"wrong call by the editor?" Topic

Rebel, no retort to my last two posts?

TMP is not an echo chamber for the American Family Association and other hate groups.

Neither is it a sounding platform for people who seem to be "perpetually offended", or angry at the fact that other people aren't angry about something that they feel that they should be angry about?

Bill has given some folks the old heave ho in the past. Before you were on the site Rebel, there was a guy here that was shall we say "into Nazi's a little too much". He finally crossed the line when he was asking about how to build a gaming model to play a concentration camp game. (And not as in "US/Allied Troops liberate the camp, but something darker)….

I've been subtly called "a racist" by a former member of TMP because he was upset at how I portrayed the fictitious residents and population of an imaginary country in Africa. He wasn't strong enough to actually come out and say the word, but he called it "The R Word"…

So based on your perceptions and what you have posted here Rebel, let me ask you a simple question.

"IF", I create an imaginary third world hell-hole of a country that is rife with corruption, greed, violence, oppression, bad humidity, big stinky flies that land on people, rampant violence and warfare, a corrupt national government led by a violent, clownish buffoon of a dictator with a penchant for shooting people, an anti-govt rebel force that is just as corrupt as the government it's fighting, a UN peacekeeping organization that is just as useless and corrupt as many we see today, and various international corporations all trying to make a quick buck at the expense of the people in this country, well…..am I bigoted and racist because it's and imaginary nation that reflects real problems that have plagued various nations in Africa since the mid 1960's?

Think carefully about how you answer this….

am I bigoted and racist because it's and imaginary nation that reflects real problems that have plagued various nations in Africa since the mid 1960's?

Sounds like you just renamed Liberia and Nigeria…

There is a huge difference between imagi-nations, and spouting off on LGBT people and rudely refusing to respect them as human beings.

Murphy

If I create a fictional African country that was sold a pup when it was 'decolonised', sold into economic slavery by the corrupt first President who was gerrymandered into position by the former colonial power, given peanuts by the global mining corporations who destroyed the environment of the indigenous people, dispossessed of their land by US based oil companies, that had its new popular President executed by CIA backed right wing militias because he wanted to introduce due diligence on oversight of the financial actions of some of the trade delegations from the West, and driven into frequent civil wars as a means of breaking government power to resist economic exploitation, all of which has happened in Africa (over 10 years ago), and helps explain why their governance is so poor; would that make me anti-American? Anti-western? Or just reflecting real life?

Think carefully about how you answer this.

Gwydion, which country was this. I am not being confrontational, I just want to read about it. If you think you will get DHed you can email me at 34whitelionrampant@gmail.com. Cheers Dave.

Pretty sure it's Nigeria.
Oh look -yes it is…
link

Dear Dave , Why its a mythical 'Imagination' of course!

Although several Presidents had unfortunate accidents – Patrice Lumumba for a start.

The French as well have had a very…positive… approach to babysitting their former colonies.

Britain has tended to let commerce do the talking – Barclays Bank for example and not just former British colonies – the Cabora Bassa Dam for a start. (with a few well placed 'former' special forces people and paras working for well known ex army types to 'help out')

Mineral exploitation throughout the continent – pick a sub Saharan country and have a quick read – won't take long to find the sticky fingers of global extraction giants involved in all sorts of fun.

Oil of course in the Gulf of Benin region – Biafra anyone?

Anybody who thinks corrupt African governments are corrupt because they are African is forgetting the other side of the coin. Global businesses may moan when they get caught out that they 'have to' do it. But one wonders who makes the running in some of these 'arrangements'?

Gwydion…my answer would be "neither"…you have created an "imagi-nation" so you are doing what you are doing, and if you are basing it on real life, then so be it.

Answers questions with questions though, should be avoided if possible.

Unlike many countries in the world, the US Corporate interest doesn't have much take on Bongolesia. There's not enough real oil there to make a difference, (although there is some), and their two major agricultural exports, (Lentil Beans and Banana Chips), are not in high demand like oil is….

So then Gwydion…what would your answer be?

and now that I think about it…

It's odd that we have over 500 posts and 12 pages of a thread that was originally focused on a previous threat of only 1 page and 47 posts…..

Hi Gwydion, thanks for responding, I will have a rumage through my John Pilger collection later and see if he covers it. All the best, Dave.

Odd?. Naw. It just the usual type of thread heading into the usual train wreck Murphy.

Oh poor, naive Murphy… Don't underestimate Big Lentil. Especially during Easter season when all of that leftover ham goes into soups.

Page 13!!!

Woo-hoo! This is turning into the new "Muah-hah-hah" thread!!!!

Now get in there and throw some punches…

I just had a break from reading all this to go and have a row with a bloke in the street -it was much more fun!!

Question judgment, not motives

link

Dave Arrowsmith (was there a name change or am I hallucinating? – either is possible)

You don't need to go to Pilger – try Frederick Forsyth (definitely NOT a leftie) for Biafra. There's his book 'The Biafra Story' written when he was disillusioned about the BBC and its role in peddling the British Govt line on the secession. And some of his journalism around the time is about if you look.

The BBC has some good stuff on MI6/CIA planning for Lumumba's demise – but in the end they got a proxy to do it for them.

Nigerian Oil – yeah Shell, all over the web but the BBC did a good documentary some years ago – video must be somewhere. Google Ogoniland.

Try 'Coltan, Congo and Conflict' The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, for a view of the rare earth element link to the Rwandan, DRC, Ugandan conflicts of the 90s (things possibly getting a little better with attempts to not use 'conflict minerals' in mobiles and laptops.)

