Claim Form: Fill & Download for Free

If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, he shall be put to death.—The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, dated to 1754 BC, Law #15There’s so much ignorance about slavery and the blame for it. I will make three key points about the “peculiar institution” that will explain why this question is amiss. I will even explore why it is perhaps dishonest.Slavery was a civilized traditionThe first thing you need to know about slavery is that, while it certainly was not a liberal tradition, it definitely beat the alternative.To minimize risk, primitive societies chose tactics like the ambush and the dawn raid. Even so, their casualty rates were enormous, not least because they did not take prisoners. That policy was compatible with their usual strategic goal: to exterminate the opponent’s society.—Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our AncestorsHelen Valera was a white girl captured around age 12 by the Yanomami of the northern Amazon rain forest in the 1930s. She bore four children to two husbands, but in 1956 made her way back to white society, where she was rejected by her family and lived shunned and impoverished at a mission. She gave up and returned to her tribe.Meanwhile, she had told her story to an Italian anthropologist who published a book in the mid-1960s. By the time the book was published, other anthropologists were long on the trail of the Yanoamo. Foremost was Napoleon Chagnon, who lived with tribes in the region at length from the 60s to the 90s. He chronicled a people constantly at war, with killing a way of life, constantly raiding their neighbors and being raided in return. They made off with food and women. The women would be raped on the spot by each member of the raiding party, brought to the village to be raped by anyone else who wanted and then each given to anyone who would take her as a wife.Chagnon’s early publications had incendiary effect. They challenged the still-prevalent Rousseauian notion of the noble savage. Follow-on studies by others confirmed Chagnon’s depiction. I had a hand in one of those studies and came to know the story well. Indeed, the Yanomami were relatively civilized. Further to the west were tribes that would take prisoners, fatten them for a while and then eat them. Other tribes practiced ritual torture of particularly cruel forms.The capture of young girls and younger boys for assimilation into the tribe was pretty much the extent of coercive labor in the neolithic world. Slavery proper got its start with civilization. When semi-nomadic raiders on the civilized world—the Huns, the Mongols, the Vikings, and so on—staged their smash-and-grab raids, few prisoners were taken. They were barely advanced from neolithic tribes. Most victims were slaughtered on the spot.In the newly flourishing city-states dependent on agriculture, however, slavery solved a big problem. Farming is backbreaking work that produces subsistence economies, not wealth to pay for labor. The taking of slaves as the alternative to slaughter was considered a moral and proper step up. Slavery was born with the first walled cities that could afford the extra mouths to feed and had the infrastructure to pull it off. It allowed the free peoples of the city to adopt an easier way of life.We call the 20th century “the bloodiest century,” a reference to the death toll from war but, especially, the murderous campaigns waged by fascism and communism—estimated at 100 million. On a percentage basis, it was not the bloodiest by a long shot. Had the death toll of the ancient world continued, the 20th century would have seen more than two billion violent deaths. We are actually, slowly but surely, learning to be nicer to each other.Slavery was a ubiquitous traditionThe second thing you need to know about slavery is that for some eight millennia it served as a non-controversial institution throughout the world.Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.—Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institute, Stanford UniversityMusa I of Mali is in the running for richest man ever. He owned several gold mines and several salt mines as well as innumerable slaves. How many, no one knows, but 12,000 accompanied him across the Sahara on his hajj to Mecca, 1324–1325. Along the way, he gave out gifts of gold amounting to tons, and every Friday had his slaves build a mosque wherever they were. This was not even the start of the West African slave trade. His ancestors before him owned large numbers of slaves.Slavery was an institution throughout the civilized ancient world, a commonplace essentially unopposed by any religion or philosophy. Caesar alone in the course of his military campaigns is said to have taken more than a million slaves. Of those returned to Rome, they could have been used for anything from road and aquaduct construction to gladiatorial combat to being chained to the oars of a trireme, and many other tasks besides. They might even have become a servus corporis (body slave), sort of an executive assistant to a domina or