Greeneg,

Your profile does not list your location, but I assume that you are an American. Just remember, that unless you are a FULL blooded Red Indian, Hawain or Inuit the you too have no more rights than the white settlers in Zimbabwe or South Africa.

The position of the negroid races in the US is a little more problematical since most of their ancestors did not have a choice about going there, but your attitude would bar them from having any rights either.

Similary, most of the inhabitants of Western Europe are the descendants of invaders, who by your submission have no right to be there.

Before the country was developed by the British South Africa country most of what is now Zimbabwe was open veldt. The white settlers created the farmland as they did in the US praries.

There had been quite an advanced community centered around 'Greater Zimbabwe' but this had largely collapsed before white settlement took place.

If you want to call people such as Groot Voel hypocrites, beware of looking in a mirror because you will see one there too!

LOL

Groot Voel (imported) wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2002 8:21 am Greeneg. You obviously have a chip on your shoulder. That is your problem. Rant and rave as much as you wish. I am not prepared to take any further notice of you.

No, actually, my problem is not that I have

a chip on my shoulder, it is that I have a

bunch of people apologizing for Ian Smith

(one of the most racist and oppressive

leaders who ever lived, and you don't have to

take MY word for it; the UN Security Council

itself, INCLUDING America and Britain, laughed

at a transition government he tried to put

together in 1978) on a board where

the moderators and everybody else ought to

know better. We have been so busy dissing

each other's attitudes that we haven't even

gotten around to discussing the actual history

of the nation. Not that you could stomach it.

In case anybody wonders why the history of

Rhodesia is relevant to this board, well,

Cecil Rhodes, the Bill Gates of his day, basically

(he made a huge fortune out of diamonds in South

Africa, and the gold didn't hurt either) is

the person that Rhodesia was named for, and

he was gay. He actually preferred native lovers, although his general attitude about

the country at large could hardly be called

loving. It is mentioned in passing in the

following PBS special on The Lost Tribes of Israel

(it was speculated that one of those tribes

might've built the ancient civilization of

great Zimbabwe).

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/zimbabwe.html

I shudder to think what is next here.

Maybe a land dispute between the Palestinians and Israelis?

I guess that people fail to realize that the human race is what we are all from.

HEY! I have an idea! Let's go somewhere else and talk about castrating each other!

A-1

I still think that being a eunuch should be required to hold higher level government offices, the world over. THAT would probably reduce the level of candidates, to say nothing of the sex scandal problem.

Paolo,

As you know, Eunuchs did once proficiently occupy many of the most senior posts in the ancient, & sometimes even more recent, world, e.g. Persia, Rome, Byzantium, China.

As history often comes full circle, perhaps the situation will recur!

As for the main theme, who has the real right to live anywhere?

You'll find that much of the world's land was dispossessed sometime from someone else for unjust reasons, e.g. I notice that the US contributors to the issue have been noticeably quiet about Colin's point about the taking over of Native American lands. Not that the Normans in England ever worried much about the former landowners, the Anglo-Saxons, nor the latter for the ancient Britons.............

PUEROS

Paolo,

pueros wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2002 8:50 am As you know, Eunuchs did once proficiently occupy many of the most senior posts in the ancient, & sometimes even more recent, world, e.g. Persia, Rome, Byzantium, China.

As history often comes full circle, perhaps the situation will recur!

We can only hope so!

pueros wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2002 8:50 am As for the main theme, who has the real right to live anywhere?

You'll find that much of the world's land was dispossessed sometime from someone else for unjust reasons, e.g. I notice that the US contributors to the issue have been noticeably quiet about Colin's point about the taking over of Native American lands. Not that the Normans in England ever worried much about the former landowners, the Anglo-Saxons, nor the latter for the ancient Britons.............

Yes, the Native Americans, Indians, redskins, injuns, reds, whatever you want to call them - some are nicer names than others, granted, just trying to cover all the bases there - were displaced by the arrival of the European man in The New World. As the Colonies became the United States, more and more were forced west, killed, or intergrated, even, leading to a loss of not only land but of Culture as well. The history books in school, which is a subject that is SORELY neglected in the USA, are very glossed-over on this point. While it's sad that it happened like that, it did. Of course, I wasnt' there when it DID happen ... I was just born here some centuries later.

