Am I the only person depressed by the number of comments with gender or racial stereotypes in them?

[Trainee neophyte]

The history of humans is the history of slavery. Slavery was finally, after millenia, abandoned because the business model stopped working. It became more profitable to move to the wage-slave model, and leave the serfs to find their own food and shelter. Interestingly slavery is now back on the agenda because the wage - slave model is starting to fail. We do live in interesting times.

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/04/27/signs-of-things-to-come/

Ditto the Japs and the Germans. And we do blame them for WW2 still, as far as I know

I think you will find Great Britain declared war on Germany, and sactions on Japan forced them to attack the USA, almost certainly the intended result. WW2 in europe was a direct result of the idiocy of reparations for WW1 (could there be a lesson to be learned there?), and Germans are still paying reparations to Jews around the world, and to Israel, which is ironic given that Israel is now the facist, racial supremacy monster that the Germans had a go at so long ago.

About Verso
Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, publishing one hundred books a year.

I will probably not read anything published by them, because it will have only the most tenuous link to reality. Sorry.

 

[Jacob]

how exactly did we destroy the country? And what exactly needed rebuilding?Under us Rhodesia was an extremely prosperous country, able to feed its own population and export food and other goods all over Africa and the world. All they needed to do economically following independence was to carry on. Instead Mugabe sought to basically asset strip the country for his own benefit, and that of his cronies. The result is that the country is now a total shambles, unable to even feed its own people adequately. Much more recovery needed following the years of independence that was ever needed following our departure.

Zimbabwe was a prosperous country before Rhodes. And yes Mugabe was a disaster. But "asset stripping" was what colonisation was all about. We didn't go there to improve things! Rhodesia didn't do apartheid in the same way as SA but instead had a limited franchise based on income and property. 15 year long war needed to get the vote.

 

[Jacob]

I find this woke idea of pulling down statues and so forth pretty stupid. Does anyone suggest we should demolish the remains of Auchwitz? No, because it serves as a reminder of what took place. It seems to me that it is much more sensible to treat things in this way. I am not comparing colonialism with the holocaust, merely saying that these things are better left in place as a point of learning and discussion.

The statue wasn't the issue, it just became a focus for the BLM protest and lot of people suddenly found they were learning far more about slavery than they knew before. A great success! I thought Marc Quinn's replacement was brilliant. Similarly Auschwitz is there for educational reasons.
Colonisation and the holocaust are compared in "Exterminate All the Brutes" - scroll down here; Sven Lindqvist - Wikipedia
recently made into a film haven't seen it yet. Exterminate All the Brutes (2021 film) - Wikipedia

 

[Fergie 307]

Zimbabwe is, indeed, a very good example.
The present corruption of the country is a consequence of having
natural development put on hold for a couple of centuries. They are in
an infant state, regarding the development of national hierarchy and
mature authority. Not helped, by their despotic dictator who held,
undemocratically, on to his position since we so graciously gave them
their independance. It was us, incidentally, that put that dictator in place.
Perhaps, if we hadn't interfered in the first place, the country as we have
come to know it, wouldn't even have existed. It was us, who set off around
the world, arbitarily drawing borders wherever it suited us. The concept
of "countries" & "borders" is entirely notional and fabricated.

I have to agree. One of the things we never seen to learn is that we can't force other people to organise themselves as we do. We seek to impose our thoughs, whether it be economics, or democracy in people to whom they are totally alien. As for countries the concept may be artificial, but it has been around for a heck of a long time. In nature you see animals maintaining their own territories, and I guess you could view it as an extension of that originally. Certainly doesn't help when politicians redraw the map without much thought to redistribution of the people within the lines, Israel and the Balkans being examples of where that hasn't gone too well.

 

[Jacob]

......

I will probably not read anything published by them, because it will have only the most tenuous link to reality. Sorry.

Actually The Many Headed Hydra is a really good read - pirates, shipwrecks, revolutions, land grabs, white slavery, Ireland, desperate tails of derring-do, it rolls on and on. I'd really recommend it just for interests sake even if you don't believe a word of it!

 

[gregmcateer]

Coincidentally, I'm reading a really interesting, well researched, (and luckily very readable, rather than high brow academic), book on the Empire. Not a 'lefty rant' as the "get over yourselves, it was in the past, not my fault, blah blah" anti-woke brigade will assume. It explains and discusses the complexities and nuance of the British Empire and also doesn't shy away from some of the atrocities. And no, we can't just leave it in the past and deny any relevance of it today.
Very much worth a read, if anyone wants to self educate, rather than just entrench their views.
Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera (a mainstream British journalist from Wolverhampton of Punjabi extraction).

 

[Garden Shed Projects]

Exodus by Paul Collier is also an interesting read on the effects of Migration.

