SLAVERY AND �REPARATIONS�

With the current agitation for slavery �reparations� in the United States, it seems important to get clear just what the reparations might be for. I think that the following extract from The Encyclopedia Britannica will have lots of surprises for most people:

Black slaves exported from Africa were widely traded throughout the Islamic world. Approximately 18,000,000 Africans were delivered into the Islamic trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades between 650 and 1905.

In the second half of the 15th century Europeans began to trade along the west coast of Africa, and by 1867 between 7,000,000 and 10,000,000 Africans had been shipped as slaves to the New World.

Although some areas of Africa were depleted by slave raiding, on balance the African population grew after the establishment of the transatlantic slave trade because of new food crops introduced from the New World, particularly manioc, corn (maize), and possibly peanuts (groundnuts).

The relationship between African and New World slavery was highly complementary. African slave owners demanded primarily women and children for labour and lineage incorporation and tended to kill males because they were troublesome and likely to flee. The transatlantic trade, on the other hand, demanded primarily adult males for labour and thus saved from certain death many adult males who otherwise would have been slaughtered outright by their African captors

I guess I am naive but is there not some cause for THANKS somewhere in there?

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QUIZ

Here is a good Quiz: What do these three people have in common? John Tyler,
James Polk and Zachary Taylor. I doubt that anyone outside the USA would know and I suspect that many Americans would not know either. And yet they all held a very exalted office. They were all Presidents of the United States.

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IRRELIGIOUS AUSTRALIA

I have previously noted how irreligious Australia is compared to the USA -- and noted also that it seems to do Australia no harm. Here is another observation of the marginal place of Christianity in Australian life.

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CORRUPT "EDUCATION"

Present realities are the best argument for making education voucher-funded:

If money were the answer, Washington public schools would be the best in the nation -- if not the world. Per student expenditures are $10,500 a year, second highest in the nation. With a student-teacher ration of 15.8, they have smaller-than-average class sizes. What is the result?

In only one of the city's 19 high schools do as many as 50 percent of its students test as proficient in reading, and at no school are 50 percent of the students proficient in math. At nine high schools, only 5 percent or fewer of its students test proficient in reading; and in 11 high schools, only 5 percent or less are proficient in math. The story gets worse when we look at the percentages for "below basic" performance, which means that the student has little or no mastery of subject skills.

But that's not the worst of the story: Each year, more than 80 percent -- and up to 96 percent -- of high school students are promoted to the next grade. This is nothing but fraud, dishonesty and deception, plain and simple. While the education establishment can rightfully point to education problems beyond their control, -- irresponsible parents, students with alien and hostile minds, and rotten teaching conditions -- they bear the sole responsibility for fraudulent promotions and fraudulent diplomas.

The bottom line is that if one didn't know better, one would think that Washington's predominantly black public school system was being run by the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, hell-bent on a mission to sabotage black academic excellence. Instead, it's a system being run by blacks for blacks.

More here.

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BRUTAL TWINS

Meanwhile, the North Korean "news" agency KCNA reports that "General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a floral basket from Yasser Arafat, President of Palestine, on the occasion of the New Year, Juche 92 (2003). The floral basket was handed to Paek Nam Sun, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK, by Shaher Mohammed Abdlah, Palestinian Ambassador to the DPRK, on Wednesday."

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

From Best of the web

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Darby gives his recipe for defeating Islamic fundamentalism.



On IQ & PC there is a story of completely off-the-planet political correctness in Britain. Apparently if you have a social worker on your case and you go and steal a car and then crash it, it is the social worker�s fault! Leftists seem to be doing their best to abolish all ideas of personal responsibility whatsoever! Do they ever think at all about what they are doing?

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