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We can blame the Haiti Revolution for that Everyone decided this whole bringing slaves out of Africa thing was best finished, and everyone attend to their market needs "in house"

 jhe90 wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
There is a very good case to be made for apologizing to and compensating living African-Americans who suffered from segregation and Jim Crow laws in the 1960s.

But historical slavery? We've had a similar debate in Britain over the role of the British Empire and the part it played in introducing slavery to North America, and the conclusion was this: Yes, we're sorry it happened, and it was an evil, disgusting crime against humanity, but why should we be held responsible for something that happened 200 years ago. Nobody alive is to blame for what happened.

A lot of British cities were built from money made from the slave trade. The logical thing to do would be to knock them down, but I doubt if that would be a popular move.

a few of the grand buildings in england are built on that blood money
no ones called to demolish them seriously.

UK, why do we pay for 200 year old crimes?
there long dead, we never did them, take your law suit somewhere else

The UK led the world on abolition in the 19th century also, but while that was a lie, as most forms of colonialism included forms of slavery. nevertheless the royal Navy was instrumental in breaking the back of the north atlantic slave trade long before the nations involved formally abolished it.

 sebster wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:
But what about Poland? I would think reparations would extend beyond just Israel

You can take that up with the 1953 West German government if you want.

How is that your answer, anyway? You said reparations to black americans weren't needed, and one reason you gave was Germany not giving to the Jews. I pointed out actually the gave billions, and then you ask why they didn't give to more people. There's not a lot of consistency there.

Sorry, should have been more detailed with my response. My point was more that where do reparations stop? Poland was invaded by Germany at basically the kick off of WW2. So yes while reparations were given to the Jews, should some have also been given to countries that suffered at the hands of war, like Poland, France, England?

Someone linked to the Wiki article on reparations paid by Germany for WW2, but interestingly, I found this chunk:

Other countries who were not recipients of Reparations:
Czechoslovakia
Denmark
UK or Commonwealth countries
Norway
Austria
Luxembourg
Belgium

Someone also found a German link to the Parisian Reparation Treat, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pariser_Reparationsabkommen, that said the UK, Denmark, and a handful of others were to get reparations as well, but how much went through I'm not sure.

I wonder if ceding the large portions of pre-WW2 Germany to Poland could be counted as reparations?

 jreilly89 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:
But what about Poland? I would think reparations would extend beyond just Israel

You can take that up with the 1953 West German government if you want.

How is that your answer, anyway? You said reparations to black americans weren't needed, and one reason you gave was Germany not giving to the Jews. I pointed out actually the gave billions, and then you ask why they didn't give to more people. There's not a lot of consistency there.

Sorry, should have been more detailed with my response. My point was more that where do reparations stop? Poland was invaded by Germany at basically the kick off of WW2. So yes while reparations were given to the Jews, should some have also been given to countries that suffered at the hands of war, like Poland, France, England?

Someone linked to the Wiki article on reparations paid by Germany for WW2, but interestingly, I found this chunk:

Other countries who were not recipients of Reparations:
Czechoslovakia
Denmark
UK or Commonwealth countries
Norway
Austria
Luxembourg
Belgium

Someone also found a German link to the Parisian Reparation Treat, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pariser_Reparationsabkommen, that said the UK, Denmark, and a handful of others were to get reparations as well, but how much went through I'm not sure.

I don't like the idea of reparations to countries because they are invaded. Use of the military is a legitimate diplomatic option. Forcing reparations to the loser leads to what happened to Germany after WW I.

Reparations should be due to crimes against humanity by nations. (Like slavery or genocide).

Next on the UN agenda.....Native American Reparation

 d-usa wrote:
I wonder if ceding the large portions of pre-WW2 Germany to Poland could be counted as reparations?

That was basically a land swap deal at the Yalta Conference which also saw part of Poland ceded to the Soviets, so it doesn't really qualify as reparations.

 Jihadin wrote:
Next on the UN agenda.....Native American Reparation

We let them have casinos, what more do you want?

 oldravenman3025 wrote:


This. In other words, it's just more hot air from an organization, and groups associated with said organization, that struggles to remain relevant, and continue rolling in the money from the wealthiest member-states. If the U.N. won't take hard action against Security Council members for ACTUAL HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES (i.e. Red China and the U.S.S.R.), then they won't do anything about a media and grievance industry spun "problem" in the United States.

