The latest from Zimbabwe

[Dame]

American Indians have a valid point as well.  Anyone remember Wounded Knee?

[Eddie]

How can it be their land if they never paid anyone for it or otherwise acquired it through legal means?

Unfortunately, this can be applied just about everywhere in the world, even Canada right?

It gets problematic when generations go by on either side and the issue comes up of land rights. Rhodes, like others in his time of conqeuring and setting up borders, it may not have been right, but its the way it was, and still is in some cases.

By the way, my comment was the least bit inflammatory, I have zero anger towards anyone from Zimbabwe.

[opsec]

I don't know why he's trying to paint me with the racist brush. I've never enslaved anybody or killed in order to gain. As far back as I can tell, my family (German imigrants) never had a history of slave ownership and I've never heard of any of them walking around wearing their bedsheets either. All I stated was that it was wrong to take land and money away from people based on their race. That's the polar opposite of racism.

[Beeherder]

The central issue here is being overlooked. The question to ask whether its 1870 in Rhodesian/Congo/??, 1793 in Paris as the Jacobin linger, 1600 in New Amsterdam (now known as New York), or 2010 in Zimbabwe.

Who gains? what person or entity always and I mean always comes out with a profit. Does not matter which indigenous people does not matter which imperium. The question remains the same:

Who gains?

It may look like an attempted power grab by Mugabe at this moment, but I'll bet your booties that he is not the one doin the real manipulation from behind the curtain.

who gains by sustaining racism worldwide? who gains by fomenting racist anger world wide? There is an answer tot he question. Who gains? This is not an accident, this is not a coincidence.

Look for similar race hatred generation in north american with escalation of violence.

Who gains??????

[opsec]

Who gains??????

The government, I suspect. Any kind of social distress gets used as an excuse to impose ever greater control over the lives of individuals usually depriving them of wealth in the process.

[Dame]

Opsec, western American lingo, is an English dialect which often leads those who are not entirely familiar with it to perceive the speaker to be far more intense and biased than the speaker actually is.  For those of us who speak a more British; for lack of a better word, dialect this can cause misunderstandings.

[The Future]

I really don't take offense at this at all, I know that if any XYZ invaded/conquered the U.S. then we would be MUCH LESS productive. guaranteed.

....tell that to the american indians who got shooed off of their "lands" in favor of "reservations"

It is not written to be offensive but to hold you to your own words.  Fantasizing that any other party but you will be less productive is a neat way to avoid the truth...you are proposing a ridiculous way of functioning in the world - "productivity" - as a legitimate cover for theft.  It is also interesting to note that none of the invasion and mass murder tactics began with "productivity of other people's resources" in mind, though they would be equally illegitimate if they had.  Manifest destiny is just way to say the natives are inferior and thus we can do whatever we like.  Avatar all over again.

Your thesis ties productivity to the state of the nation's finances.  So if no one can do it better than the current occupiers, isn't it odd that US taxpayers could be on the hook for as much as 23 trillion in fictitious money.  So much for productivity avoiding hyperinflation. 

If the US was so productive, why is Made in the USA on its deathbed.  It is even faked now - products assembeld on US land in Jamaica and legally labelled as such.  Don't be like the Brits clinging to a glorious past in your mind while decline is right in front of you.

And natives in america were not "shooed" off their land.  That is like saying Jewish people were shooed into gas chambers....the evidence presented here supports the fact there are and will continue to be truly wicked people on this earth who manage the rationalize the most wicked of acts....

Opsec knows full well his words were racist.  He admits that "Farmland was taken, massive amounts.  Blacks were systematically moved off prime farmland and left to rocky, unfertile areas." and yet still tries to distract everyone with some false idea that land is being taken from people "based on race".

It is a known tactic of the race baiting to throw his words out there and then act like he didn't.  Juvenile but fully expected.

[offdalip]

dude, 2 wrongs does not a right make, nor 3 nor 4

the fact of the matter is that the land was taken from Rhodesian blacks generations upon generations ago.
current generations CANNOT have any claim on historical injustices, these injustices were visited on their forebears and NOT
on the current generation.

and the fact remains, Rhodesia became the richest nation in Africa from the work of the farmers that took those lands.
when the farmers were dispossessed the nation crumbled. you can't make the argument that the original occupants would have
been more successful, they simply didn't have the capital resources

[The Future]

How can it be their land if they never paid anyone for it or otherwise acquired it through legal means?

