Now France is racists as well....

[InsaneApache]

The upper house of the French parliament has passed a tough new immigration bill, weeks after it was adopted by the lower chamber.

The bill makes it harder for unskilled migrants to settle in France and abolishes the rights of illegal immigrants to remain after 10 years.

But this is the bit that make me crack up...

Most immigrants living in France come from its former African colonies.

The proposed law has been criticised by many in the region, including President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal.

Racist France

It does make you wonder if the African nations are covertly encouraging their undesirables to emigrate.

[_Martyr_]

To be honest, if people are immigrating to your country from your former collonies then its a bit rich to be suddenly upset. "oh, yeah we conquered your land, enslaved your population, destroyed many of your cultures, raped your natural resources, completely upturned local power structures and drew totally artificial borders leaving completely unviable countries with very little hope of ever developing... but dont you dare coming over here and try seeking a better life in our country..." If France had never been an imperial player in those parts of northern Africa then I would feel a little more understanding for this.

[rory_20_uk]

Wasn't France given most of North West Africe to stop it whining about the thrashing it had received at the hands of Prussia?

[_Martyr_]

My point is that for any former imperial player to whine about immigration from a former collony is just laughable IMO. If you didnt want foreigners in your own country, then you shouldnt have conquered those countries and had your wicked way with them.

[rory_20_uk]

My point is that for any former imperial player to whine about immigration from a former collony is just laughable IMO. If you didnt want foreigners in your own country, then you shouldnt have conquered those countries and had your wicked way with them.

To play Devil's advocate: when we went over there, we defeated the local rulers. There were often large battles and finally the area was taken by the victor.

So why should countries not put up resistance? After all, we wern't let in easily to their country, so we should return the favour...

[Banquo's Ghost]

TSo why should countries not put up resistance? After all, we wern't let in easily to their country, so we should return the favour...

Top notion. Just so long as they are allowed to have Lee Enfields and 12 inch naval guns and our border guards are armed with sharpened mangoes...

[_Martyr_]

LMAO!

[King Ragnar]

Seems wierd that they wanted independance and now they want to come live under your rule again, seems they were better off with having over sea rulers than independance ...

[_Martyr_]

Well no, they were better off before their nations were plundered by the imperialists and left in a state of quagmire once the European's guilty conscience cought up with them... Now they are just totally ****ed.

[Crazed Rabbit]

It does make you wonder if the African nations are covertly encouraging their undesirables to emigrate.

Here in the good ole U.S. of A, we know that the Mexican gov't is helping and encouraging immigration, and have the gall to say they'll sue us if the National Guard detains illegals. And Bush just takes it.

Crazed Rabbit

[rory_20_uk]

And your country cares if it gets sued? Illegal detention for 4 years eems to roll like water off a duck's back. Detaining immigrants isn't going to bother the USA!

[King Ragnar]

Well no, they were better off before their nations were plundered by the imperialists and left in a state of quagmire once the European's guilty conscience cought up with them... Now they are just totally ****ed.

So they were better off being small petty tribes fihting each other with sticks and stones, and would be better if they were still like that now?

Surely if they were still colonies they would be better off, no civil war, no starvation and no genocides etc, but no they would rather have all that instead of being a colony, ok then....

[_Martyr_]

They would have been better off if Europe did not simply march into every single other continent on this planet, enslaving the populations and stealing their resources. Africa is such a mess now compared with say Asia, (although lets face it, its also pretty screwed up in parts) because of the particulary disasterous way it was split up, (superimposed jigsaw puzzle) taking absolutely NO regard as to where tribes lived and cultures. Often borders were drawn up directly cutting a people in half so that they would be easier to control. This resulted in a situation where the majority of African countries had to endure some sort of crippling civil strife because the populations of which the countries were artificially composed simply werent ever meant to be a "country" together. They would have been a hell of a lot better off if we had traded with them and taught them some of our technologies, rather than stealing from them and destroying their cultures.

It astounds me that to this very day, many english people do not see the empire for what it was, a barbaric occupation of much of the planet.

[King Ragnar]

It astounds me that to this very day, many english people do not see the empire for what it was, a barbaric occupation of much of the planet.