dominus, that is female and male heads of a household.The Ottoman Turks regularly raided the Balkans and other nearby Christian regions in order to capture promising male children to impress into the Janissaries, the first standing army in Europe. Apparently, allegiances in the Turkish world were so twisted that, starting in the 14th century, Sultans found it wise to build an elite personal guard from slaves who could have no other loyalty. It became such a prestigious corps that Turks began paying their way in to join.One often-observed tradition of slavery to induce captives to accept slavery was that their existing or future children would be raised free. That is the racist departure in American slavery, where blacks were deemed suited only for slavery, meaning their offspring too. At the same time, however, Anglo Americans tended to prefer blacks as house slaves to Irish, of whom there were a large number of indentured slaves—at least the blacks did not have the taint of “popery.”One other thing to know about American slavery is that Americans themselves were frequently captured into slavery by Indian raiders. People living on the frontier were regularly captured and marched in groups of a dozen or more to Canada to be traded into slavery in return for commodities. Relatives who came looking were required either to purchase their loved ones back or to wait the full term of years until the servitude ended. The practice was considered humanely preferable to not providing an incentive to keep captives alive.Slavery was ended by capitalismThe third thing you need to understand about coerced labor is that it ended swiftly wherever organized markets for labor were implemented.The fact is that slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism emerged. And it disappeared first where industrial capitalism appeared first: Great Britain. This was no coincidence. Slavery was destroyed by capitalism.—Donald Boudreaux, Harvard professor of economics, Capitalism, Slavery, and the State, letter to the New York TimesIn the liberal world [true sense] the equality of all mankind began to be extolled, but it was actually the concomitant economics of free enterprise that swiftly supplanted slavery wherever it took hold by creating not only the much superior mechanism of labor markets but also the wealth to make paying for drudge labor a possibility. Arising at the same time, industrial mechanization also began removing the drudgery from labor.This transition away from coerced labor did not occur in the socialist world. They were not producing the wealth to make labor markets a reality. There is a reason socialism is referred to as command economics.Every major socialist regime—the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Communist China, North Korea, and several others—were, and in some cases still are—dependent on coerced labor. Often, this was slave labor, but, not wanting to appear so retrograde, it typically took the form of punishment labor, often, as with Kulaks and the victims of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, for the crime of trying to better one’s life. The Soviet Union had its infamous Gulags in addition to working some ninety percent of Axis war prisoners to death. China first had laogai (“reform”) and then jianyu (“prison labor”). When not generating the wealth to pay laborers, the state does whatever necessary.Dishonest?Are questions such as this one to be regarded as innocent curiosity? There is some chance this one is. The overwhelming likelihood however involves a different motive.Spend a few minutes actually studying what activists mean by “social justice” and you will discover that it is often a reactionary effort. It claims the rule of law is a rigged system designed to protect the interests of the patriarchy or white privilege or the “one percent.” Social justice holds that abstract rules or timeless principles are inadequate if they do not lead to “redistributive” or “economic” justice. In other words, as Friedrich Hayek famously observed, social justice is about the subjective will to power of a tribal coalition, not universal principles.—Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American DemocracyYears back I made a pilgrimage to visit my old friend Deborah. She was a psychologist, a friend since college days, but I had not seen her in five years, since she had moved several hours’ drive away. After a nice outdoor lunch, with her husband and my family, she told me about her new practice… in “white guilt.”After patiently weathering the ribbing from me she knew would come, she soberly warned me I should take the matter seriously. There, in a mid-sized affluent city with only a modest population of blacks, she had something on the order of one hundred patients seeing her for the single issue of feeling guilty over wrongs they themselves did not participate in. “It is important, Charles, because if you can get people to feel guilty or envious or, especially, fearful, they become easy to manipulate.”I have no idea why Americans would want to manipulate other Americans. Anybody have a clue?

