Indexing for the UN_list. Click the silly logo to see the list.
Posted on 09/05/2001 8:49:39 AM PDT by sarcasm
DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - Africa was headed for a showdown Wednesday with its former masters over demands that states that profited from the slave trade and colonialism apologize and pay reparations for the damage done.
The European Union and Africa remain far apart in their talks on the issue at a U.N.-sponsored conference on racism, with the Europeans offering increased cash for aid but rejecting the notion of reparations.
African delegates maintain that the affluence enjoyed by many in the developed world today was built on the backs of slave labor and the raw materials extracted from the world's poorest continent.
``The slave trade destroyed Africa's human resources ... and the lack of those human resources weakened the continent,'' said one central African delegate who declined to be named.
``In the 16th century there was not such a great difference between Europe and Africa...today there is because of the legacies of colonialism and slavery which helped to build the West's economies. This generation in the West has benefited from those crimes and should pay for them,'' he said.
Millions of Africans were uprooted from their homes and shipped chained in appalling conditions across the Atlantic to plantations in the New World. Countless perished en route.
Colonialism also took a huge toll on the continent, with millions of enforced laborers dying in the Belgian Congo where authorities terrorized locals into collecting rubber by cutting off hands and committing other atrocities.
Africa today remains the world's poorest continent, burdened by poverty, disease and brutal conflicts.
AFRICANS SAY UNITED ON REPARATIONS
``The African group holds a common position (on reparations and apologies),'' said South Africa's Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, who is leading Pretoria's delegation on talks with other African nations on the issue.
She denied reports that there had been a ``hardening'' of Africa's stance on the issue, but delegates who have seen the documents under discussion have disputed this.
``The latest document from the Africans is less flexible,'' said Marcos Pinta Gama, a spokesman for the Brazilian delegation, which is trying to broker a compromise.
Genocide against indigenous peoples and apartheid are also under discussion, with the Africans pushing to have them and slavery branded as crimes against humanity.
The Ecumenical Caucus, an umbrella group of churches, backed the African demands, asking ``for our churches and governments to acknowledge that they have benefited from the exploitation of Africans and African descendants.''
REPARATIONS ALSO MAJOR ISSUE IN U.S.
Across the Atlantic, the issue of reparations is also becoming a major issue with the descendants of the slaves taken from Africa demanding compensation for an injustice which many commentators say is still inflicting harm on blacks in America.
``It is the issue of repair for damage done,'' United States civil rights leader Jesse Jackson told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
``We (African-Americans) have fewer services and less education. We are disproportionately jailed and killed by the state. We have shorter life spans. We have less access to capital,'' Jackson said.
He added that all of these social and economic problems faced by the African-American community were rooted in the centuries of slavery that ended with the North's victory over the South in the Civil War in 1865.
Asked if he would make reparations for slavery a political priority when he returns to the United States, Jackson said: ''Yes, of course...we must make crooked ways straight.
And there would be more access to capital if slavery had never ripped black people from their African homes?
Anyway, this conference of racists is achieving the opposite objective.
Very funny. I demand a billion dollars, a Learjet, and the Mona Lisa. Be quick about it, or I'll hit you with more demands.
I disagree. I submit that the continent of Antartica is far poorer than Africa.
What incredible stupidity! These people don't deserved to be talked to until they develop sense, i.e. drop the socialist whining and face reality. What nation in Africa faced the devastation that Germany and Japan did at the end of WWII. In thirty years these nations became economic powerhouses with high standards of living for their people. The problem with Africa is the backward culture adopted by the leadership and accepted by the common people. Until these cultural issues are dealt with, Africa will remain a backwater. Western capital will be available in abundance to any African society which demonstrates a representative government with a functioning rule of law.
What irks me the most, is how come we send billions of dollars over there, we send missionaires, we send the peace corps, and still they live the same way they did before our money or people showed up.
With the money we spend on sending aid to Nigeria, or Ethiopia, we could cancel the debts of every college student who can't pay back their student loans from 1987 to now. Why is it, that we continue to pour money into countries who won't help themselves? A better question, is how come nobody is benefitting from the money, goods, and people we send?
I can tell you why. What happened when we sent a huge cash donation to Russia? The Oligarchs got it, divided it up, and then used it for themselves. Same thing in Africa. The people in government use it to build palaces, and arm the police to protect them, while the people slave, and starve in the streets.
Reparations? Why? We feed and clothe them as it is. I say, the only way we pay reparations, is if we get to bring all parties who are held accountable to trial. I hold people like Louis Farrakhan, and Jesse Jackson accountable, as Slavery still goes on to this day over there. These men who claim to be the sons of Africa, let this go on. They are just as culpable, as the people in Africa who sold their people into slaver to begin with.
Tribal war, equaled goods. Tribes who captured slaves, had things to trade with the Europeans. Because they didn't make anything else of value, or because diamonds and gold hadn't been discovered yet. Had the Europeans never visited Africa, they'd still be living much as they did some 300 years ago. They haven't built anything, nor have they created any advances in science, nor have they advanced anything in agriculture. They being the native peoples of Africa. I'm not anti-black, nor am I a racist, however I am anti-idiocy, and can't stand the idea of being responsible for reparations, especially since my family never once had slaves.
I think if this sets a precedent, then the scots, the irish, the germans, the native americans, the central americans, the chinese, the japanese, the jews, the mexicans, all deserve reparations, as they have all been beaten down, and conquered at one time or another.
And let's not forget the Russians. The word slave is derived from "Slav" (or vice-versa). There was a lot of white slavery in Asia Minor.
Another thing...there was a lot of black slavery in Asia Minor, but you don't see this conference going after the Turks. The reason is that they were so mean to the slaves--castrating them, working them to death--that they didn't survive to protest later.
Well, then why did Africa destroy their own "human resources" by selling them into overseas slavery???
Well, Jesse, let's tell it like it is and cut the B.S. Let's compare the situation of African-Americans to that of the Jewish people, one of the most persecuted groups on the planet.
Jews have a much higher educational level than the population in general because they highly stress education. On the other hand, when an African-American child does well in school, the current African-American culture embraced by his peers results in that African-American child being ridiculed as "trying to act White". If your culture honored education as the Jews and Asians do, African-Americans would do very well in regards to education.
If African-Americans did not commit a disproportionately large percentage of the crime in the USA, against African-American victims, then they would not be disproportunately jailed and executed. The only way to change this statistic is to have African-Americans commit less crime or to have other American ethnic groups drastically increase their own crime rates.
If African-Americans would stop murdering each other at the horrific rate that they now do, stop abusing drugs at the rates that they do, stop the deluge of illigitimate teenage pregnancies and save child rearing for when both parents have an adequate education, you would be amazed at how much your collective life spans would increase.
I came to this country as a Cuban refugee at age 6 and my family only had the clothes in our suitcases. I never did drugs, I never engaged in a life of crime, I did not get a single female pregnant out of wedlock, I busted my butt in school to get a good education, I busted my butt in the American economy without "affirmative action" and I am now the owner of my own business and a millionaire. If my culture had brought me up with the values that are now prevelant in the African-American culture tolerated by the poverty pimps such as yourself, Jesse, as opposed to the traditional Conservative values advocated by J.C. Watts ot Alan Keyes, I would also have very little access to capital today.
Stop blaming other for your own failure, Jesse. The cause of the failure of your followers can be found in the lack of moral leadership shown by so-called "African-American leaders" such as yourself.
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