User talk:Danny
Old talk archived at User talk:Danny Archive
Maybe this is not the best time to quit smoking. ;) But go ahead, tend to your mental health if you need to. I must say, I am getting pretty tired (and was hoping you come out and play, too). For what it is worth, Sv and I had a cordial and respectful dialogue on his talk page. I even made a good-faith effort on Martha's talk page. But having said all I have to say, I am just too tired myself to even look at the semitism or judeocentric pages. Please do look at ethnoconvergence and my comment on the talk page, and make a decision as sysop (per my request above), though. Shavuah-tov! Slrubenstein
For all those involved in the ensuing debates on anything and everything involving Jews either essentially or peripherally, you are all arguing out of passion. You are all talking (typing) at each other, not to each other, and you are none of you listening to each other and trying to work up to a consensus. Yes, I am saying this, and yes, I do have strong opinions (and some training) on many (but not all) of the relevant subjects. Given that you are ALL so impassioned tonite, I suggest a time out until Monday on all edits relating to these topics. Then, when everyone is calmed down, we can work on something that is agreeable to all sides, perhaps with a neutral third party moderator. Other than that, this is just becoming an attempt to score points against each other, and that does no one any good. Oh, yeah, and if anyone knows how to archive some of this bloody talk page, I would be eternally grateful, whether you are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, or a worshipper of penguins. Danny 01:01 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)
- Just did -- as far as I know, there's no simpler way to do than add a link to to uncreated archive, copy a block of text to the clipboard and preview, then open the link in a new window or tab or whatever floats your boat, paste your block and presto... you are the proud owner of an archive. Tokerboy
Danny, you are so right. And for your information, I just gave RK an olive branch. Its not much, just a twig... but I hear it's supposed to mean something...- Stevert
Holy shit. I'm gonna remind you every day until you tell me the story, and send me something that he touched, even if the only thing you have is your head. Tokerboy
Thanks!! Slrubenstein
Danny, see Submissive. I'm already checking out his/her other contributions. -- Zoe
Absolutely not. I still to know every gory detail, especially the parts that involve gaining a new understanding of the universe, etc and so on, or a way to eat mushrooms without tasting them. Tuf-Kat
I was also concerned about the source of that new Martin Van Creveld article on the IAP site "quoting" him saying "we could destroy all European capitals". Im not as certain about its validity as you are.
"Does "more reliable" sources, however, mean sanitized sources? And wouldnt the act of sanitizing news sources be propagandist? -PackardGoose
It is questionable, but as long as the text of Judaism in Music is still the exact text of the essay... I don't really care either, but it irks me when Clutch reverts because nobody responds to his reasoning even though he ignores the responses. Is there any reason not to straight to the essay? Tuf-Kat
Very welcome. I'll post the list giving a heads up that the article's frozen and mentioning that sysops should be mindful of it and not edit the page (protected pages just have a fairly inconspicious link at the bottom saying "unprotect this page"--which I'd like changed to something more obvious--I wonder how often a sysop has edit a protected page without noticing that it's protected?) Best, Koyaanis Qatsi
You may want to check out Jewish Messiah, created by an anonymous user last night. Tuf-Kat
"Just one question though: How come when I look it up at http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html the second symbol comes out as mud? Danny"
- Oh, thats cause of the phonetic: "Ni" which has multiple meanings.. mud being one of them... (which is only a fragment as I understand -such is the problem of phonetics traslated to meanings - "steve" for example, has the sibilant and plosive constinants "ST" (stee) which has to be changed to "sa ti" (jap) or "shi" etc.. Even in Asia, selecting the Kanji for your name is a big deal, and done when your old enough to get a feel for what you want, so where the sound often provides multiple choices for Kanji, the meaning is more important than the sound. Mingbai? -豎眩
Hi, Danny. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm doing a bunch of years with the Nobel Prize added on. Anonymous56789 20:56 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)
In more ways than one -- but I am about to close shop! Slrubenstein
And I take any contention you have very seriously. Even if I were to disagree with you on this specific case, I still think there is a larger issue that ought to be addressed in some systematic way. In any event, I need to think about things more and am certainly glad when I can benefit from your thoughts too. Slrubenstein\
Uh, if we are talking about the same thing, I sent an e-mail to RK that he should forward to you (if he hasn't, just ask him). At this very moment there is what I think is an anti-war rally outside my window, so I am off to check it out, Slrubenstein
Danny, how do you find so much info about days in lit.? - Anonymous56789
How could I become an admin like you? - Anonymous56789 22:26 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)
As of 20:07 Tuesday, I and others did a lot of work on Idol worship; please check it out... Slrubenstein
The quote at Ira Hayes looks fine. I think the main qualification is that it couldn't possibly detract from the value of purchasing the song and it's obviously being used to illustrate a point of academic interest, hence being fair use. Tuf-Kat
The map was from the website listed there. There was no copyright notice so I assumed it was OK to take it. I'll give them credit on the page.
