Holy Crap! Lions! wrote:The thing is, it is their fault.

No it isn't. You can't blame every African person for the state their lands are in... they didn't start the wars, they didn't ask us to go there in 1400 or whatever it was and slave up a fuckload of them!

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote: They agree to being raped by the companies and not organising themselves, we (collectively) left their countries with a promising future of economic and social development and put in the building blocks for them and they ran it into the ground everywhere applicable.

They don't agree, they don't really have any choice.... it's not exactly like you can say this about everywhere in Africa anyways, it's totally fucking massive and more diverse than Europe in terms of society's cultures etc... lots of the people in poverty don't have any problems, simply because of where they live! And it wasn't the population who ran anything into the ground, it was some twats getting into power and fucking it up for everyone else... like if we were to just take all the troops out of Iraq now.. I guess they learnt from experience on that one!!! haha

One (very good) question is, why don't the people in drought-ridden areas just move somewhere else? surely it can't be that difficult?

thrash metal maniac wrote:

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote:The thing is, it is their fault.

No it isn't. You can't blame every African person for the state their lands are in... they didn't start the wars, they didn't ask us to go there in 1400 or whatever it was and slave up a fuckload of them!

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote: They agree to being raped by the companies and not organising themselves, we (collectively) left their countries with a promising future of economic and social development and put in the building blocks for them and they ran it into the ground everywhere applicable.

They don't agree, they don't really have any choice.... it's not exactly like you can say this about everywhere in Africa anyways, it's totally fucking massive and more diverse than Europe in terms of society's cultures etc... lots of the people in poverty don't have any problems, simply because of where they live! And it wasn't the population who ran anything into the ground, it was some twats getting into power and fucking it up for everyone else... like if we were to just take all the troops out of Iraq now.. I guess they learnt from experience on that one!!! haha

One (very good) question is, why don't the people in drought-ridden areas just move somewhere else? surely it can't be that difficult?

Lots of contradictions.

they don't really have any choice....

One (very good) question is, why don't the people in drought-ridden areas just move somewhere else? surely it can't be that difficult?

You answer the question yourself. If they don't want to suffer under our shitty business ethic, they could just move away. But they only have to work for the corporations and companies because they squandered their chance.

You say Africa is more diverse, yes it is. Although... define diverse. African people never developed a native civilisation (Egyptian was semitic and the very few that existed on the coasts were copies of the Arab invaders/traders) or written language. In that respect i'd say Europe is more diverse.

like if we were to just take all the troops out of Iraq now..

The country would completely desend into anarchy. What's your point?

No it isn't. You can't blame every African person for the state their lands are in... they didn't start the wars, they didn't ask us to go there in 1400 or whatever it was and slave up a fuckload of them!

Get your facts straight. The slave trade was partly run by Africans, the natives helped the European (and Chinese, Arabic and other African, before you go pointing fingers) traders gather slaves. So actually, you can.

And that's beside the point, my point was that collectively they absolutely ruined the continent after the Europeans/Arabs went and developed it. What happened 1400 years ago is irrelevant.

Ultimately, i'm just tying to get people to realise that the famine and war is self inflicted and we made every effort when we left to give them the best start. The fact that the 'average guy' doesn't start wars doesn't change the fact that he is involved with them or supports them.

Do you honestly think the people minded in Rwanda when their rival tribes were exterminated? We are dealing with a very different group of societies here, with very different morals. Don't assign western innocence to them merely for convenience to simplify the issue.

One of the reasons our aid is so ineffective is because we fail to acknowledge some obvious truths because of the skewed system of morals our culture has.

Lions! You are talking crap. It's hardly fair to have a pop at Thrash Metal Maniac for being loaded with contradictions when your reply is equally as dismissable.

You cannot blame a nation for it's problems under a dictatorial regime. That is like blaming Hitler on the Germans. If a country is ruined by outside influences then it is the responsibilty of that outside influence to put things right. Africa was plundered and pillaged and the majority suffered. Few countries are more to blame than the UK, we provided the market for a lot of the suffering. Then we left and we allowed dictators, and (more often than not) supported them, to run rampant killing a load of people. Whilst the dictators are in power, one way they are supported is by giving them massive loans that do not but fill their pockets. Then, once they are removed, the debt is kept with the country. You see, those fucking stupid destitute people shouldn't have allowed their fascist leader to do that(!) Case in point, Zambia (an ex-colonial country) has a $35 millon dollar debt that has already cost them $20 million in a situation where they 'borrowed' less than $4 million. This is owed to an American who 'bought' the debt for the last figure. Of course, this is probably their fault too...

