O/T:- Palestine / Israel

[PedroTheFisherman66]

[QUOTE=BJPIE;40372157]Again Elite, you seem obsessed that colour defines racism.
Take a look at Tribal racism in Africa that still exists or the Caste system in India.

Our class system is a version of the caste system just by another name..!

[BJPIE]

If the blacks had taken us a slaves would that have been racism in action or just commodities.

Commodities. That's what slaves have been for thousands of years.
The only reason you are saying it's racist is due to different skin colour.
Racism is not just skin colour!!

[Newish Pie]

Commodities. That's what slaves have been for thousands of years.
The only reason you are saying it's racist is due to different skin colour.
Racism is not just skin colour!!

My understanding is that while there's always been slaves and slavery, the difference between what's happened historically and what the European colonial powers (including the UK) did is the sheer scale. It was done on an industrial scale the like of which had never been seen before. In Africa, firearms were traded for slaves, which transformed local military balances of power, so that if you didn't have firearms, you risked getting conquered and enslaved. And how do you get firearms? By trading with the Europeans, who want slaves. Obviously a lot more complicated than that with a lot of regional variations.

It was certainly about people as commodities. But with that had to come rationalisations and justifications, otherwise how do you live with yourself? And some of those justifications were that the people they took as slaves were inferior, that they were nearer to apes than European humans, that they were little better than children, that they were doing them a favour - they were better off as slaves than living in Africa. Either in terms of their physical welfare or their moral welfare and the state of their souls.

I don't think Rudyard Kipling was talking about slavery when he talked about "the white man's burden", but that was the view... white people are the best and their job is to bring civilisation and enlightenment and Christianity to the world. For some, this was just a pretext and a licence to pillage, for others, I think they genuinely believed it. For others... we have to do this bad things now, but it'll be better for everyone in the long run. And probably a lot of people lived with the dissonance and went back and forth between idealism and the ruthless pursuit of profit. But even those most benevolent, well-intentioned version is still well-intentioned white supremacy.

Of course, what happens next (and this is from a podcast series I listened to about the Haitian Revolution) in slave plantation societies is that the Europeans start having children with their slaves. Obviously a range of circumstances under which that happens and treatment of the offspring. But some of them are acknowledged and treated as sons and daughters of the master. Also, as time goes on, some slaves are freed... perhaps in the will of a dead master, or for x number of years of service.

And the rise of a group of black or mixed-race (not 100% white) people who are free, in many cases educated, often wealthy, and either actually or potentially powerful and influential. And the Europeans didn't like that threat to their personal power and status, and so you get the development of racial categorisations and attempts to limit the power and rights and opportunities of anyone who's not 100% white. In some cases, that also applied to anyone born in the colony rather than the mother country, at least for a time.

So with slavery (which is an economic category) you need white supremacy to justify it, which I think I'm right in saying is what creates "whiteness" as a concept, which hadn't really existed before there was a need to keep people down. Slavery (of this sort, anyway) has long gone, (though slavery was abolished 77 years before Joe Biden was born, so this is within two lifetimes).

But the attitudes and beliefs associated with slavery continued a lot longer than that, and continue to this day. Which isn't to deny the progress made, of course. The mistake the left sometimes makes (particularly in the UK) is not acknowledging the huge progress made in our own lifetimes, and the mistake the right makes is that they think everything is sorted now. Though some on the right don't want everything to be sorted and would like more white supremacy, please.

In the US, slavery lasted a lot longer and it was in their country. In the UK, it was obviously abolished earlier and (along with a lot of the violence and brutality) was outsourced to the colonies, where it was out of sight and out of mind. Gary Younge wrote a brilliant article on this about deliberate amnesia.

Of course, the ruling classes in the UK were also perfectly happy to inflict violence and squalor and misery on poor people in their own country throughout the same period.

[Magpies1959]

BJPIE, I think you misunderstood me, I was merely asking the question, I don't think it was racism.

[sidders]

Commodities. That's what slaves have been for thousands of years.
The only reason you are saying it's racist is due to different skin colour.
Racism is not just skin colour!!

Agreed, but it's a large part of it.

[Magpies1959]

Does anyone know why the BBC would be so quick to report an Israeli strike on the hospital in Gaza, when as now seems to be the case it was from a Hamas missile that broke up in flight. This coupled with a very convenient break up in connection with a former Israeli president, just as he started criticising the BBC's reporting of the events in Israel/Gaza, in an interview with Victoria Derbyshire.

The BBC have at least done U Turn on Hamas and have now decided they are a terrorist organisation.

[SwalePie]

Does anyone know why the BBC would be so quick to report an Israeli strike on the hospital in Gaza, when as now seems to be the case it was from a Hamas missile that broke up in flight. This coupled with a very convenient break up in connection with a former Israeli president, just as he started criticising the BBC's reporting of the events in Israel/Gaza, in an interview with Victoria Derbyshire.

The BBC have at least done U Turn on Hamas and have now decided they are a terrorist organisation.

I don't get what you're getting at here? The BBC reported it just like everyone else. I don't know whether you have any more recent information than I do but I was of the opinion that the case was now considered NOT to be caused by a Hamas missile breaking up. It is hard to keep up, of course, but after seeing the excellent Channel 4 report on the sound and image analysis a few nights ago I thought it was now clear?

I'm not necessarily disputing your version, I just thought it was the other way round based on the information I'd seen from multiple news sources, especially the Channel 4 report.

[nw6pie]

I don't get what you're getting at here? The BBC reported it just like everyone else. I don't know whether you have any more recent information than I do but I was of the opinion that the case was now considered NOT to be caused by a Hamas missile breaking up. It is hard to keep up, of course, but after seeing the excellent Channel 4 report on the sound and image analysis a few nights ago I thought it was now clear?

I'm not necessarily disputing your version, I just thought it was the other way round based on the information I'd seen from multiple news sources, especially the Channel 4 report.

It’s now as clear as it will ever be that the cause of the explosion was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket misfiring. See BBC, New York Times and many more, only holdouts are Al Jazeera and Channel 4 - which makes me very sad about the latter. Most news orgs have now apologised for taking Hamas at its word when the news first broke and the way they framed the story as being an Israeli airstrike.

[SwalePie]

It’s now as clear as it will ever be that the cause of the explosion was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket misfiring. See BBC, New York Times and many more, only holdouts are Al Jazeera and Channel 4 - which makes me very sad about the latter. Most news orgs have now apologised for taking Hamas at its word when the news first broke and the way they framed the story as being an Israeli airstrike.

Interesting. So the C4 report has now been widely discredited? (It would appear I'm not fully up to speed, so not arguing with you here)


ETA: Just had a read of this which also casts doubt on it https://www.jurist.org/features/2023/10/23/explainer-suspicions-shroud-al-ahli-hospital-blast-probes/

[keldsyke]

Interesting. So the C4 report has now been widely discredited? (It would appear I'm not fully up to speed, so not arguing with you here)


ETA: Just had a read of this which also casts doubt on it https://www.jurist.org/features/2023/10/23/explainer-suspicions-shroud-al-ahli-hospital-blast-probes/

I can’t believe you believe anything Channel 4 reports too! It was clarified with the footage as said with the Islamic Jihad rocket misfiring and the intercepted conversation on tbe frontline when tbey realised they had fecked up.