For a fictionalised (sort of) version of Africa and the 'West'/Globalisation try The Constant Gardener by le Carre (again NOT a leftie)

Murphy:
I think answering questions with questions can be very useful in refining some of the assumptions behind an initial query.

But to answer your question with an opinion, I think it is too easy to deal with the symptoms without looking at the causes.

Your Bongolesian enterprise is a masterpiece of creative effort, but I like comedy, and there are wonderfully comedic elements of your creation, to point up the failings and errors of those who create the horror. Your ministers and generals deserve the pillorying they get. But they are very easy targets. Where is the satire and where are the pomposity pricking barbs aimed at those companies that supply and exploit and suborn and erode and destroy democracy and cultural norms and the glue that bound African society together?

That's all.

Wow!
Should make wrong calls more often.
Brings them out. ;-)

seems to sorta fill the dawghouse as well ;-D

Nothing Rebel?

Comra, sorry I meant dear Gwydion, I am not a leftie, no, no ,no, NO. not ever, I mean would I dare to post on TMP if I were such an ungodly creature ? Lord no. Anyway thanks very much for your reply and for some very usful source reference's. I may be preaching to the choir here, but have you heard of the stunt the Wilson government () pulled in the Chagos Islands, during the 1960's, not Africa I know, but as explotation of a third world nation I think it takes some beating. Anyway thanks again for the info, best wishes, Dave.

Mitochondria said: "Nothing Rebel?"
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) does not classify it as a mental illness. An anonymous poster on a toy soldier forum claims it is. What is there to answer exactly? You might want to pursue your line of thinking with the APA, I'm sure you'll change their views on the subject.
I'll just run along and argue with someone on how Stephen Hawkins is mistaken.

Has any thread ever got to a thousand posts?

David;

The "Muah-hah-hah" thread I started back in 2009 I think, at last check was approx 20,400 posts on approx 410 pages…

I'll just run along and argue with someone on how Stephen Hawkins is mistaken.

I didn't know you were such a fan of Australian rowing. link

"I didn't know you were such a fan of Australian rowing."
Exactly my point. Idiot scientists can't even spell their own names right. Next thing he'll be saying is the world is round, absolute tripe! Me and the boys worked it all out during the football game last weekend while drinking ice cold cat urine with froth on the top that was labelled 'American Beer'. Life, the universe and everything? We got all the answers right here buddy.

Has any thread ever got to a thousand posts?

The "Muah-hah-hah" thread I started back in 2009 I think, at last check was approx 20,400 posts on approx 410 pages…

The Muah-hah-hah tread was a deliberate attempt at humour with the idea of creating a massive tread.

Three years ago on the TMP Plus Science Boards we reached 1,634 post following an attempt to celebrate Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. Naturally, some people, from one particular faith community, decided this was beyond the pale and the whole underpinning of modern scientific biology had to be challenged, repeatedly.

"Naturally, some people, from one particular faith community, decided this was beyond the pale and the whole underpinning of modern scientific biology had to be challenged, repeatedly."

LOL – Didn't you just say you have a lot stifles on the other string?

AA,

Some folks just have trouble with admitting the Darwin was not completely right.

Some folks just have trouble with admitting the Darwin was not completely right.

Not at all. In fact, I suspect that there isn't a single reputable scientist or reasonably well educated layman in the world who thinks that Darwin was completely right about evolution. That's a straw-man canard that is often tossed around by the "some people" referenced by 138SquadronRAF. It's usually accompanied by the equally fallacious, "If Darwin was wrong about *one* thing, then he was wrong about *everything*."

In plain fact, we now know that Darwin wasn't right about many aspects of evolution. But that doesn't mean that evolutionary theory is any less valid.

jpattern2,

Agreed; I don't think that any informed person thinks that Darwin was 100% correct.

Evolution by natural selection fits and explains the known facts and can even be observed in action.

It is rather enlightening to examine those who oppose evolutionary theory and the arguments that they use in voicing that opposition.

The Muah-hah-hah tread was a deliberate attempt at humour with the idea of creating a massive tread.

Yes 138th, it was….
And a damn fun thing it was also!!!!
It was started one lazy Sunday evening by me while sitting at work with NOTHING to do, (on call but had to be at the office to be "on call")…..

at least evolution has facts and proof to back it up, creationism is just a lot of stories and no proof at all.
doesn't mean I don't believe a God exists or may exist, but evolution is credible. creating everything on the planet in 6 days is not. Just my opinion.

The Bible is not a science text.

Pretty much everything in it crouched in metaphor.

I seem to recall that a day to God is a thousand years to us, according to the Bible. Now, I am not advocating that one GOD day is equal precisely to 1000 human years. For all we know at some point in translation, of which there have been many, the translator got bored and stopped transcribing zeroes. Perhaps he thought, "ah, no one is ever going to count something greter than a thousand years" and stopped.

So, no, the vast majority of Christians do not believe that Earth and its inhabitants were created out of nothing in the span of one calendar week. Some do, but are regarded in the same light as the snake-handling ones. Which is to say, no in a positive light.

I actually am laughing at those of you who are throwing out Darwin as being right because of "proof".

The key tenet of scientific rigor is repeatability of results. Since speciation through evolution cannot be repeated, it remains just a theory.

Hey, I have a great idea to lighten the mood after the gay marriage debate:
Let's debate evolution!

Wanna hit abortion and immigration next, just to make sure absolutely nobody gets upset about anything ever on this wargaming site.

13 pages?

On this?

Yer see, his is why we can't have nice things…

John T