocide was long in progress before the 1840s. She is wrong, however, in saying that responsibility doesnt lie with the government alone. Private individuals cant be blamed for not overthrowing centuries of British government policy with charity. And saying grain traders could have been less greedy is just a joke.
wbs
James Donnelly Jr. addresses the issue of genocide head on in relation to land clearance. He notes that 'revisionist historians have tended to minimise the role of British govt. responsibility...this essay is deliberately intended as a challenge to the revisionist historiography of the Famine, in which [John] Mitchel (of 'the Almighty sent the blight, but the English created the Famine') and other nationalist propagandists are dismissed as the creators of the baseless myth of genocide. My contention is that the idea of genocide took root long before Mitchel published his work. And it is also my contention that while genocide was not in fact committed, what happened during and as a result of the clearances had the look of genocide to a great many Irish contemporaries'.
C
How has Donnelly Jr. defined genocide? Without his definition his assertion that genocide did not take place really has no meaning.
wbs
Cormac O Grada writes about the Famine and other Famines and notes that in the 1840s in the Netherlands there was a Famine which saw much the same official neglect and indifference, something he contends was borne (as in Ireland) from a class and religious perspective moreso than a racial aspect which was reflected in official attitudes to 'relief', one which saw it as the thin edge of an immoral wedge. He notes the unique aspect of the Famine that it happened in the 'backyard' of the Empire, but also notes the conditions of the poor within that society. He also notes that the pain of the event was often forgotten or ignored because it was the 'pain of the poor' in our society.
c
Indeed its possible that not all famines are part of a genocidal campaign.
I would be surprised, though, if there was not some ethnic element in the famine in the Netherlands. But the famines and endemic deprivation in Ireland certainly were.
wbs
There's more, but you see the way the trend goes. Not one contributor agrees with the contention that the Famine was a genocide.
c
You've mentioned Christine Kinealy, she goes pretty far in that direction. And if genocide is such an off the wall assertion, why do so many of these people refer to it all the time - if even just to deny it.
wbs
They see it as an event which was greatly exacerbated by willful neglect on the part of the British government and other agents within the process.
c
your right, they seem to see it as an isolated event divorced from the decades and centuries of British policy which brought the Gaelic nation to the verge of extinction. As if the Gael ate potatoes because he always ate potatoes. As if he paid rent to foreign parasites, because he always paid it to foreign parasites etc, etc.
wbs
They tend towards a view that this neglect was the result of economic, religious and political ideologies which were prevalent within the society at the time.
c
You mean like National Socialism in the 1930s and 40s?
wbs
They note the importance of 'class' something you ignore.
c
Do you think a poor Catholic Irish speaking Gael in Connaught was regarded the same way as a poor Protestant English speaking Anglo-Saxon in London?
wbs
They do research, they've gone through the archives. Etc. etc. etc.
c
And very impressive research some of it is too. But for all that research, none of your quotes here have even attempted to show that there was no genocide in Ireland. They have made some bland statements which try to artificially keep the focus on one particular famine in a whole series of famines. They make no attempt to analyse this pattern of destruction as it unfolded over a period of one and a half centuries, at least. It almost seems as a self imposed handicap.
wbs
"A highly contentious political debate is over whether the government of Great Britain consciously pursued genocidal policies designed to depopulate Ireland through death and emigration. Explaining the causes of the famine and analyzing the impact of British policy have been complicated by continuing conflict over whether the six counties of Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom. While we do not believe that British policies during the Great Irish Famine meet the criteria for genocide established by the United Nations (1951) in a treaty signed by the United States, we believe it is a legitimate subject for
discussion."
c
again a bland statement which makes no attempt to justify itself. It also focuses on just one famine in the series. How can they talk of "the famine" if there were 29 of them between 1720 and 1880?
wbs
Now, you can, and no doubt will, dispute all these historians but to what point? The issue you raise re: genocide is not new. You're merely reinventing a certain spoke in a wheel. Many of the texts above date back into the 1990s and further back - certainly true of Joe Lee and FSL Lyons. They are experts in their various fields which are wide ranging from agricultural history, food and biology, sociology and so on.
c
you talk about these historians the same way as my grandmother talks about the Reverend Fathers. Ill accept any assertions they make if they back them up. Bland statements that no genocide took place, without defining genocide or looking beyond a certain five year period carry no weight with me. And you can be sure there is nothing new about calling the extermination of the Gaelic nation a genocide. People tend to know when that is happening to them.