Well to be honest if we sat and did nothing we would have become a colony, we took the iniative to not let it happen, the empire was most certainley not a barbaric occupation, some countries would not exisist without e.g. USA, Australia, Canada, they would be nobody countries, if anything the empries created the world.

If they where colonies still they would be alot better off, and i feel they should not be aloud any where near our borders they didnt want out help they wanted independance, they got it, so use it and deal with it, dont come crying back to us, asking for aid and charity.

[doc_bean]

So they were better off being small petty tribes fihting each other with sticks and stones, and would be better if they were still like that now?

Do you know anything about African history ?

Surely if they were still colonies they would be better off, no civil war, no starvation and no genocides

Yes, congo was so peaceful and pleasant when we were still there

etc, but no they would rather have all that instead of being a colony, ok then....

Europe pulled out everything when they abandoned the colonies, they left a wreck. And you'd rather have someone rule you from a few thousand miles away, in the best interest of the *mother* country ?

[_Martyr_]

You'll notice that in those new world countries you mentioned there arent all that many Aborigonees or Native North Americans left. The people that now live in these countries are the decendants of those Europeans that forcibly displaced the native population, and treated them pretty damn terribly it may be added. Thats not just barbaric occupation, your right... In many cases it was genocide.

[_Martyr_]

Well to be honest if we sat and did nothing we would have become a colony

So, you acknowledge that being a colony is a bad thing. However, at the same time you fail to acknowledge that it is bad for you to have them, and that other people would feel the same way (ie pretty damn negative) about being controlled by some foriegn force half way around the world who want to essentially wipe you and your culture off the face of the earth... Seems a tad arrogant...

[InsaneApache]

Well I have to admit the the British Empire was no saint, also remember it was an anachronism that a (partial) democracy acquired one, mainly in an attempt to prevent French hegemony in the New World and the far east.

Compared with other empires of the time it was far more enlightened. Remember it is the only time in history that an empire voted to stay together, albeit in a loose confederation, the the monarch as head of state for most of the former possessions.

[Brenus]

“Africa is such a mess now compared with say Asia, (although lets face it, its also pretty screwed up in parts) because of the particulary disasterous way it was split up, (superimposed jigsaw puzzle) taking absolutely NO regard as to where tribes lived and cultures. Often borders were drawn up directly cutting a people in half so that they would be easier to control.”
Err, in two sentences you claimed two different things:

1. The Colonialist did share Africa at random, in drawing strait line borders
2. The Colonialist intentionally drew borders in order to “divide to rule”.

If you would study history of borders, you will find out it is a little bit more complex. The Colonialists did take care about small details as separation of water lines, Mountains, distance and time to reach towns and other very important things if you want to CONTROL a territory. And you will find that, as example, it was done the same in France to divide the country in Departement. The unit was each point of a territory could be reach in a 24 hours horse journey.
Now, again, if you can explain me the BIG advantage to draw very nice irregular borders in the Sahara or Kalahari or in the Tropical Forest, I am curious to see your expose.

“oh, yeah we conquered your land, enslaved your population, destroyed many of your cultures, raped your natural resources, completely upturned local power structures and drew totally artificial borders leaving completely unviable countries with very little hope of ever developing... but dont you dare coming over here and try seeking a better life in our country..."
Oh yeah. We did all that and that because you miss it so much that you want now to come in our country. Better life, but I thought we mistreated you so much that you FOUGHT for your independence and got it, in order to develop a new paradise on Earth, far for the Evil colonist who “conquered blab bla bla”.
What I wrote isn’t what I think, but it is the same kind of (self censured) in answering your own stereotypes.

Like Clemenceau (Future French President du Conseil during WW1,) in 1885 in a speech in front of the Parliament, I think colonisation was nothing else than the proclamation of the power of the force against the right (qui n'est autre chose que la proclamation de la puissance de la force sur le Droit).
But if you want to play the game, old colonial power have to accept every thing from Former Colonies I will disagree.
I am against the law because:
It won’t discourage ILLEGAL immigrants. They will take their risks to come and to live in a “racist” country.
It will drain all the educated people from the Countries which need them badly.
And for what? More money for our managers, more misery for the poorest, more unemployment in the targeted populations. That is what we call FREE market, isn’t it a nice summary.