Danny, I just imported some text into Islam and Judaism from the 1906 public domain Jewish Encyclopedia. I know it needs a lot of updating and work, but I was afraid to leave the article as it was. It looked like it was going to get filled with lots of misc. topics that have little (or nothing) to do with the relationship between Islam and Judaism (the supposed topic of the article!) Please feel free to deal with anything in there! RK
FYI,
I downsized image:Patrick Henry.jpg to 250 px wide and 10% of its original size so that Patrick Henry is a bit more user friendly to people with 800 x 600 displays and dial-up modems. :) --mav
We’re not here to call a ”spade a spade.” Read up on the NPOV policy.
He’s been rejected by Zimbabwe’s ex-colonial master. Many in the Third World, including many Third World leaders, regard him as a hero and respect even more for his defiance of the British.
Saying that the “international community” rejects him thus displays a Western bias.
You have written a blatantly propagandistic introduction to the Robert Mugabe article. You say that you're ‘calling a spade a spade.’ Frankly, this is an admission to violating NPOV guidelines.
Quoting only sources hostile to Mugabe’s land reforms is inappropriate in an introduction. Saying that he’s been rejected by the “international community” is also inappropriate. Since when did the Western ex-colonial powers account for the entirety of the international community? You allege that he’s a racist persecuting whites. Others feel that he’s implementing essential land reforms and carrying out a delayed de-colonization of a country ravanged by apartheid and racism. The introduction shouldn’t endorse any particular point of view.
The introduction reads like a middle-schooler's essay explaining why he hates Mugabe.
Instead, this article needs a more encyclopedic introduction along with a balance of opposing viewpoints if it quotes opinions regarding Mugabe’s presidency.
I know that, Danny. I have a PhD in history and decolonization is one of my areas of expertise. It was still a British colony before the declaration of “Rhodesia’s” independence and that racist government was just an outgrowth of British colonialism.
Saying that he’s been banned from the Commonwealth is enough.
Refrain from hyperbole too. Mugabe’s not Hitler and land reform’s not the Holocaust.
Amnesty International is also a Western organization with little understanding of the historical realities of the Third World.
And you cannot disconnect his “autocratic” policies from the land reforms. The latter necessitates the former.
To understand that, you need a grounding in the historical realities of this country.
Before 1980 Zimbabwe was a white-supremacist British colony that went by the name of Rhodesia, after the British financier Cecil Rhodes, whose company, the British South Africa Company, stole the land from the indigenous Matabele and Mashona people in the 1890s. British soldiers, who laid claim to the land by force of arms on behalf of Rhodes, were each rewarded with nine square miles of land. The Matabele and Mashona -- those who weren't killed defending their land-- were rewarded with dispossession, grinding poverty, misery and subjugation. Today, in a country of 13 million, almost 70 percent of the country's arable agricultural land is owned by an elite of some 4,500 mostly white farmers, many descendant from the British soldiers who Rhodes blessed with a claim to stolen land, to pass down the generations.
After a long campaign for national liberation, independence talks were held in 1979. Talks almost broke down over the land question, but Washington and London, eager for a settlement, agreed to ante up and arrange for financial support for a comprehensive land reform program. If you were going to return land to the peasants who had been working it -- the rightful owners -- you'd have to compensate the white landholders. But the assistance, and therefore, a workable land resettlement plan, was never forthcoming.
That was a problem, because the land issue was largely what drove the struggle for national liberation, and has remained at the heart of Zimbabwean politics since. Unresolved, it festered.
Frustrated, and under pressure from war veterans who had grown tired of waiting for the land reform they'd fought for, Mugabe embarked on a course that would lead him headlong into collision with the IMF and Western governments. He passed legislation enabling the government to seize nearly 1,500 farms owned by white Zimbabweans, without compensation. As Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr. I.S.G Mudenge put it, at that point "all hell broke loose." Having held free and fair elections on time, and having won them, Mugabe now became international goat and pariah, on the wrong side of London, Washington and international lending institutions. A dictator, a stealer of elections, a thug. That was to be his new guise.