Question: what do you think of the revisionist historian Ilan Pappe’s claim that the creation of Israel is to blame for the lack of peace in the middle east, and that Zionism is more dangerous than Islamic militancy?Answer: Unlike Chris Hutchinson, i have no problem with identifying Pappe as a revisionist historian, in fact he is one of the “new historians”, a group that has made use of what was newly declassified(at the time) information to substantiate their own beliefs as facts and describe a distorted view of historical events in order to advance their political goals, rather than follow the path of objective historians, any claim made by a person associated with these “new historians” should be taken with a huge batch of salt.New Historians - WikipediaThe reason for the lack of peace in the middle east is because that Arab society is very much suited to being a warlike medieval society rather than a peaceful modern one, these countries compete and make war with each other for dominance, territory, resources, religious supremacy, ethnic differences, all of which going on today with an existing Israel just as it was going on for hundreds of years prior to the establishment of the modern state of Israel, i cannot imagine that i would ever encounter a greater example of intellectual dishonesty than the ones i witnessed at the hands of the new historians.Lets examine some of the leading Arab and Muslim countries of the ME:Syria- engaged in a brutal civil war since 2011 between numerous factions, as the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, a member of the Alawite minority, he has shown great diligence, creativity and brutality in order to hold on to power since the beginning of the civil war, it is estimated that this conflict has claimed the lives of about 500,000 people and turned more than 5,000,000 into refugees.prior to the civil war, Syria was a member of the “Axis of evil”, a group of counties that sponsored terror and sought to manufacture\acquire weapons of mass destruction. Axis of evil - WikipediaIraq- was ruled by a dictator(Saddam Hussein) who had previously attacked Kuwait hoping to take over its oil, an assault which led to the first gulf war in 1991, despite being defeated, he remained in power until the second gulf war when he was overthrown by a US led coalition and later executed, after many years of trying to establish democratic rule in Iraq, the US eventually decided to quit, the latest claim to fame from the iraqi government, is the continued oppression of the Kurds, an indigenous people living mainly in Syria, Iraq Iran and Turkey, the Kurds are seeking self determination in the form of an independent state, in 2017 in a refferendum made among iraqi Kurds, 91% voted for independence from Iraq, who in turn was quick to send its armed forces to quell any such dreams. Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum, 2017 - Wikipediain the picture- Iraqi Kurds celebrating the results of the referendum.Lebanon- in essence it is controlled by the terror group Hezbullah, which is sponsored by Iran, Hezbullah militants have taken active part in the fighting in the Syrian civil war alongside the forces of Bashar AssadJordan- The Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, originally part of “Palestine” this area was carved of the land which the Brits promised to the Jews and handed over to the Hashemites , a beduin tribe from modern Saudi Arabia, after losing a war to the house of Saud. the Hashemites are a minority ruling over a majority of of “Palestinians” which account for 80% of the country’s populace. Black september refers to the retaliation the Jordanian armed forces against cities with PLO presence after the letter attempeted to overthrow Hashemite rule, the Jordanian forces indiscriminately shelled civil areas, reulsting in the deaths of about 3,400 peopleTurkey- Tough it is ethnically not Arab, it is comprised of people that have been greatly influenced by Arab culture, and eventually influencing Arab culture over the centuries in which they ruled over much of the Arab world, Turkey is responsible for the ethnic cleansing(religious cleansing would be more accurate) of non Muslim of Greeks and Bulgars out of the newly formed Turkey at the end of WWI, Turkey is also responsible for the Armenian genocide and the Greek and Pontic and Assyrian genocides…all of which took place at the end of WWI… yeah the Turks sure had their hands fullGreek genocide - WikipediaAssyrian genocide - WikipediaArmenian Genocide - WikipediaI dare not put on the more horrific pictures depicting the genocides committed by the TurksIran- The world’s largest financier of terror, it finances terror organizations such as Hamas and Hezbullah while it is preoccupied in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia over the fate of Yemen and the ME, it seeks to produce nuclear weapons, as it remains undeterred by US sanctions, blasphemy is an offense for which citzens are jailed, and homosexuals are routinely executed, woman are oppressed, and the country is ruled by a dictator while the “elections” merely decide the face of the presenter for the Iranian supreme leader.By its own admition, Iran is occupying 4 Arab capitalsIran and state-sponsored terrorism - WikipediaIran: Sana’a, Yemen Is “the Fourth Arab Capital in Our Hands”Saudi Arabia- Ruled by a monarch, gays, blasphemers and atheists are subject to arrest, engaged in a proxy war in YemenAs far as Zionism goes, it is the most successful liberation movement of the 20th century, it is a source of innovation, prosperity and stability, and the state of Israel is always willing to accept a hand stretched out in friendship, as it has done with Egypt and with Jordan. to blame the one peaceful country in a violent area for the instability is complete and utter lunacy which tells a great deal about the credibility of those making such claims

