Talk:Atrocity

Editors note: I would like people to add to this as much as possible and do so from the humanist perspective, rather than a nationalist one. Simply speaking, an American may object to the inclusion of the My Lai massacre as an atrocity, but it is certainly one from the point of view of most human beings, not that I speak for them all, but lets not play ignorant. -Sv

Amerocentrism has no defenders on Wikipedia. I question somewhat the usefulness of this article, though. --Robert Merkel

The notion that modern man killed off other species of man is not only "pre-historical" but totally without supporting evidence. It is like saying that the puma killed off the sabre-tooth tiger or the coyote killed off the dire wolf. Fredbauder 13:23 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)

- ...I knew id get some response from that modern man vs neanderthalensis bit :>). But I did it also to illustrate a point, which is that documentation gets more and more unreliable as we go back. But the fact that nobody cares about atrocities that may or may not have happened long ago does lead to a biasing of quasi-varifiable documentation such as ould be found in our oldest, religious based text. So I did it for my own frame of mind, for the article, and the point is to unify all of these varied issues of mass killing, ina centralised article that is intelligently formed by a heirarchy. Thus there are two: Articles representing murders of Holcaust proportions, and the decending order. Or 2 Articles that go progressively backward in time and as such frame their relative irrelevance to current events. So much of these issues we deal with frame ethnically specific holocausts, regardless of time, or veracity. A Encyclopdedia should, I believe, remove this ethnic frame of mind, and work with the historical record. The caveat, of course: History has traditionally belonged to the victors. This may no longer be the case because of the modern record, provided all this information is processed. -Stevertigo

P.S. At least I didnt start getting into my theories of how competition between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, formed the psychic-remnant basis for our current notions of ethnic distinction and raciality. %]

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I like this new article (although I don't "like" the stuff it's talking about). I think we can move to here -- from the genocide article -- as many as half the disputed instances of "genocide" which don't fit the definitions of genocide specified in international treaties.

To everyone who kept saying that "genocide" was the wrong word, I say you were right all along. Now let's do some fixing up. --Ed Poor

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hmm I had thought the same thing, on a quick read of these other things, and am not aginst moving or copying some material. I think there should be some legitmate overlap, so that the genocide article remains in itself an article and not a stub. though, yes, murderous acts can be qualified as atrocities without being acts of genocide, which i understand to be systematic. --User:Stevertigo

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"Atrocities are acts of mass [murder], often, but not necessarily to the degree of genocide." -- I don't think this is an accurate description. An atrocity could also be, for example: mass rape, sans murder; detainment of prisoners in intolerable conditions; torture of parents in presence of children; etc etc etc. Unfortunately humans are all too good at coming up with variations on these.

See http://www.bartleby.com/61/67/A0506700.html

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interesting point. maybe this material should be moved to mass killing, as a separate, general article. atrocity, i admit has some color in it, as a word for encyclopaedic use. hmm... this would make atrocity a more generalised word encompassing all issues rel. mass killing, and then down the scale to... where is the line, do you think, whoever ye are? -Sv

Removed:

• ===Mass killing===

  We here use the term mass killing to refer to all of these atrocities in a non-politicized way. Regardless of the political nature of, or the justifications for them, all such acts of killing peoples en masse are mass killing. incidents.

self referential - i originlly added it thinking this would be a catchall, but this was redundant to the article. silly me. ---Sv