The first thing the EU did was commission a study. The study concluded that Mugabe would have to go, forced out by civil society, the union movement or NGO's, uprisings in the street, maybe even a military coup. "By hook or by crook, but mostly by crook," Mugabe would be ousted.
On 24 January, 1999, a meeting was convened at the Royal Institute of International Affairs to discuss the report. The theme of the meeting, led by The Economist's Richard Dowden, was "Zimbabwe - Time for Mugabe to Go?" Mugabe's "confiscating" of white-held land compelled an unequivocal answer to the conference's rhetorical question: Yes. Dowden presented four options:
1) a military coup;
2) buying the opposition;
3) insurrection; and
4) subverting Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.
On March 23 of that year, Washington weighed in. The US State Department held a seminar to discuss a strategy for dealing with the "Zimbabwe crisis." Civil society and the opposition would be strengthened to foment discontent and dissent. The opposition would be brought together under a single banner to enhance its chances of success at the polls and funding would be funnelled to the opposition through Western backed NGO's. Dissident groups could be strengthened and encouraged to take to the streets. The same plan was to work later in Belgrade (naïvely celebrated today by a large part of the US left as a model of grassroots, non-violent, change from below.) It could work in Harare.
Opposition leaders were told to put their differences aside and unite under a single banner. Washington would bankroll their campaigns, and fund NGOs and civil society to put pressure on the government. In Zimbabwe, the electoral opposition coalesced under the banner, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Of course, none of these opposition groups had any special claim to being democratic, but the appropriation of the democratic cache was intended to make it seem that the government was authoritarian and antidemocratic.
Under these circumstances the reviled leader is caught in an unfair position. Allow the massive interference of Western governments to go unchecked, and forfeit the only chance of a free and fair election. Take steps to limit the interference and give your opponents ammunition to step up the charges that you're authoritarian and antidemocractic.
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I'd just like to thank you so much for reverting People on stamps for me. -user:Zanimum
Danny:
First, I believe those parliamentary figures are outdated. I’ll check.
Second, I stand behind what I said.
If there are competitive, multiparty elections to be rigged in the first place what you have in Zimbabwe is closer to the British model than the Stalinist model. Regardless, food, vaccination, preventative medicine (don’t forget the AIDS crisis) shelter, and clean water are more important than a free press in a country as impoverished and underdeveloped as Zimbabwe. White Americans, in contrast, seem to care more about their rights to fund veiled pro-racist NGOs in Zimbabwe than about the material well-being of a over ten million improvised Zimbabweans.
I’ll be honest. Mugabe shouldn’t have abandoned the single-party state in the first place. That’s what left Zimbabwe open to outside interference, which has really been destabilizing the country. I want Mugabe to subvert the self-serving, neocolonial opposition as much as he can in order to offset their funding advantage provided by greedy, greedy colonialists. He can’t surrender Zimbabwe’s long struggle for national liberation begun when British troops (the ancestors of those 4,000 or so pseudo-aristocrats) massacred nearly everyone in Matabeleland’s military in Bulawayo their 1890 "preemptive" attack. Just because the white farmers figured out how to legitimize the illegitimate under the guise of “free elections,” with that treasonous MDC puppet potentate, Mugabe does not surrender his heroic cause.
It’s a about time we’re seeing unemployed youths, aspiring bureaucrats, and war veterans taking back what was stolen from their people in the first place. They’re not all Mugabe cronies. Some are, though; and they’re even preferable to what you had before. Regarding the white farmers and their ex-colonial overlords who fund the opposition, no fair-minded person should have an iota of sympathy for those racist parasites.
And you can’t develop Zimbabwe’s economy without taking these difficult measures. You can’t have vibrant capitalist development in such a latifundia economy in which 4,000 racist pseudo-aristocrats own 70% of the arable land in an agrarian country of 13 million. Given the resistance, the expropriation process had to be haphazard. This will cause hardships in the short run, but once things have stabilized productivity will have recovered if Mugabe is able to fend of the enemies of the Zimbabwean people.
I wish sell-out Mandela and Mbeki and their ANC had the courage and resolve of Mugabe and his ZANU-PF.