Here’s a couple for you, most of them talk about why the Axis couldn’t win WWII.The Dunkirk “Debacle.”Claim: The Germans should have continued the attack into Dunkirk.DunkirkHere’s the thing: the Nazis didn’t just go “you know what? Let’s take a chill pill.” They stopped because they needed to. The Panzers needed refitting and every single division needed replacements for their losses. The respite was badly needed, and when Göring offered to destroy the British on the beaches it seemed like a good solution.[1]At the Battles of Hannut and Gembloux alone the Germans lost 160 tanks.[2]This mirrors a lot of other battles, all going to show how the Germans needed a break.When the soldiers had rested up they indeed did try and catch the British, but even then they were held back by the brave men of the French army. It’s not like they said, meh, whatever, they can go.Operation Sea Lion.Claim: The Germans could have drawn the Royal Navy into the English Channel and used the Luftwaffe to take out the RNThe KriegsmarineNo matter how the Germans approached it, it’s never going to work. As you say, the Royal Navy was too big a threat. And even if, as you say, it started and they were drawn out into the Channel, it’s not like they’ll roll over when the Luftwaffe arrives. They had aircraft carriers (which admittedly might not be much help) and the English Channel was within range of most fighter squadrons and all bomber squadrons in the south (as shown by the ‘Kanalkampf’ in July-August [3]).The LuftwaffeThis is why the Germans wanted to wipe out the RAF on the ground, thus commencing the Battle of Britain. And we see how that goes. If the Germans can’t get air superiority then they can’t get naval superiority which means they can’t even think about beginning a battle for ground superiority, aka an invasion. The RAF and RN were too big an obstacle for the German armed forces, this is why Hitler cancelled it.Indeed, in 1974 they war-gamed the scenario with actual Commanding Officers even the likes of Adolf Galland were present. They kept the situation and equipment the same and gave the Germans every advantage. The Germans managed to make superficial landings on the south coast but were obliterated.Quotes from the transcript:Sep 24th dawn - Sep 28thThe German fleet set sail, the weather calmed, and U-Boats, E-Boats and fighters covered them. However, at daylight 5th destroyer flotilla [UK] found the barges still 10 miles off the coast and tore them to shreds.The Luftwaffe, in turn, committed all its remaining bombers, and the RAF respondedwith 19 squadrons of fighters. The Germans disabled two CAs and four DDs, but 65% of the barges were sunk.The faster steamers broke away and headed for Folkestone, but the port had been so badly damaged that they could only unload two [barges] at a time.The failure on the crossing meant that the German situation became desperate. The divisions had sufficient ammunition for 2 to 7 days more fighting, but without extra men and equipment could not extend the bridgehead.Hitler ordered the deployment on reserve units to Poland and the Germans began preparations for an evacuation as further British arracks hemmed them in tighter. Fast steamers and car ferries were assembled for evacuationvia Rye and Folkestone.Of 90,000 troops who landed on 22nd September, only 15,400 returned to France, the rest were killed or captured.[4] (Full transcript available detailing pre-invasion action).One of the causes for the cancellation of Sea Lion.Hitler the Idiot.Claim: Hitler was an idiot and should have stayed away from German military affairs.Hitler.Contrary to popular belief, Hitler wasn’t an idiot. He was, in his prime, a capable strategist and leader. It’s only when his mind starts to deteriorate due to the failings of Barbarossa that he starts to make the wrong calls. But many times in his campaigns he correctly overrules his generals and makes the right choice. It’s only at the end he starts to bugger it up. He did screw it up in Russia, but in both France and, in the beginning, Russia he was doing fine. This myth springs from German high command memoirs, who blame the loss of the war on Hitler’s ineptness, despite the fact that it was often the other way round.In one case his mistrust of his Generals caused one of his best moments.As the Nazi offensive towards Moscow stalled, his generals wanted to retreat, but Hitler decided to form a defensive front and hold the line. As the commander-in-chief, Hitler made the final decision, and the German defenses held. Soviet losses were so severe that the resulting stalemate became known as the “Rzhev Meat Grinder.”[5]Edit: Some people think I'm saying Hitler was the best strategist ever and it was his generals' fault that they lost and he should have just done everything blah blah blah. Not at all. All I'm saying here is that he was, quite simply, capable. Not great, maybe not even good, but adequate.Russia.Claim: The Germans lost Russia because they were behind schedule, all thanks to Hitler. (I’m seeing a pattern)Panther in Russia.Even had Hitler not “meddled” in the strategies involved, the outcome would have been exactly the same. The Germans could not keep to the time schedule, not because Hitler threw them off it, but because the Russians were actually putting up a fight.Yes, the beginning of the campaign was a disaster for the Russian/Soviet army, with massive losses. But when they got prepared and ready for the war, they started pushing back. That alongside the fact that the Germans had no long term plans for the invasion and it all started to fall apart.