Unfortunately, this can be applied just about everywhere in the world, even Canada right?

It gets problematic when generations go by on either side and the issue comes up of land rights. Rhodes, like others in his time of conqeuring and setting up borders, it may not have been right, but its the way it was, and still is in some cases.

Agreed.  But not just about everywhere in the world.  North America is certainly the largest example.  The acts date too far back though for any authority to exact any form of justice.  In the case of Zimbawe (and many other places) this is not the case.  

Also it is interesting to note how certain people become king of the hill, they change the rules and say the tactics were used to get here weren't right.  "So from now on, the legitmate way to function in the world is..."  It is also interesting to hear people justify the unjustifiable acts by whites yet cry racism when the indigenous (finally) take action to restore justice.  Imagine the outcry of the natives in north america (including hawaii) got their military strength together....

[The Future]

dude, 2 wrongs does not a right make, nor 3 nor 4

the fact of the matter is that the land was taken from Rhodesian blacks generations upon generations ago.
current generations CANNOT have any claim on historical injustices, these injustices were visited on their forebears and NOT
on the current generation.

and the fact remains, Rhodesia became the richest nation in Africa from the work of the farmers that took those lands.
when the farmers were dispossessed the nation crumbled. you can't make the argument that the original occupants would have
been more successful, they simply didn't have the capital resources

This did not happen generations upon generations ago.  There were people still alive last century who witnessed it.  (Are you saying Israel with their 2000 year old claim should pack up and go back where they came from?)  I have seen no evidence that "Rhodesia became the richest nation in Africa from the work of the farmers that took those lands."  Either way, it is irrelevant.  Putting aside the biased view that increased productivity just isn't possible (how does one reach perfection and be on the decline at the same time?,) if your fishing boat was hijacked and the hijackers went on to increase productivity, would your children, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins say the killing of the crew was justified?

As for the "when the farmers were dispossessed the nation crumbled." this does nothing to demonstrate causality.  Stork sitings are highly correlated with birth rates in Nordic countries but we do not conclude that storks deliver babies.  You need to be much more rigourous than that.

"you can't make the argument that the original occupants would have been more successful, they simply didn't have the capital resources" - I am not arguing that they would have.  In fact that is the distraction from the mass murder and theft. 

As for "capital resources", look at your economy.  Capital resources can be nothing but fiction.  Who the hell made you judge, jury and executioner?

[opsec]

You can't put a price on people's right to self determination which the Zimbabweans really were robbed of. That being said, retroactive revenge is not justice and does nothing to compensate the victims who are now deceased. They are just striving for injustice in their favor. The problem with using historic grievances as a justification for retaliation is that anybody can use that as an excuse to commit injustices against anybody else, i.e. "You look like the people that did X,Y, and Z to the people that I look like, so I'm going to attack you in their name." That isn't a formula for sucess as Zimbabwe is now demonstrating.



As an aside to all of this, here's an article that for some will be enlightening and which to others will no doubt appear as yet more racism. Granted, it does not pertain to Zimbabwe directly, however the arguments listed below are still relevent to the larger idea of trans-generational justice: http://97.74.65.51/Printable.aspx?ArtId=24317

Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too
By: David Horowitz
Wednesday, January 03, 2001
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Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?

One
There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery
Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?

Two
There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits

The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.

Three
Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them
Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask them to pay (through their descendants) again?

Four
America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery
The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?

Five
The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice itself. Randall Robinson's book on reparations, The Debt, which is the manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled "What America Owes To Blacks." If this is not racism, what is?

Six
The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination
No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150 years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes of whites ( and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to decide an issue that is so subjective - and yet so critical - to the case?

Seven
The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.
The renewed sense of grievance -- which is what the claim for reparations will inevitably create -- is neither a constructive nor a helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood. How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others -- many less privileged than themselves?

Eight
Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a "healing," what will?

Nine
What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?
Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?

Ten
The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom
Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.


For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans -- especially African-Americans.

America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Horowitz is the founder of The David Horowitz Freedom Center and author of the new book, One Party Classroom.

[Eddie]

Agreed.  But not just about everywhere in the world.  North America is certainly the largest example.  The acts date too far back though for any authority to exact any form of justice.  In the case of Zimbawe (and many other places) this is not the case. 

