Posted on 12/14/2006 3:15:09 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Harare, Zimbabwe (AHN) - Zimbabwe will not turn over former Former Former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam, despite his conviction of genocide.
William Nhara, a spokesperson for President Robert Mugabe's government, says, "As a comrade of our struggle, Comrade Mengistu and his government played a key and commendable role during our struggle for independence and no one can dispute that."
"The judgment is an Ethiopian judgment and will not affect his status in Zimbabwe. As far as we know there is no extradition treaty between Harare and Addis Ababa."
Mengistu, who has been living in exile in Zimbabwe since he fell from power in 1991, was convicted of charges ranging from genocide, to imprisonment, homicide, and illegal confiscation of property.
Ethiopia's Federal High Court convicted Mengistu and 71 other defendants for their parts in the "Red Terror." According to the U.S. government, "The enormity of government-sponsored operations against suspected political opponents during the 'Red Terror' has defied accurate analysis and has made attempts at quantification of casualties irrelevant."
"Sources estimated that, during 1977-78, about 30,000 people had perished as a result of the Red Terror and harsh conditions in prisons, kebele jails, and concentration camps."
Through suggested and/or occlusion in #255, you tried to represent Gabon's tiny Muslim population as the totality of the French Equatorial African Muslim population. If you would like to clarify your comments, I would be eager to see the true meaning of that post.
Of course, I insisted on no such thing. I tried to explain to you that "Asiatic" in the early 20th century was used as a racial term -- similar to the contemporary use of "Asian" as a racial term despite its geographic implications. And as you suggest, yes, "Asiatic" was a racial term that was often understood to be distinct from "Oriental". You can consult the rulings of Ex parte Shahid (1913) and Ex parte Dow (1914) on the use of "Asiatic" as a racial category to describe Arabs.
I've done nothing of the sort.
The only fair comparisons would be to present either both as raw numbers or both as a percentage.
Fair enough. You have repeated the 20,000 number on the Nazi side. Echenberg gives 48,759 recruits from French Soudan alone.
You take the current CIA Factbook statistics to be sufficient for approximating the religious demography the WW2 area, so 48,759 x 90% = 43,883.
IOW, those 20,000 jihadi SS troops constitute a greater percentage of Hitler's forces than the colonial muslims did of the Allied forces.
Comparing the relative strength of 20,000 troops among 18 million Wermacht soldiers with considerably more among the "100-something million or so participants in the allied side of the war effort" is apples and oranges to say the least.
You would have to support that accusation with facts that do not exist in this forum or anywhere else.
I see only one letter written before the coup, and it makes no mention of Pinochet or his alleged desire to protect Chile's constitution.
A successor as defined by the constitution. You have yet to show any provisions in the Chilean constitution that place Pinochet in the line of presidential succession.
Frei described the military's action as meeting its "legal obligation," consistent with the directions of the legislative and judicial branches. Seeing as his expertise on Chilean constitutional law far exceeded anything you could ever hope to glean from your frantic search engine-style "research" into a historical event with which you are painfully unfamiliar, I'll gladly yield to his judgement in that matter.
Seeing as Pinochet abolished the constitution upon seizing power in the coup, it's fair to say that Frei was speaking under a very different set of circumstances. His familiarity with the Chilean constitution had little weight under the rule of a military junta that did not recognize that constitution. Indeed, it was quite likely that his immediate post-coup statements were influenced by a desire to keep from running afoul of the leaders of the unconstitutional coup.
My claim is firmly grounded in the "speculation" (as you characterize it) that the Nazi regime preferred "Aryans" to Slavs. In the face of the Soviet advance, Berlin's leaders were were more than happy to let the burden of death fall to the Slaves they considered to be Üntermenschen.
If Roman rule never officially ended in Iberia, you should demonstrate that rather than merely claiming it. A first step would be to show how the Roman governorships in Iberia were transferred to the Visigoths. A second step would be to demonstrate how and when these appointed positions became hereditary.
Valia became king in 415, and openly supported Honorius' rule in Rome. By 418 the Visigoths were in Gaul, and the two empires were openly allied with each other.
It seems as if you are describing two separate but allied states. Such a description challenges your assertion that "Roman rule never officially ended in Spain."
Since meaning of my question escapes you, I'll rephrase it:
How many years were the Moors in Iberia.
When the argument in question concerns sending law-abiding citizens to concentration camps based on their religious and/or ethnic background alone, I would say that the issue was ad Hitlerum before I rejoined.
Actually, I was referring to soldiers from the sub-Saharan colonies only. Or are you doubting that there were tens of thousands of Muslim soldiers from France's North African colonies?
If you have information about people who are planning to engage in terrorist acts or supporting those who do, please tell the authorities.
If supporting individual rights and responsibilities, private property, limited government, and America's greatness are no longer "conservative purposes or beliefs" on this forum or any other, I must have missed the memo.
EPWR's evasion of the question, and lqclamar's subsequent defense, is a classic example of the triumph of emotion over reason and responsibility. Apparently the two of you see no problem with outrageous demands (such as concentration camps for all American Muslims) but cry foul when those who make those demands are held accountable for the demands' inevitable results. If the consequences of such an idea are "irrelevant" then the idea itself is flawed.
If supports concentration camps for all Muslims in America, you necessarily support the internment of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Zalmay Khalilzad, and a host of others who are less prominent but just as patriotic. If you don't want to confront these "uncomfortable" aspects of your demands for summary internment on the sole basis of religious and/or ethnic background, perhaps you should not make such demands.
A courtesy ping, if you care to drag yourself back to the mud here in Nukemeccastan.
It's sooner or later for all of us, but Mengistu faces a choice between two particularly unpleasant ways to go.
That's a bold claim, considering that you don't know where "my part of the world" is.
In cases such as yours where the participant is both obstinate and less than forthcoming, an educated guess based on your posting characteristics suffices. So I stand by my characterization.
A lame excuse for an equally lame debating tactic. The point is you've tried many a time to set up trap questions with artificial constructs intended to produce a desired answer. When others see through your game and refuse, you get all pissy and start accusing them of avoiding your contrived question. But the fault was in that question all along.
Apparently the two of you see no problem with outrageous demands (such as concentration camps for all American Muslims)
Drop the hyperbole, zimdog. Though I do not speak for him, what I believe EPWR advocated was a U.S. internment program of first generation muslims in the United States similar to the internment policies of WWII for 1st generation Japanese and German citizens. Ever since then you have spun and distorted his views into a copy of the Hitler-style "concentration camp" for Jews, when they were nothing of the sort and more accurately resembled the U.S. policy in WWII that was personally designed by Franklin Roosevelt and found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States. Like it or not, the precedent is against you on this one and no amount of contrived Hitler analogies will alter that.
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