[6]They moved the factories away from the German advances and then started churning out new tanks. With new equipment and soldiers the Soviet army started to lose ground at a slower rate. This is why the Germans couldn’t keep the time schedule.Moscow/Stalingrad.Claim: Just take Moscow/StalingradEven if the Russians lost Stalingrad and/or Moscow, so what? The Russians weren’t going to capitulate in 1941, even if Moscow and/or Stalingrad were taken. The Russians aren’t going to say “oh no, our capital is taken. Guess it’s game over.” They’ll continue to fight. The Soviet Union will send in every man woman and child available to kill as many nazis as possible. Even if it means losing Moscow or Stalingrad.The former German high command created this myth that the Russians would have given up if they pressed just a little farther to Moscow. This just couldn’t happen because the Germans were in a stalemate just outside Moscow anyway and couldn’t break the defences, even after 3 months and 5 days of attacks on Moscow (it may be a surprise to know they actually did try)[7]Historian David M. Glantz proposed an alternate scenario where the Soviets lose Moscow“Initially, Army Group Center runs roughshod over its opponents. Within a few days, it achieves the spectacular encirclement of 685,000 Soviet troops near the towns of Bryansk and Vyazma, about 100 miles west of Moscow. The hapless Russians look to the skies for the onset of rain, for this is the season of the rasputitsa—literally the “time without roads”—when heavy rainfall turns the fields and unpaved roads into muddy quagmires. But this year the weather fails to rescue them, and by early November frost has so hardened the ground that German mobility is assured. With Herculean efforts from German supply units, Army Group Center continues to lunge directly for Moscow.Thoroughly alarmed, the Stalin regime evacuates the government 420 miles east to Kuybyshev, north of the Caspian Sea. It also evacuates a million Moscow inhabitants, prepares to dynamite the Kremlin rather than have it fall into German hands, and makes plans to remove Lenin’s tomb to a safe place. Stalin alone remains in Moscow until mid-November when the first German troops reach the city in force. And in obedience to Hitler’s order, Fedor von Bock uses Army Group Center to surround Moscow, instead of fighting for the city street by street. Nonetheless, the Soviet troops withdraw rather than fall prey to yet another disastrous encirclement, and on November 30—precisely two months after Operation Typhoon begins—it culminates in the capture of Moscow.”This scenario is probably the most plausible, he says. And then he goes on to explain why this would not be the end of the war.“But would the fall of Moscow have meant the defeat of the Soviet Union? Almost certainly not. In 1941 the Soviet Union endured the capture of numerous major cities, a huge percentage of crucial raw materials, and the loss of four million troops. Yet it still continued to fight. It had a vast and growing industrial base east of the Ural Mountains, well out of reach of German forces. And in Joseph Stalin, it had one of the most ruthless leaders in world history—a man utterly unlikely to throw in the towel because of the loss of any city, no matter how prestigious.”[8]Losing Moscow would only be a setback. A major one, absolutely. Fatal? I believe not. The Soviets were incredibly good at shifting their factories and building new ones, it’s not like they had to pay the labourers or anything. They still had a whole 6,308 km until the end of Soviet soil.[9] I’d say good luck to the Germans if you want to Blitzkreig another 6,308 kilometres.Ye-haw and the Declaration of War on the USA.Claim: Work together to kill the US/USSR.Enter the JapaneseHitler was actually very happy that Japan attacked the US. He believed the Japanese navy would be enough to keep the US at bay from meddling in Europe until Barbarossa had concluded and Russia capitulated. He believed they were lazy and thus, wouldn’t be able to stand up to the superior Aryan race. This was an instance where he was wrong.Attack Pearl Harbor, but only after a beautiful photo is takenHe didn’t factor in the US’ ability to mass produce. He didn’t think that the infrastructure to build an efficient army could be put in place. But it could. And pretty quick too. All of this I agree with you on. (A quote from Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-1944: Here’s a quote that pretty much sums up what Hiter thought of the US)“The axis ain’t got nothing on me.” - USA, 1945.However, the suggestion that Japan attack the USSR is never going to happen. The Japanese were flat out scared of the USSR, and had lost badly during the Russo-Japanese border aggressions in the 1930s.Japan was never going to work with Germany, simply because they actually didn’t like each other. They just had similar goals and it made sense to work together. That’s it. No friendships. No hugs and kisses. Just “I’ll help you if you help me.” And they didn’t end up helping each other. They fought two separate wars. Should they have worked together? Absolutely. Were they ever going to? Absolutely not.I hope what I’ve said here makes sense. Please feel free to respond and I hope this wasn’t too long.All photos colourised by me (except Hitler). If you want more colourised photos from WWII then check out my space, WWII in ColourFootnotes[1] Decisions: Hitler’s Halt Order[2] The 1940 Battle of Gembloux - Warfare History Network[3] StackPath[4] http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/seelowe.txt[5] Führer's Military Incompetence, Did it Cost the Third Reich the War[6] Operation 'Barbarossa' And Germany's Failure In The Soviet Union[7] Death in the Snow: Battle of Moscow[8] What If the Germans Had Captured Moscow in 1941?[9] Moscow to Lavrentiya