Also it is interesting to note how certain people become king of the hill, they change the rules and say the tactics were used to get here weren't right.  "So from now on, the legitmate way to function in the world is..."  It is also interesting to hear people justify the unjustifiable acts by whites yet cry racism when the indigenous (finally) take action to restore justice.  Imagine the outcry of the natives in north america (including hawaii) got their military strength together....

Your argument doesn't really hold up, how far back is too far? Since you didn't include Canada as to far back, I assume you wouldn't have a problem passing your keys of your home to the tribe who once resided on your property then?

Man has dominated man to his injury for a long time and the rules are changing for everyone as I speak, as you well know. So what's your solution?

[Stump Rancher]

Let me just interject something here because I'm amazed that it hasn't been mentioned yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe#Human_rights

There are widespread reports of systematic and escalating violations of human rights in Zimbabwe under the Mugabe administration and his party, ZANU-PF.

According to human rights organisations such as Amnesty International[59] and Human Rights Watch[60] the government of Zimbabwe violates the rights to shelter, food, freedom of movement and residence, freedom of assembly and the protection of the law. There have been alleged assaults on the media, the political opposition, civil society activists, and human rights defenders.

Opposition gatherings are frequently the subject of brutal attacks by the police force, such as the crackdown on a 11 March 2007 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rally and several others in the 2008 election campaign.[61] In the attacks of 2007, party leader Morgan Tsvangirai and 49 other opposition activists were arrested and severely beaten by the police. After his release, Morgan Tsvangirai told the BBC that he suffered head injuries and blows to the arms, knees and back, and that he lost a significant amount of blood.[62] The police action was strongly condemned by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the European Union and the United States.[62] While noting that the activists had suffered injuries, but not mentioning the cause of them,[63] the Zimbabwean government-controlled daily newspaper The Herald claimed the police had intervened after demonstrators "ran amok looting shops, destroying property, mugging civilians, and assaulting police officers and innocent members of the public". The newspaper also argued that the opposition had been "willfully violating the ban on political rallies".[63]

With this track record, does anyone think for one minute that Robert Mugabe has anything other than the maintenance of his own power in mind? Is justice from his hand a possibility? That to me is the salient issue here, even granting the arguments for some sort of redress of past injustices.

[offdalip]

Let me just interject something here because I'm amazed that it hasn't been mentioned yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe#Human_rights

Quote
There are widespread reports of systematic and escalating violations of human rights in Zimbabwe under the Mugabe administration and his party, ZANU-PF.

According to human rights organisations such as Amnesty International[59] and Human Rights Watch[60] the government of Zimbabwe violates the rights to shelter, food, freedom of movement and residence, freedom of assembly and the protection of the law. There have been alleged assaults on the media, the political opposition, civil society activists, and human rights defenders.

Opposition gatherings are frequently the subject of brutal attacks by the police force, such as the crackdown on a 11 March 2007 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rally and several others in the 2008 election campaign.[61] In the attacks of 2007, party leader Morgan Tsvangirai and 49 other opposition activists were arrested and severely beaten by the police. After his release, Morgan Tsvangirai told the BBC that he suffered head injuries and blows to the arms, knees and back, and that he lost a significant amount of blood.[62] The police action was strongly condemned by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the European Union and the United States.[62] While noting that the activists had suffered injuries, but not mentioning the cause of them,[63] the Zimbabwean government-controlled daily newspaper The Herald claimed the police had intervened after demonstrators "ran amok looting shops, destroying property, mugging civilians, and assaulting police officers and innocent members of the public". The newspaper also argued that the opposition had been "willfully violating the ban on political rallies".[63]

With this track record, does anyone think for one minute that Robert Mugabe has anything other than the maintenance of his own power in mind? Is justice from his hand a possibility? That to me is the salient issue here, even granting the arguments for some sort of redress of past injustices.

 I think you encapsulate it best SR:

It doesn't matter what happened in the past; the power oligarchy of the present is the one that gets to make the rules, 'nuff said. doesn't have to be justice, but it does reflect who is in power

[darwinslair]

So, is anyone here prepared to forfeit their personal assets any time they do not meet someone else's minimum productivity standards.  Where would that leave most investors after the past year.  How about most homeowners, homes are not seen as productivity units.

We do it here.  It is called eminent domain, and allows governments to confiscate property from individuals and give it to organizations who promise more in tax revenue for the government.

Tom