 

[thetyreman]

friends: what are you doing this weekend Ben?

Me: Oh just arguing about genocide and wokeness in the off topic section of a WOODWORKING forum cheers.

 

[dzj]

I have to agree. One of the things we never seen to learn is that we can't force other people to organise themselves as we do. We seek to impose our thoughs, whether it be economics, or democracy in people to whom they are totally alien. As for countries the concept may be artificial, but it has been around for a heck of a long time. In nature you see animals maintaining their own territories, and I guess you could view it as an extension of that originally. Certainly doesn't help when politicians redraw the map without much thought to redistribution of the people within the lines, Israel and the Balkans being examples of where that hasn't gone too well.

Those maps were redrawn with a lot of thought. The folks with the rulers were all but silly or misinformed.

 

[selectortone]

Just about the entire map of the modern day Middle East was drawn up by a Frenchman and an Englishman with a ruler during WW1.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25299553

 

[Phil Pascoe]

friends: what are you doing this weekend Ben?

Me: Oh just arguing about genocide and wokeness in the off topic section of a WOODWORKING forum cheers.

Never mind, at least next week you can do it in the pub.

 

[Spectric]

There is one thing you can do with history and that is talk about it but what has been done is now history and cannot be changed, a fixed event in time forever but it should be possible to learn from it but we don't seem to bother and continue to make the same mistakes.

 

[AJB Temple]

There was an interesting discussion of history on radio 4 yesterday, talking about Boadicea. We all surely know that recorded history is not necessarily true, complete or fair. It is generally written from the biased perspective of the winner or any battle or the most successful of any event. It omits large parts of a balanced perspective and rarely considers nuance. Frequently it fails to record facts that would be useful or at least interesting to future generations. Take Boadicea - despite her name being known to all, and mispronounced by many, we actually know almost nothing definitive about her.

 

[Fergie 307]

The history of humans is the history of slavery. Slavery was finally, after millenia, abandoned because the business model stopped working. It became more profitable to move to the wage-slave model, and leave the serfs to find their own food and shelter. Interestingly slavery is now back on the agenda because the wage - slave model is starting to fail. We do live in interesting times.

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/04/27/signs-of-things-to-come/
I think you will find Great Britain declared war on Germany, and sactions on Japan forced them to attack the USA, almost certainly the intended result. WW2 in europe was a direct result of the idiocy of reparations for WW1 (could there be a lesson to be learned there?), and Germans are still paying reparations to Jews around the world, and to Israel, which is ironic given that Israel is now the facist, racial supremacy monster that the Germans had a go at so long ago.


I will probably not read anything published by them, because it will have only the most tenuous link to reality. Sorry.

Bit of a simplistic view of how the war started. Two major miscalculations, Hitler assuming that we wouldn't actually go to war over the fate of Poland, and both us and the Americans not anticipating that having led the Japanese down the road to industrialisation, they would be prepared to go to war when we tried to rein them in. I agree that the terms of Versailles gave the Nazis a valuable tool in terms of propaganda. It was a shame Kitchener didn't survive the first world war, as he had always urged magnanimity in victory. He feared that too harsh a punishment would lead to trouble down the road, and was one of the few to hold that view who had sufficient gravitas to have been taken seriously.
I don't think that in either case the grievance justified plunging the world into war. And you have to remember that in the case of Germany she had started numerous wars over the preceding years, not least of all the first world war, which had cost millions of lives. You can't entirely blame those responsible for negotiations seeking to try and prevent them ever doing it again.

 

[Spectric]

What about the Americans, in a lot of their movies they do have a tendancy to rewrite history.

 

[Spectric]

Hitler assuming that we wouldn't actually go to war over the fate of Poland,

He did not realise Churchill was looking for something that he could be remembered for, Churchill probably just though a little conflict and I will be remembered for preventing Poland and such becoming German, he should have kept his nose right out of it and been more political.

 

[gregmcateer]

I think it may be tin hats and popcorn time again any moment now, with dangerous views that question the perfection of our erstwhile wartime leader

 

[Phil Pascoe]

He did not realise Churchill was looking for something that he could be remembered for ...

Really? You actually believe that?

 

[gregmcateer]

It was a shame Kitchener didn't survive the first world war, as he had always urged magnanimity in victory. He feared that too harsh a punishment would lead to trouble down the road, and was one of the few to hold that view who had sufficient gravitas to have been taken seriously.

Whilst that is true, Kitchener also put in a personal order to Dr Waddell for Chinese porcelain which he was to plunder during the British invasion of Tibet.
Complicated things, humans

 

[gregmcateer]

Really? You actually believe that?

There are some who whisper similarly about a certain lady who became particularly attached to some islands near Argentina.
I'm saying nothing.

Popcorn time