First saw those photos on a Reddit post 18 years ago. Always was a weird vibe in the comment section.

It is inherently authoritarian to think you can “liberate” another country on your terms without regard for the ordinary folk there. This is what America gets wrong time and time again. America may (and may is doing a lot of heavy lifting here) be a democracy but it’s foreign policy track record shows that it doesn’t actually care to support democracy around the world. It cares to support its national interests and that’s all. The rest is blowing hot air and virtue signalling.

If only going to school in anthropology meant you were knowledgeable in every culture.

You clearly made an assumption about her worldview based on her caste. It’s no different than you looking at another person and assuming how they think based on their race.

If you want to judge her based on her words and actions I welcome that. If you’re going to make assumptions based on immutable characteristics then you are engaging in bigotry, anthropology degree or not.

My personal standard is to not tolerate “these people are like this because they were born that way” no matter where it comes from. You shouldn’t tolerate it either.

I’m more than happy to inform you on India’s varna/jati system, how it became codified due to colonial administration, what has been done to mitigate its institutionalization and how it persists today since your anthropology degree clearly fell short of that.

This is such a poor understanding / oversimplification of Indian culture and history.

First it’s important to point out that much of America was an apartheid state predicated on a race based caste system for most of its history. You know which race was high caste and which was low. If not, ask your grandparents (or parents for that matter).

Can anyone today look at those of the race that was high caste and assume that they continue to look down on the historically low caste? No, it’s not that simple.

Usha came from a family of scholars who were well regarded as philanthropists and educators in their village.

Assuming you know anything about how she thinks of others based on her caste is actually incredibly regressive. Its equivalent to assuming every white person must is a racist.

I think she made a terrible choice in JD. But let’s not assume to know the woman based on archaic presumptions. We can do better than that.

Saying ‘It will just negatively impact your credit score’ like it’s nothing in a capitalist nation where nearly all financial trust is based on how effectively you pay back your creditors is a pretty wild take.

Especially when a car and home are the bare minimum for most people to be able to function in the US (public transport is laughable anywhere outside a metropolis) and the average person isn’t getting either without a loan.

I wouldn’t be so quick to ignore medical debt. The average retired couple spends $350000 on medical expenses in the US. The system is a lot more dysfunctional than you make it out to be.

I should clarify my prior post in that European colonists were unique in practicing race-based chattel slavery

I am not at all challenging the fact slavery existed in the many societies. Concur with all of your examples but, and this is an important caveat, slavery was not practiced under a further dehumanizing race based caste construct in those societies, it wasn’t industrial on the scale of the transatlantic trade (rather more often based on domestic kinship models), and I would still attribute the perpetuation of slavery in Brazil according to the European colonial model to Portugese settlers. Unfortunately colonialism doesn’t end when colonists leave (as the field of post colonial studies has demonstrated repeatedly).

Even under Shariah (Islamic) law, slaves had the right to be fed and clothed like their masters, the right to marry, and protections against extreme physical abuse. This is not how European colonists practiced slavery via the transatlantic slave trade.

My understanding of your argument is that it boils down to slavery existed elsewhere. I 100% agree that it did. But the way European colonists did it was so much more cruel and inhumane, and I think that’s what the diplomats from 123 of 178 nations are recognizing here, and rightly so.

In short, we need to have some nuance in understanding how slavery is actually practiced. Some forms are more cruel than others. My argument is that the European colonists did it on a scale and with a degree of cruelty (creating a race based caste system on the basis of false science to justify it) never before seen in human history.

The most important point is that slavery practiced by European colonists is specifically designated as chattel slavery because it was uniquely cruel and inhumane compared to slavery practiced in the rest of the world and historically.

Referring to 123 nations representing 6+ billion people as hypocrites is a convenient and dismissive argument. The West can live its bubble / safe space but we know what the rest of the world thinks.

The broader world seems to understand that this cannot be oversimplified into whataboutisms, simple dualisms or be reflected upon without nuance.

The West is welcome to bring its own resolutions but I’d advise against it because if we’re going to keep track of all of the genocides, displacements and chattel slavery commited by one people onto another in the past 500 years it’s going to be a PR nightmare for them.

The colonial forefathers of many Western nation states knew this which is why they sought the destroy evidence of their wrongdoings. A more blatant example of this is Britain’s Operation Legacy. British colonial officials had a tendency to open fire on unarmed civilians (often women and children) and they tried to cover up countless examples of this and other immoral acts. They firmly believed in that race based caste system they helped create, which I mentioned earlier. So even if they were killing innocent non-white people, it didn’t quite matter to them since they weren’t really people from their twisted perspective.