“NOW France is racist”: Why now? Do you remember the riots in France? All the newspapers and media told as it was because France was against Muslim, racist, not integration etc. So nothing new here, well, except the surprising one that, in fact, some people from other countries WANT to come. Can you see the problem here?

“Wasn't France given most of North West Africe to stop it whining about the thrashing it had received at the hands of Prussia?” Given by whom? Just go to check the dates (just a clue: Algiers is taken in 1830).

“Europe did not simply march into every single other continent” I didn’t know that Genghis Khan, Tamerlan, Murad I and Abd El Rahman were Europeans. Chinese didn’t create a huge Empire, nor the Khmers, the Indians, Aztecs etc… They never enslave, tortured, deported, pillaged and burned to the ground.

[King Ragnar]

You'll notice that in those new world countries you mentioned there arent all that many Aborigonees or Native North Americans left. The people that now live in these countries are the decendants of those Europeans that forcibly displaced the native population, and treated them pretty damn terribly it may be added. Thats not just barbaric occupation, your right... In many cases it was genocide.

Yes but if it were not for empuires they would still be runnign around with sticks and stones etc, the empires modernised the world, ok ill admit it wasnt all happy and fun, but without the empires we wouldnt even know about half of the world, we wouldnt know that half the countries now exsisted, and they would not have found us either as they obviously didnt seem to be advancing in the tech tree at all.

And i can never see the empires trying to wipe cultures from the earth, if anythign the empire embraced them and respected them, if they wanted to get rid of all of the tribes etc im sure they could have pritty easily done it, but they didnt so obviously that wasnt the plan.

It was a dog eat dog world, still is, ive said it before they wanted independance they have it, they wanted nothing to do with us so why the hell should they be allowed to come into our countries.

They thought with their independance we can create happy new country wrong, with out the colony owner they have no chance, africa would be better off it was still under foreign rule, it would have sufficient funding, alot better law systems and less poverty.

[_Martyr_]

Err, in two sentences you claimed two different things:

1. The Colonialist did share Africa at random, in drawing strait line borders
2. The Colonialist intentionally drew borders in order to “divide to rule”.

Err, no I dint. I said that all... I siad they took no account of where the people and cultures were located in creating countries, in that they didnt take a particular tribe or culture and then assign them as a country. That infact the opposite was true, they split most tribes up... I dont see where my apparent contradiction is...?

If you would study history of borders, you will find out it is a little bit more complex. The Colonialists did take care about small details as separation of water lines, Mountains, distance and time to reach towns and other very important things if you want to CONTROL a territory. And you will find that, as example, it was done the same in France to divide the country in Departement. The unit was each point of a territory could be reach in a 24 hours horse journey.

Another example of arrogance. The people who happened to live on and ultimately own the land of which we speak were given little more soveriegnty than the wilderbeast. If you draw up artificial lines based on anything other than who lives there you're going to have a lot of problems. And that is exactly what happened... and if the French broke their own countr up that way, its a WHOLE different kettle of fish than conquering a part of Africa and imposing that on them.

Now, again, if you can explain me the BIG advantage to draw very nice irregular borders in the Sahara or Kalahari or in the Tropical Forest, I am curious to see your expose.

Thats a pretty ridiculous question to ask... I would have thought it was pretty obvious that you would then have relatively homogenous countries today that werent totally crippled by civil strife.

If China invaded Europe and cut France up into 4 parts, one part belonging to Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium, tried forcibly to destroy French culture, banned the French language, plundered all the French resources and left 100 years later when we the Chinese finally decided it wasnt worth their while, Id say there would be a little bit of trouble between the afforemention countries.


The fact that is being overlooked is that one big reason that Europe is now so wealth is because of colonialism. This wealth was effectively stollen from the collonies native populations. If they now come knocking on your doorstep wanting a little back, good for them.

“Europe did not simply march into every single other continent” I didn’t know that Genghis Khan, Tamerlan, Murad I and Abd El Rahman were Europeans. Chinese didn’t create a huge Empire, nor the Khmers, the Indians, Aztecs etc… They never enslave, tortured, deported, pillaged and burned to the ground.