Not a whole lot I can do about it ... which doesn't really give me the right to bitch about it happening in other countries today when the usurper thinks that HIS rights are being violated.

Paolo wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2002 3:23 pm Not a whole lot I can do about it ... which doesn't really give me the right to bitch about it happening in other countries today when the usurper thinks that HIS rights are being violated.

I wouldn't be quite so ready to back off on such issues, Paolo. There's seems to be this notion in our culture that if you've got any "black mark" on your record in the past -- often even if it wasn't you who earned it -- that you are forever denied the standing to point out any wrongs you see. And that's plainly unreasonable in my book.

You and I are not responsible for what our ancestors may have done, even if we somehow indirectly benefitted from it. We can certainly feel a moral obligation to level the field for those who are directly descended from the victims, but the type and degree of our efforts is our own choice, not a mandate. Justice is never served by punishing the innocent or declaring guilt by association. Unfortunately, there are some who are so consumed by hatred for those they perceive as beneficiaries of past injustice, that they would gladly perpetrate new injustice as a solution. All that does is prolong the hatred and resentment by feeding the cycle of retribution.

Even on a personal level, it is a cheap and illegitimate tactic to declare someone unfit to render a moral judgement because of some misdeed he may have committed years before. There are plenty of things I did in my youth of which I am now ashamed, but I like to think I've learned a few things along the way. Sometimes, the fact that we have experienced the consequences of an act makes us even more qualified to render judgement on it than someone who'd never done it at all.

In short, it seems to me that we place entirely too much importance on qualifying the messenger, and far too little on consideration of the message.

Firstly I wish to thank persons such as Riverwind, Losethem, Colin, Pueros and Radar for their most positive contribution to this thread. Radar’s most succint argument to me, is by implication, that no matter where we are in the world today, we cannot stand idly and passively asside and watch where INTERNATIONAL LAW and acceptable norms against humanity and the environment are being flouted.

As a result of the halocaust, genocide has been justly declared an international crime against humanity by the international community.

As a result of the Apartheid regime in S.A., racism has been declared justly an international crime against humanity by the international community.

Other human rights, such as the right to life, the inviolate right to own property, the right to water, to food, shelter, the right to have access to the judicial system, the rights of minorities to pursue their own culture, religeon, language, sexual orientation, etc; the right to the citizenship of the host country are recognised by most international communities as inalianable rights of the individual.

The MONSTER Mugabe of Zimbabwe flouts a number of these rights. Unabashed racism, suppression of minorities (such as whites and gays), dipossessing individuals of their propery without compensation, manipulating the judicial system to suit his own ideologies, dispossessing whites of their legitimate citizenship, harrassing and threatening the opposition parties, etc. In terms of the above, I submit that at present Zimbabwe is a ROGUE state, a TERRORIST state, no different from Iraq and Libya.

The international community (with the unfortunate glaring exception of the USA) are in the process of recognising and establishing an international court in the Hague in the Netherlands, to have jurisdiction to try all persons (from heads of state to the lowliest individual all over the world) guilty of international crimes against humanity and against the world environment. Persons such as Saddim, Gaddaffi and MUGABE, will then think twice before leaving their country for fear of arrest, also the possibility of forfeiture of their personal assets outside their country. (It is to be hoped that such a court, once functional, will not apply double standards).

Then there is also the unfortunate case of the Nigerian (northern province) woman who is currently in the process of being tried under the Sharia (Islamic law) for adultery (for having an illegitimate baby, this having subsequently died), and if found guilty (a forgone conclution), will be buried in the sand with just her head protruding, to be stoned to death by the local male population. Where is the international community on such matters? I for one, cannot accept the sublimation of our own (South African) state president who refuses to intervene on this unfortunate woman’s behalf, because he states (to his own shocked countrymen), one has to see the matter in the context of the laws, religeon and culture of the applicable local population. He futhermore sublimates, one does not wish to allienate Nigeria as a staunch ally of his NEPAD dream for Pan Africa (the African Union).