It cant take hard action because they have veto power, and there is more than enough to tar and feather the US with as well. We have more people languishing in prisons than both China and Russia (the USSR no longer exists and hasnt for 25 years) combined and foreign military excursions into places like Iraq havent exactly been rosy friend fests.

The UN does a lot of great work that most people never see or care about because its not exciting and doesnt involve things going Boom, and is super useful diplomatically for back end behind the scenes stuff, and mostly making the US look good even with weirdness like this. Its far from perfect, but it does have its uses, and at 14B a year, is hardly the most expensive thing out there, especially since the US doesnt foot the whole bill.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:


This. In other words, it's just more hot air from an organization, and groups associated with said organization, that struggles to remain relevant, and continue rolling in the money from the wealthiest member-states. If the U.N. won't take hard action against Security Council members for ACTUAL HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES (i.e. Red China and the U.S.S.R.), then they won't do anything about a media and grievance industry spun "problem" in the United States.

It cant take hard action because they have veto power, and there is more than enough to tar and feather the US with as well. We have more people languishing in prisons than both China and Russia (the USSR no longer exists and hasnt for 25 years) combined and foreign military excursions into places like Iraq havent exactly been rosy friend fests.

The UN does a lot of great work that most people never see or care about because its not exciting and doesnt involve things going Boom, and is super useful diplomatically for back end behind the scenes stuff, and mostly making the US look good even with weirdness like this. Its far from perfect, but it does have its uses, and at 14B a year, is hardly the most expensive thing out there, especially since the US doesnt foot the whole bill.

True, the UN provides the framework and infrastructure to create coalitions and campaigns to do good work in a lot of places around the world that sorely need some help. It's also susceptible to the same kind of political shenanigans that you get when you give politicians the ability to cast stones at other nations to score political points. Overall the UN only has the power that member nations choose to give it so it's difficult for the UN to do any truly bad things and it does make it easier for nations to come together to do good things so it's existence is probably a net positive by a fairly wide margin.

United Nations council recommends "tasting the rainbow" for Skittle lovers.

 jreilly89 wrote:
Sorry, should have been more detailed with my response. My point was more that where do reparations stop? Poland was invaded by Germany at basically the kick off of WW2. So yes while reparations were given to the Jews, should some have also been given to countries that suffered at the hands of war, like Poland, France, England?

Fair enough, it's a tough question with no good answer. Exactly what point a nation crosses a line from 'oh well history isn't nice to everyone' and in to 'that's abhorrent and demands reparations' is extremely difficult to judge.

I just want to repeat what I said earlier - the reparations paid to Israel helped them build a viable nation state that is prosperous to this day. But I don't consider this an argument for reparations, I consider it an argument for capacity building, investing infrastructure, education and the rest in order to turn impoverished areas in to prosperous ones. In the case of Israel this was easier than most cases because the population was already educated and skilled.

Don't fixate on justice, look at growth, is basically what I'm saying.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skyth wrote:
I don't like the idea of reparations to countries because they are invaded. Use of the military is a legitimate diplomatic option. Forcing reparations to the loser leads to what happened to Germany after WW I.

Use of the military can be a legitimate diplomatic option. Wars of expansion are expressly illegal.

And reparations are as old as war, and there's no pattern where reparations automatically lead to more fighting later on. What made the reparations in the Versailles Treaty such a bad idea was the economic devastation in Germany and the rest of Europe after the war. After Franco-Prussian war France was actually forced to pay more in reparations than Germany after WWI, but the difference is that the Franco-Prussian war was much shorter, and at the end of the war France actually had that kind of money to repay.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:
True, the UN provides the framework and infrastructure to create coalitions and campaigns to do good work in a lot of places around the world that sorely need some help. It's also susceptible to the same kind of political shenanigans that you get when you give politicians the ability to cast stones at other nations to score political points. Overall the UN only has the power that member nations choose to give it so it's difficult for the UN to do any truly bad things and it does make it easier for nations to come together to do good things so it's existence is probably a net positive by a fairly wide margin.

Yep, and remember the UN isn't just the General Assembly. There's also the International Court of Justice, WHO, the IMF, International Civil Aviation and so on. There's like 20 different agencies, all doing stuff you would never even think of, but which are clearly needed once you hear about them.

The UN has plenty of issues, as you'd expect of something as strange as a multi-national representative agency. But it also does a lot of good and necessary work that goes completely ignored by the greater population.