I agree, these are other examples of barbaric empires. This is exactly my point, its nothing to be proud of that the British or French can be mentioned i the same breath as these. And yet, somehow you are better? No civilised country enslaves other countries so you cant even use the excuse that you were spreading civilisation.

[King Ragnar]

So Martry you would have us rather live in poverty and hell like the africans now instead of having the empires and no money?

[_Martyr_]

And i can never see the empires trying to wipe cultures from the earth, if anythign the empire embraced them and respected them, if they wanted to get rid of all of the tribes etc im sure they could have pritty easily done it, but they didnt so obviously that wasnt the plan.

You must be joking right? The Aboriginal population of Australia was reduced by 90& in just over 100 years after the arrival of Europeans. Similar, if not higher numbers count for the Americas. It was a bloodbath. There was a scalping bounty in the USA and Mexico well into the late 19th century. Thats genocide pure and simple.

[_Martyr_]

So Martry you would have us rather live in poverty and hell like the africans now instead of having the empires and no money?

So if Germany had won either world war, it would have been grand because at the end of the day the Germans would have gotten fat off your backs so it would have been OK. No? Didnt thinks so.
Britain was by no means poor before it established an empire, one of the prerequisites of having an empire is being wealthy. It just wasnt the concentration of much of the wealth of the world as it was for a brief period in the 19th century.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Great bill, long overdue.

My only criticism is that it doesn't go far enough yet. For the moment, I'm happy that Sarko managed to get this bill through the senate. It's the best we could hope for against an opposition made up of an alliance of labour unions, leftist opinion makers, Muslim and Christian religious leaders and African despots.

I won't lose a minute of sleep over their accusations that it's outrageously racist to:
-require permanent citizens to learn French at some point
-ask immigrants to accept republican values and abide by democratic laws
-not grant automatic citizenship to illegals
-have French demand for immigration, and not Africa's demand for emigration decide the immigration policy of France.

[InsaneApache]

Yes but if it were not for empuires they would still be runnign around with sticks and stones etc, the empires modernised the world, ok ill admit it wasnt all happy and fun, but without the empires we wouldnt even know about half of the world, we wouldnt know that half the countries now exsisted, and they would not have found us either as they obviously didnt seem to be advancing in the tech tree at all.

And i can never see the empires trying to wipe cultures from the earth, if anythign the empire embraced them and respected them, if they wanted to get rid of all of the tribes etc im sure they could have pritty easily done it, but they didnt so obviously that wasnt the plan.

It was a dog eat dog world, still is, ive said it before they wanted independance they have it, they wanted nothing to do with us so why the hell should they be allowed to come into our countries.

They thought with their independance we can create happy new country wrong, with out the colony owner they have no chance, africa would be better off it was still under foreign rule, it would have sufficient funding, alot better law systems and less poverty.

Ever heard of the library at Timbuktu?

My step-Mom is an African American and she tells it like this;

What the 'a consenting lady and gentleman procreating' were they doing there in the first place? They should have just got the 'a consenting lady and gentleman procreating' out.

Africa, in case you missed it, is the cradle of civilization, both east and west. Scratch the surface and you will find a whole host of civilizations. Most of whom ran for thousands of years.

I can still remember what my Grandad said to me, ( he was in the Indian Army, based at Jubblepore in the 1920's), " The reason India is so poor is because we stole everything they had, all the gold, all the rubys, their land and their country, that's why India is poor. OK this was in my childhood (1960's) and things have improved. The question is, would they have got better faster?

[rory_20_uk]

Right, the local Raj was soooo much better, eh? Would India have done better if no infrastructure had been built? Or with no industrial investment? Of course! The main thing is that Europeans are Eeeevil...

And by your step mom's logic, why doesn't she get the h*ll out of America and back to Africa if she believes that so strongly? Go to Liberia - the land for the freed slaves. That modern Utopia that shows everyone what Africa is capable of by itself

Empires are made by conquest. The Europeans were just better at it than everyone else. Whinge and whine all you like, that's the bottom line.

