I see, that was both unclear and unadvisable....but I'll play along.....
I think you misunderstand, they want reparations for a past theft that was never recouped or returned. The Nazis returned what they stole and paid dearly for their crimes, and they admit and have shame for the crimes of their nation/countrymen. Slave owners couldn't return the lost lives, families, property, or cultures, and largely didn't even try to pay compensation, and they and their descendants have acted like releasing the slaves WAS reparation AND just punishment for the kidnappers/slavers, so any further complaint is unjustified.

The sins of the father are the father's, but if the son takes the money dad stole and lives on it, knowing it's stolen, then the son is complicit. If my dad kidnaps your child and rapes it to death, and makes a fortune selling tickets to the event, I'm a complicit monster if I live on that money instead of giving it to you even if I wasn't born when he did it....no?

It's largely because the crimes have never been addressed and also because the victims are still, to this day, harassed and attacked as if they were the kidnappers rather than the victims.
If your mother was kidnapped, worked to death, and you were shunned and denied because of it, and so were your children and grandchildren, would you not want your great grandchildren to try to get justice for her from the people whose wealth was created by selling people like her? Would you not hold a grudge against them?

Considering the wrath provoked by niggling perceived slights against the right, can you even imagine how you and they would react if positions were reversed? I think they would demand deportation of the descendants of slave owners and forfeiture of all their assets, judging from recent behavior.

Uh......slavery didn't start in the 1700's. It likely began in Mesopotamia as an industry, but probably existed long before cuneiform existed to record it.

Even sticking to Africa, Egyptians used slaves extensively eons before this.

Most active slavers in 18 th century Africa were Arabs or Europeans. Africans traded/sold POWs from other tribes caught during tribal warfare, and later began to actively participate in the European slave trade. They absolutely were not the sole kidnappers, however, nor were they the first.

So which is it?

Either you can be a Christian or a Muslim and apply your own morality to your religion ...

or

you're not a Christian or a Muslim unless you're a literal fundamentalist?

Given there isn't really some kind of central authority on who is or isn't Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever, I think it's fair to say that if you believe in the general tenets of your religion, you are a christian/muslim/pastafarian.

IMO, most people are generally good despite their religion. While a few do good works because of their religion, almost everyone ignores the outdated bits (slaverly, etc)

If the second part is true the first part is true.

Islam is a cult of totalitarian evil. Its founder was a warlord, a mass murderer, a slaver and a rapist, around the emulation of whom the entire operation is sustained.

Muslims who don't murder are exactly as guilty as muslims who do. Decent, peaceful people don't join nazi cults.

The Kool Aid I'm drinking, @iaui, is education and objective thought.

I agree about the over-reaction to the "white slavers" comment, which I think just got hyper-PC types riled up.

And he does seem pretty humble and wise, although if he was really going to practice what he's preaching he would just butt out and not say anything. To be fair, he probably got invited on the show and is just responding honestly to the questions -- which is a fair bit different than if he sought out a soapbox to complain from.

I think Lucas had a fantastic combination of Tolkien-esque level creativity AND knew how to adapt his specific creations to the broadly appealing "Hero of 1000 faces" fantasy prototype AND got lucky in many ways. He deserves a LOT of praise for all of that. ...BUT, for the original movies he knew how to delegate things that he doesn't do well -- dialog, directing, etc. He was reined in by internal and external constraints. When those largely went away, we got the prequels.

I love Star Wars and am very grateful to George Lucas for creating that universe. And I'm pretty much equally grateful that he isn't at the helm anymore.

Wow...I'd seen all the headlines about this, purposefully avoided most Star Wars commentary as it seems pretty weakly considered and nearly always click-bait.

Seems like the "white slavers" comment wasn't anything as serious as the hype-mill spun it. It's almost a throwaway joke that you can tell doesn't really land. I think Lucas seems humble and wise in this clip.

I remember playing Fallout 1/2 and being a "Savior of the Wasteland" and being a stealthy character robbing everyone blind. I'd pickpocket fancy armor off some shopkeeper and then promptly sell it back to him. I did however give most slavers the dynamite in the pants treatment on general principal.

This was also not the only man involved, and not the only concern that applied. This quote is his, not that of half a nation.

While I agree that the south had racist and white supremacist behaviors, I simply point out that the north was little better.

Both were plenty racist, and both cared a lot more about their money/power than they did about slaves. Rich white people in charge today don't give 2 shits about poor black people, I find it very unlikely that the rich white people in charge way back then cared any more.

Let me illustrate the 'champion of liberty' spin with an unrelated example :
Take the ww2 pacific theater for example. Japan teaches WW2 as a war to free Asia from western colonialism. U.S. teaches WW2 (pacific) as a war to free Asia from imperial expansion and oppression by Japan. Both are telling the truth, and both are full of crap. For neither was altruistic in their motivations, but both spin themselves as champions of liberty. For you will always have people on your side if you tell them you are standing up for liberty. (A concept well illustrated in The Prince - one of the earlier 'game theory' (from before it was called that) studies of governance.)

