This post was written from January 10th to the 12th:

January 10 2024

My symptoms still persists, this has been going on since December 26th, but it seems to be simmering down quite a bit. My cough sounds horrifying so I try to stifle it as much as possible to not bother or scare my fellow students. So Ive had two history classes since my last entry and not much has happened but there were some interesting tidbits bits I’d like to share. I’ll actually give that before going into “personal” stuff.

So for class we were supposed to watch the movie Watchers of the Sky which is about Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term Genocide. It is a very long movie that mixes in a biography of Lemkin and genocides such as the one in Sudan to paint a picture of international justice and inaction. I’m not going to go on a deep dive into this movie but I’m sure you can find a way to watch it if you’re curious. Again, it is around 2 hours long so keep that in mind. While we did make references to the movie in class we mostly focused on lecture material that wasn’t directly from it. This first week will focus on defining what genocide is, which is why the movie was assigned. We also have to read passages from the book Blood and Soil before each class to discuss, for now only the introduction has been covered.

January 11 2024

Okay I was unable to finish writing yesterday and am continuing today. Anyway, the lectures: we talked about what genocide is. While it is a crime against humanity, not all crimes against humanity are genocide; there are politics associated with calling something “genocide.” We then talked about what isn’t genocide via examples: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not acts of genocide, they were horrible crimes but not genocide. Stalin’s Gulags were brought up, they were concentration camps but were not genocidal, although Stalin did commit genocides (plural). The Holodomor, was of course brought up as a case of genocide…. I wonder if my professor is a fan of Anne Applebaum. It can be argued that the transatlantic slave trade was cultural genocide, but it was more so an outcome rather than being sought out directly. For me, weren’t slaves stripped of their individual cultures deliberately?

Genocide is very particular, not every atrocity is a genocide. This isn’t to say they’re not as bad but we have to be accurate with our terminology. Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1942, and it was first published in 1944. He was the founding father of genocide studies and it’s why we talk about him. When he was just a young boy he was always troubled by mass violence, like the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Young Turks. This made me think of the YouTube channel, why would they call themselves that? Many of you probably already know about the details of the genocide so I wont go into it, but the perpetrators got away with it and its mostly due to Woodrow Wilson’s philosophy of self determination; Turkey can do whatever it wants within its own borders. My professor then asked us if we thought Wilson was a good guy and it seems most of the class says no, mostly due to his antisemitism. I wonder, what is the sentiment here? Canadian education doesn’t talk much, if at all about Woodrow so I can’t say personally. Anyway in 1939 Lemkin flees to America, from Poland, and is surprised/disturbed by the fact that Americans at the time didn’t seem to be too bothered by what was happening in Europe at the time. According to my professor Americans were not thrilled but refused to get involved, that was until Japan attacked them. Despite this track? I’m not going to sit here and say the entire American population supported the Nazis but wasn’t there a good chunk that did?

The word genocide is composed of two: Genos = tribe, ethnicity, race; Cide = to kill, exterminate. The Nuremberg trials did not have the mechanisms to charge the Nazis with “genocide” so they were charged with other crimes. The UN eventually adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. The UN definition in article 2 is fairly rigid and a bit limited as it on killing members off a group; causing serious physical or mental harm to members of a group; deliberately inflicting conditions of life on a group to bring out its destruction; preventing births within a group; forcibly transferring children from a group to another. Lemkin includes banning a language as a form of genocide but this is not included in the UN. Pretty much all countries signed but some did not ratify: Japan, Indonesia, some African countries, and it took the US 40 years to ratify the convention. The USSR did sign but not when socioeconomic class was included due to the Kulak situation. He described the Kulaks as being private property owning peasants, and if socioeconomic class was included then the Kulak thing would be considered genocide…

That was the first lecture of the week on Monday, the second was on January 10th. I did make it a point that these lectures would be personal but these lectures makes for good material to share so I feel somewhat obligated, they also take up a good chunk of my day so I’pm gonna talk about it though maybe not as detailed.

We started the January 10th lecture by talking about the ICC and how it goes after individuals inn violation of International law. Currently Putin has a warrant out for his arrest due to his transferring off Ukrainian children into Russia which constitutes genocide. What bothers me about this is that many other leaders, specifically in the west, have done this and much much more yet they don’t have warrants. What gives? We know…

We got into small discussion about how Putin is not stupid enough to travel to countries who are signatories, its why he didn’t attend a BRICS summit in South Africa due to them being obligated to arrest him. My professor asked if Putin came to Canada would we be brave enough to arrest him? I really don’t think so and that seemed to be the sentiment among the rest of us. A student piped up that most wouldn’t want to arrest him. With that my professor said Putin’s army is crap (what?) but maybe 1 out of 10 of nukes work so no one wants to risk arresting him. If his army is crap why are they holding their own so well? My professor is English so that may explain his perspectives…

We talked about UN peacekeepers for bit and their general ineffectiveness. With regard to the Rwandan genocide, some official guy (I don’t remember his name) said that 1 American is worth 80,000 Rwandans, and isn’t that just so telling. We finished off the discussion of the movie and moved on to Blood and Soil, which is synthetic global history. What does that mean? I have no clue but it is going to be like our textbook for the course and it covers a whole bunch of genocides; one of the chapters is called “Soviet terror and agriculture” so thats great. I wont go into too much with this discussion but my professor did say that revolutionary dictatorships are more susceptible to commit in genocides than democracies. Some historians argue that the Haitian Slave Revolt was a genocide perpetrated by slaves against white slave owners. What. Strange thing to believe…

During this lecture i learned the term “subaltern genocide” which is when a people who feel weak revolt against those perceived as strong, he said the Nazis were this. They labelled the Jewish population as being wealthy and Toronto and controlling everything and the Germans had to defeat them. That plus a multitude of other things, of course.

It looks like thats where the lecture ended for January 10th. I had a lecture today, January 12th, and it had some bangers so I’ll write about them in a separate post. Before I go I must apologize for any spelling errors, I swear I know how to spell but this keyboard is very odd and it will double letters even though I only press the key once. E is the letter that gets doubled the most so you will see me talking as if I’m from Shakespeare times. O also gets doubled frequently, but sometimes I end up hitting two keys as once which isn’t great either, somethings the press of a key wont even register so letters don’t end up getting typed. Autocorrect can either make me of break me. So I’m sorry about all that and I apologize for my complaining.