[Brenus]

“I said they took no account of where the people and cultures were located in creating countries”. Yes, and that is a mistake. What they didn’t was to secure a nice place to live but they took care to avoid any clashes with other Colonial powers, so, ethnicities were respected. What nobody did was to take in account that the tribes will ignore the borders because they ignore the treaties, and rightly didn’t bother about them.
You are making the common mistake to mix modern knowledge with past history.
The artificial borders were not imposed to the countries when the got their independence. They ACCEPTED these borders.
The NATURAL borders like the one in Europe were drawn by wars. Is it what you wanted for Africa? I think that Africa had enough of civil wars and to add international wars isn’t a good idea.
But, anyway, you will blame the European Countries for them.

“If you draw up artificial lines based on anything other than who lives there you're going to have a lot of problems” You see… You did it again; ARTIFICIAL. The lines were NOT artificial. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t say it was for nice purposes, but it was clearly thought.
The colonial powers did base their power on pre-existing kingdoms and communities. Why to import massively soldiers, priest and administrators when you can bride, terrorise or exploit what the local have in place. Did you heard about the African Kingdoms of Mali, Ghana, Songhai, Baguirmi, Ouaddaï et Kanem-Bornou, Oyo, Dahomey and Kongo?
Before the large scale use of the quinine (1850), the Europeans were dying of malaria. They couldn’t hold the territories without a local (native) administration.

“Thats a pretty ridiculous question to ask...” Is it? You didn’t answer the question. How will you draw or define a NONE artificial border between Libya and Chad, in the middle of the desert?

“I would have thought it was pretty obvious that you would then have relatively homogenous countries today that weren’t totally crippled by civil strife.” Right you are, Africa would have been crippled by international wars.

On which criteria will you share Africa: Languages: 1500-2000 divided in 4 groups: Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Saharan, Nilo-Saharan and Khoisan. This estimation doesn’t count the dialects.
What about Religions: Christians, Muslims, Ethnoreligionists (tribal, shamanistic and animistic), Hindus and Jews, each having with their own territory.
Oh, no, better ideas: the ETHNICITIES: There are more than 1800 of them.

Blaming the Europeans for what goes wrong in Africa is ok. However, it doesn’t resist analyse.

“If China invaded Europe and cut France up into 4 parts”. China didn’t but England tried. 100 Years war, France was cut in pieces, and believe it or not, the English took more from France and slaughter more than the European did in Africa. France survived.

“Europe is now so wealth is because of colonialism”: Not on a long term and that why the Colonial Empire disappeared. It is because it is better to leave the independent countries selling what we need and not having the duties and charges inherent to colonialism.

“No civilised country enslaves other countries so you can’t even use the excuse that you were spreading civilisation.” I agree on that. It is a moral judgement I share.

[rory_20_uk]

“No civilised country enslaves other countries so you can’t even use the excuse that you were spreading civilisation.” I agree on that. It is a moral judgement I share.

One not shared by most civilisations for the greater peiod of history. These days we have machines as slaves so have no more use for human slaves. Look at the Luddites - viewed the machines as such a threat they destroyed them as it made many people less than machines.

In many cultures the slaves didn't mind being slaves as they had far more rights than the working class in 18th century England for example who had the freedom to die wherever they liked of whatever they chose. Compare that to a slave from a wealthy family in the Roman, Greek, Macedonian Byzantine or whatever empire.

[Banquo's Ghost]

One not shared by most civilisations for the greater peiod of history. These days we have machines as slaves so have no more use for human slaves. Look at the Luddites - viewed the machines as such a threat they destroyed them as it made many people less than machines.

In many cultures the slaves didn't mind being slaves as they had far more rights than the working class in 18th century England for example who had the freedom to die wherever they liked of whatever they chose. Compare that to a slave from a wealthy family in the Roman, Greek, Macedonian Byzantine or whatever empire.

Human slavery is actually at quite a high point these days.

It's a bit of a myth that slaves in the ancient world had it better - there's no evidence that I know of to show that ordinary slaves didn't mind their lot. A gilded cage is still a cage. If you would be happy to be enslaved, even to a kind master, then you might be able to claim that others should accept slavery.

Similarly, if you accept that Britain would have been better off being occupied by the Germans, you might have a moral point to make about other's occupations. You would have benefitted greatly, you know, especially in the field of public transport. Your language could have been purified back to its roots and those pesky unions you despise would have been sorted out.

Ah, the benefits of being civilised by advanced countries.