On a side note,

Keep in mind that slaves from Africa were usually purchased from black slavers.

And just a few generations ago, my own great grandparent's era, they and their peers were white peasant property of local white counts.

Things are not really all that 'black and white' (no pun intended).

-scheherazade

This is certainly hate speech. I hate muslims; not islam, muslims.

Muslims, like jews, christians and neo-nazis, are by definition not decent people. It's islam that we're concerned with in particular, and islam is substantially the worst of those ideologies.

It's easy, isn't it, lazily to accuse your opponents of ignorance - but I'm obliged to wonder how much you actually know about islam, its texts and its history.

It is a historical and scriptural fact that mohammed was a rapist and promoter of rape among his followers, as well as being a slaver and warlord and murderer of many thousands of people. All muslims know this, and all have chosen to endorse his crimes and follow his teachings and are, as a fundamental tenet of the islamic faith, expected to emulate his behaviour.

Can you dispute even a single word of what I've just asserted? All muslims are guilty of mass-rape. All muslims are guilty of mass-murder.

It's sad to see those who flatter themselves that they're progressives descend into rape-apology and collaboration with genocidal fascism.

The point at issue isn't 'is islam bad', though obviously it is; but 'is it possible to generalise about large numbers of people who are in the same club and believe the same things' well yes of course it is. As for corroborative evidence, this is not an assertion that requires it. To the extent that it's possible to generalise about anything, it must be possible to generalise about people who have voluntarily signed up to the same ideology.

What's more the actions of individual muslims aren't important. You can't judge any ideology by the actions of its supporters because mostly they will act from, for example, biological imperatives, personal temperament, cultural factors independent of religion and so on, regardless of what they profess to believe. Which is not to say religion isn't influential and dangerous. To assess the merit of an ideology you have to look at what it actually says, what are its core tenets, what are the principles it espouses, and if you do that and ask the question 'does islam promote violence' the answer is an unequivocal 'yes'. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with promoting violence, but it's not my fault these people can't structure a proposition clearly.

Let's build some consensus. I'm sure everyone here can agree that islam's claims are unfactual, that there is no allah, that mohammed was a liar and that all muslims are idiots. These things are obvious, but given these certain truths wherefore do we defend these delusional maniacs? Certainly none of them is innocent. These are creatures who have signed up to follow the example, the whole point of islam is to follow mohammed's example, of a notorious murderer, slaver and rapist (historical and canonical facts); whose rambling, repetitive book is riddled with threats of eternal torture for unbelievers and exhortations to the faithful to slay those unbelievers, hastening them to that unjust end. Guilty, every one.

If you oppose bigotry, you oppose islam.

Hmm... we could both have to hand in our pedant cards after this.

The important part of the definition for this discussion is, as a noun, an act or instance of dribbling. The verb means to allow saliva to trickle from the mouth, and the synonyms are:

drool, drivel, slaver, slobber, drip, spit, saliva.

If you say someone had dribble on their face, or had dribbled on their face, you don't need to qualify it with saliva as the meaning is already implied.

You know, it's not too late to ninja-edit both our comments and pretend none of this ever happened...

The repugs in the House have failed to submit a jobs program of any kind (which they ran on in '10 and '12), but their slavering base of luddites only care for the endless blatherings of faux-rage and the types of useless quixotry that repealed Obamacare 37 times.

RSNML

I see the way it is. When an officer is killed, it's all dramatic and everyone's bummed out, but when the red shirted enlisted men are devoured by the dozen by a giant slavering space cloud, it's just an inconvenience.

>> ^TangledThorns:

Someday our children will learn that climate change is the greatest hoax of the 21st century and allowed other more real and serious environmental problems go ignored till it was too late.


Not fucking likely. Someday children will look back with the same revulsion we feel she we discuss slavers and wonder how we could possibly have let it get so bad and then, when presented with overwhelming evidence, how deranged morons like you could respond with "fuck it, let's just accelerate into this clusterfuck"

But hey, I don't have kids, and frankly I've given up trying to make a difference and educate you and you ilk, so fuck it, bring on the climate disaster. It'll kill a whole heap of people and the planet will be a really unpleasant place for a few centuries, but maybe it's a lesson we need to learn.

I wonder if she could ever be considered for "right of asylum" considering what she is going through. It's very easy to me, with the Chinese connection (not only the laws, but the slavers too) to the whole, "...we don't want girls born here...", dilemma in the populace due too political laws enacted there--I mean just listen to her Father (just call back and get him documented) let alone the documented death threats that have been made against her. It seems like any decent lawyer could try to justify this as a political matter rather than just a sex-trade/slave-trade one. But I'm SURE their there are idiotic politicians willing to jump in front of a bus and tell them that there is no way it will be considered under the "right of asylum" act, because they aren't a nuclear scientist coming from Iran. Pathetic.

No matter the case this is obviously a case of leniency and JUSTICE. But, when is the last time you've TRULY seen justice being handed out on a daily basis--right now we are lucky if we win just ONE victory every so often--call me jaded.