As for Iraq, the best solution does include a withdrawal of troops but that is the probably the least controversial issue for the restructuring of the country that probably also needs to (gasp!) be allowed to determine it's economic policy including (shock!) national/public ownership and a (no!) restriction on the free-market. Finally, (never!) it probably requires war reparations. Don't tell me Iraq will 'descend into anarchy' - as if it can get any worse! And for the record, Saddam Hussein and the shit that's happened aferwards, that weren't the Iraqi's fault either. Who's was it? Ours? The America's? Damn right on both accounts.

So there.

Rant over.

That's what I was trying to say... I was stoned

I didn't even contradict myself on the one 'example' Lions! used, he took 2 quotes from different things I was talking about and put them together....

thrash metal maniac wrote:That's what I was trying to say... I was stoned

I didn't even contradict myself on the one 'example' Lions! used, he took 2 quotes from different things I was talking about and put them together....

Yeah. I knew what you were on about. It was more that your argument wasn't very... coherent (or, it was very stoned... ) However, as Lions! said lots of contradictions I assumed there were some I hadn't seen.

Note: Mr Crap! Lions! I mean you no disrespect, I just happen to think you are wrong on this one. Peace and Metal to you.

STD_Caps wrote:You cannot blame a nation for it's problems under a dictatorial regime. That is like blaming Hitler on the Germans.

Blaming Hitler on the Germans is a very fair and very accepted assertion of Nazi Germany.

If a country is ruined by outside influences then it is the responsibility of that outside influence to put things right. Africa was plundered and pillaged and the majority suffered.

Yes, and then we rebuilt many of the areas as colonies and they prospered, then they tore themselves apart when the natives took power. See: Rhodesia, modern South Africa. Prosperous countries before the change of power.

Few countries are more to blame than the UK

Well, Except Germany, Belgium and France.

We provided the market for a lot of the suffering.

Definitely, the problem is caused by us to a large degree. I never said it wasn't.

Then we left and we allowed dictators, and (more often than not) supported them, to run rampant killing a load of people. Whilst the dictators are in power, one way they are supported is by giving them massive loans that do not but fill their pockets. Then, once they are removed, the debt is kept with the country. You see, those fucking stupid destitute people shouldn't have allowed their fascist leader to do that(!) Case in point, Zambia (an ex-colonial country) has a $35 millon dollar debt that has already cost them $20 million in a situation where they 'borrowed' less than $4 million. This is owed to an American who 'bought' the debt for the last figure. Of course, this is probably their fault too...

Again, what are you actually getting at? I agree with that. But they only need this aid because they ruined their countries. We didn't destroy their industry. We didn't tear the countries apart, we created them and in most cases (not all) gave them a very good start. Why are you disagreeing with me here?

As for Iraq, the best solution does include a withdrawal of troops but that is the probably the least controversial issue for the restructuring of the country that probably also needs to (gasp!) be allowed to determine it's economic policy including (shock!) national/public ownership and a (no!) restriction on the free-market. Finally, (never!) it probably requires war reparations. Don't tell me Iraq will 'descend into anarchy' - as if it can get any worse! And for the record, Saddam Hussein and the shit that's happened aferwards, that weren't the Iraqi's fault either. Who's was it? Ours? The America's? Damn right on both accounts.

You do realise that Iraq is NOT one people, and that Saddam had many, many supporters and that the violence there stems in part from that? The Kurds are a massive problem for unity. You know that the Turkish have massed 200,000 men on their border to fight the Kurds? Hell I bet you don't even know about the current Genocide the Turks are engaged in.

We should pull out of Iraq. It's one of the worst handled wars/occupations to date. The public hate us, even more so in Afghanistan. Especially on the Americans part. Go talk to some soldiers and prepare to revel in horror at some of the stories of gross incompetence and massive civilian killings they perpetrate. Of course you only hear about the killings by insurgents on the news, not '200 schoolchildren killed by an A-10 tank buster due to American National Guard incompetence'.

