Enslaved!

Quote of the moment: "Your starter for 10: what does this emoticon depict?" - Emoticons on University Challenge! Hurrah!

Have just seen an advert for La Coste perfume stuff. For guys. Featuring a guy getting out of bed naked, walking past his huge trophy cabinet, then sitting down with a cup of tea of a saucer. White china. A real man's man, obviously!

Now, be warned. Rob in particular should be scared. I am about to embark on a contraversial on possibly emo topic. If you are pregnant, have a heart condition, are epileptic, or are Rob, please look away now!

I was watching Moira Stewart on the BBC 2 "Who Do You Think You Are?" series. Most of it was pretty good, including the bit when she went to a small Scottish town where her grandfather worked in a hospital, and where we used to stay overnight on the way to the Northwest coast for holidays. How rare! What did remind me of something rather daft was what she said at the end. When she found out that an ancestor of hers was a slave-master, she said she felt disgusted that she was descended from some involved in slavery.

Fair enough you might think. It wasn't actually that which I was objecting to, it was the way she talked about "slavery", in the same way as many people do. As if slavery was something invented and implemented by Europeans, including those who colonised North America, and was exclusively practised upon Africans. Much like the idea of "ethnic cleansing" was an exclusively Nazi thing, practised only upon Jews.

6 million Jews died during the Second World War, under the Nazi regime. But so did 5 million others; Romany gypsies, homosexuals, communists, and many more. Ethnic cleansing has happened all through history. For example, the Kurds and the Sunni Muslims: 30,000 Kurds died in Iraq between the two Gulf Wars. Rwanda: an estimated 1 million people died in 3 years of genocide, mostly under machete blades.

Slavery has been common practice in at least 4 continents that I know of, in the last couple of millenia. In Europe: Obviously common in Rome and in Ancient Greece. The Vikings had thralls (the origin of 'enthrall'), the Normans had serfs. When Europeans colonised Africa and took black African slaves home, and later to North (and South) America, they weren't doing anything new, especially because the African tribes had a tradition of slavery too. The Zulus, the most organised and effective of the warrior tribes, that conquered an empire for themselves, took whole tribes in slavery. Such is the traditional method of the conqueror. In South and Central America, the Inca, Maya and especially the Aztecs took slaves in war. They were a vital and normal part of society.

The major difference, it seems to me, is that the scale involved increased. It started with tribe to tribe, only a few miles apart. It increased to being nation-states, then to countries. When the Africans were shipped en masse to Europe and America, it became intercontinental, and more importantly, it's the only time it happened in the memory of most Americans (of the white variety, slavery was also common among the American Indian tribes) and thus the only one that counts against the guilty consciences of those of liberal (emo) sensibilities.

Rant over.

Also on my hitlist today: my rents, for yelling at me for spending all evening on the internet.

1. It's a prepaid account, of the £12.99 per month dial-up variety. Thus it is costing them nothing extra for me to do so.
2. Since I work on Saturdays, Tuesday is my second day off per week (which is vital for health reasons, according to Rob).
3. I was harassed for messing around when I should be doing something useful. I did an hour and a half of maths and walked the dogs today. Plus I spent a hour before supper printing off emails from admissions tutors and my UCAS application, and checking on the track thing (which still doesn't show anything, though I have apparently recieved two offers already).
4. They also had a go at me for waking them up at half twelve last night, by opening the back door and turning the outdoor light on. That would be because the puppy was whining because he needed a leak, so I took him out into the garden so he wouldn't piss on the floor.
5. They were only moody because Zulu (the puppy) tried to chew the carpet in the sitting room!

Go me! Longest... Rant... Ever... (By Will - obviously Podgy ones are at least quadruple the size).