The handling of information in this country through the media can only be described as propaganda. We are fed an extremely biased and incomplete version of the truth.

To quote you once more. 'So there'.

BTW, same to you STD, everyone has their own opinions, I just hear about this stuff from our soldier friends and from my South African/Rhodesian friends. You have no idea what we aren't told about Africa, we're just fed half truths and lies. Did you know 10,000 white men are killed in South Africa a year?

But yeah, everyone disagrees on things.

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote:Blaming Hitler on the Germans is a very fair and very accepted assertion of Nazi Germany.

If you ask slow Billy down the pub perhaps, but it is widely believed that at least a good number of Germans didn't know the full extent of what the Nazi's were doing, and even then, there were a large number opposed too scared to speak out because even speaking out could get you ratted on and put into a camp. Hitler also never won the popular vote he needed, he was given the power he needed to seize power from Hindenburg under the belief he would be a useful puppet. What happened could so easily have happened in most European countries at the time, so it would be wrong to blame the people who actually never even voted him to full power.

Fair enough he did become very popular in the late 30's, but the lives of most Germans drastically improved from the creation of a wartime economy that had Germany won the war would have most certainly collapsed in on itself.

Herzeleid wrote:

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote:Blaming Hitler on the Germans is a very fair and very accepted assertion of Nazi Germany.

If you ask slow Billy down the pub perhaps, but it is widely believed that at least a good number of Germans didn't know the full extent of what the Nazi's were doing, and even then, there were a large number opposed too scared to speak out because even speaking out could get you ratted on and put into a camp. Hitler also never won the popular vote he needed, he was given the power he needed to seize power from Hindenburg under the belief he would be a useful puppet. What happened could so easily have happened in most European countries at the time, so it would be wrong to blame the people who actually never even voted him to full power.

Fair enough he did become very popular in the late 30's, but the lives of most Germans drastically improved from the creation of a wartime economy that had Germany won the war would have most certainly collapsed in on itself.

Read some Daniel Goldhagen, 'Hitlers Willing Executioners'

The general idea is that Germans knew what was happening, and were not forced to.

Also, not everywhere in Europe had a huge recession, their entire country ruined and the threat of multiple massive invasions, they also hadn't had was amount of their lands conquered and confiscated. The only country to come close to a Fascist regime other than Italy was France, although Scandinavia held similar views. As did most Europeans then.

At the end of the day, The Germans voted Hitler in, it's their fault whether they had full knowledge or not. They voted, they are the cause. To state otherwise is factually wrong.

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote:

Herzeleid wrote:

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote:Blaming Hitler on the Germans is a very fair and very accepted assertion of Nazi Germany.

If you ask slow Billy down the pub perhaps, but it is widely believed that at least a good number of Germans didn't know the full extent of what the Nazi's were doing, and even then, there were a large number opposed too scared to speak out because even speaking out could get you ratted on and put into a camp. Hitler also never won the popular vote he needed, he was given the power he needed to seize power from Hindenburg under the belief he would be a useful puppet. What happened could so easily have happened in most European countries at the time, so it would be wrong to blame the people who actually never even voted him to full power.

Fair enough he did become very popular in the late 30's, but the lives of most Germans drastically improved from the creation of a wartime economy that had Germany won the war would have most certainly collapsed in on itself.

Read some Daniel Goldhagen, 'Hitlers Willing Executioners'

The general idea is that Germans knew what was happening, and were not forced to.

Also, not everywhere in Europe had a huge recession, their entire country ruined and the threat of multiple massive invasions, they also hadn't had was amount of their lands conquered and confiscated. The only country to come close to a Fascist regime other than Italy was France, although Scandinavia held similar views. As did most Europeans then.

At the end of the day, The Germans voted Hitler in, it's their fault whether they had full knowledge or not. They voted, they are the cause. To state otherwise is factually wrong.

I wouldn't take too much stock in Goldhagen, what he says is very extreme and most of the academic world doesn't agree with his views.

I'm not denying that there wasn't also a large number of Germans who didn't support Hitler and didn't know what was going on, but the force was definitely there. For example the SA threatening people at ballot polls who did not vote for the NSDAP. It wasn't small scale either, the SA was massive, in the end becoming so big that it became a worry to Hitler and he had it disbanded. Well, that and the actual army taking exception to it.

And like I said, Hitler used a different means to gain power, he became chancellor and banned the other parties in the country. He never got so powerful through popular vote. Even if he had, Hitler never told people voting for him would result in the death of 6 million, if Gordon Brown decided to put a large ethnic group in concentration camps you wouldn't say "oh it's England's fault, they voted for labour" The NSDAP obviously had different aims, but there was no reason for anyone to believe at the time Hitler having power would end up how it did.

Herzeleid wrote:

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote:

Herzeleid wrote:

Holy Crap! Lions! wrote:Blaming Hitler on the Germans is a very fair and very accepted assertion of Nazi Germany.

If you ask slow Billy down the pub perhaps, but it is widely believed that at least a good number of Germans didn't know the full extent of what the Nazi's were doing, and even then, there were a large number opposed too scared to speak out because even speaking out could get you ratted on and put into a camp. Hitler also never won the popular vote he needed, he was given the power he needed to seize power from Hindenburg under the belief he would be a useful puppet. What happened could so easily have happened in most European countries at the time, so it would be wrong to blame the people who actually never even voted him to full power.

Fair enough he did become very popular in the late 30's, but the lives of most Germans drastically improved from the creation of a wartime economy that had Germany won the war would have most certainly collapsed in on itself.

Read some Daniel Goldhagen, 'Hitlers Willing Executioners'

The general idea is that Germans knew what was happening, and were not forced to.

Also, not everywhere in Europe had a huge recession, their entire country ruined and the threat of multiple massive invasions, they also hadn't had was amount of their lands conquered and confiscated. The only country to come close to a Fascist regime other than Italy was France, although Scandinavia held similar views. As did most Europeans then.

At the end of the day, The Germans voted Hitler in, it's their fault whether they had full knowledge or not. They voted, they are the cause. To state otherwise is factually wrong.

I wouldn't take too much stock in Goldhagen, what he says is very extreme and most of the academic world doesn't agree with his views.

I'm not denying that there wasn't also a large number of Germans who didn't support Hitler and didn't know what was going on, but the force was definitely there. For example the SA threatening people at ballot polls who did not vote for the NSDAP. It wasn't small scale either, the SA was massive, in the end becoming so big that it became a worry to Hitler and he had it disbanded. Well, that and the actual army taking exception to it.

And like I said, Hitler used a different means to gain power, he became chancellor and banned the other parties in the country. He never got so powerful through popular vote. Even if he had, Hitler never told people voting for him would result in the death of 6 million, if Gordon Brown decided to put a large ethnic group in concentration camps you wouldn't say "oh it's England's fault, they voted for labour" The NSDAP obviously had different aims, but there was no reason for anyone to believe at the time Hitler having power would end up how it did.

I know all that, but you fail to admit that the SA was huge.. and German, and that Germans, as all Europeans were, were extremely ant-semitic.

History can get bent.

Except where I said the SA was massive. And it's obvious to absolutely anyone they're German, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it. Antisemitism is one thing, but an attempted eradication of a whole people is quite another. If Hitler hadn't gained control of the country and set up a system in which everyone else in the party 'worked towards the fuhrer' and come up with the final solution, it wouldn't have happened. The German people aren't to blame for something they themselves didn't orchestrate because as I said Hitler never fairly won the popular vote and power in Germany. I just think 'people' are generally too easy to manipulate to be blamed for the actions of their leaders even though in this case I stand by the idea that many did not realise the full extent or did not support what was going in. You don't go around blaming American citizens for the invasion of Iraq for example.

The German people can't really be blamed. They didn't dare stop it, they'd have been crushed anyway, and there was too many brainwashed nazi supermen in anyways...

I studied opposition to the Nazi regime for my personal study at A level, and very few could do anything, and this was the people who were well up for doing the thing in the first place.

And many people just didn't know in the first place about the holocaust and stuff. The Nazi's didn't actively flaunt the fact they were killing jews to their public, they just made them an enemy.

*Any factual inaccuraries portrayed in this post may be put down to the 5 pints thrashduck drunk before posting it.

I like music, does anyone else?

I'm somewhat surprised at how in depth this has all got. Haven't got time to read it all now. However it may interest you lot to read this when it comes to aid to Africa:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php? ... icle/1662/

This may give you an idea of the actual African point of view.