A group of elderly Kenyans who were subjected to rape, torture and castration in British detention camps in the 1950s actually won a case against the British government in 2013 and were paid a $30 million dollar settlement distributed to 5228 people. They even had to fund a memorial to the victims in Nairobi.

Unfortunately most colonial atrocites are past the ‘statute of limitations’ so to speak so I agree that reparations would be complex. I’m just glad that the world sees European transatlantic chattel slavery for what it was and, even if it’s hard for modern Westerners to accept, at least they know how the rest of the world sees it now too. The first step to justice is acknowledgement.

This is an interesting assessment of geopolitics. I would say that China is the only country that comes close to being a behemoth relative to the US though.

It’s true that America is slowly transforming into an Israeli and Russian foreign asset rather than a true democracy.

It was legal to kill your slave in America also as long as it was “by accident” and this was justified with biblical passage.

Freeing slaves was much more common in ancient Rome than it was in the transatlantic trade or ancient Greece.

Freed slaves could also qualify for citizenship in ancient Rome while for a century in the US they were either nonpersons or infamously 3/5ths of a “real” person.

As for those that perpetuated slavery in Brazil, it’s well established that Portugese settlers upheld the institution. How did Portugal vote? I wonder why. Now that Brazil is a democracy and those that were subjected to that cruelty have a voice - well that explains why they voted yes, doesn’t it?

I won’t contest any of the dates you’ve brought forward. But I will reiterate that slavery in the Middle East was closer to how slavery was practiced historically. European colonial powers turned slavery into something uniquely and monstrously inhumane so it’s understandable why these nations would prefer to hide from that truth. They created a global race based caste system to justify it, which has been a stain on human morality since then. At least there’s hope in the fact that the majority of the world sees it for what it truly was.

123 nations representative of 75% of the global population agreed with this proposition. It’s convenient to say they all did it to score political points and make a statement. But when representatives of 6.35 billion people say this was uniquely bad (considering all the horrific things that happened in their countries due to colonialism and other tyranical regimes), it may be time to stop and self reflect (for the countries that voted no or abstained).

We can go back and forth about the living and working conditions of various peoples held in bondage through history. I think if we really got down to it we’d find that those subjugated by the transatlantic slave trade had it worse in many ways but I’d like to come back to a few central points.

1. This was a slave trade on a scale never before seen in human history. 15 to 20% died in transport.

2. On arrival, people were completely stripped of their identity and personhood. They could not marry, they could not have families. They could not testify in court. They could be killed with a degree of impunity. They were non human property. This is not how slavery was practiced in Greece Rome or in more modern Islamic empires.

3. The status of being a slave was inherited from one’s parents (also not the norm).

4. The European colonial powers / slave traders developed a global race based caste system to justify all this. You’re right that it started on a religious basis but that doesn’t justify what it morphed into. We have white supremacists engaging in terrorism today because of this heinous ideology that they chose to normalize.

I think Ghana has a point by bringing this UN resolution to a vote and it’s pretty telling that the US, Israel (and Argentina because of Milei) voted no and every European nation abstained while 123 of 178 countries voted yes. That gives us a good sense of what majority of the world thinks and perhaps where the truth lies, though I understand why the West would want to stay in a bubble / safe space when this discussing this matter.

Generous of you to suggest there ever was a peak. Guy’s like this stay steady mid tier or below forever. Their anger is often a manifestation of coming to terms with that. I guarantee you this guy questions whether he’s in over his head with some frequency and it’s exactly his mediocrity that makes him push forward. I don’t sense confidence from this guy at all. He’s clearly been faking it for a long time and will probably continue to do so, hoping the rest of us don’t see the insecurity and incompetence painted on his face every time he opens his mouth.

Seems like an oversimplification to me. This is applicable to any ideology - not just religion.

More broadly that’s the utility of all monotheism. It is extremely effective at uniting people but also teaches them to abide by an authoritarian hierarchical framework.

I agree there are challenges with economic reparations but I do want to point out that the transatlantic slave trade was different from slavery as practiced throughout human history.

It was more cruel than even slavery practiced in ancient Greece and Rome (civilizations which Western nations like to harken back to).

European colonial powers firmly believed in and propagated a global race based caste system. This itself is a crime against humanity but they put into practice the subjugation of people with darker skin, defining them as less human as justification for their enslavement.

Throughout history many civilizations thought other peoples to be inferior or barbaric. But there has not been a global race based caste system based on complexion as colonial era Europeans practiced it.

Entire fields of false science such as phrenology and eugenics sprung from this dogmatic belief in skin tone defining ones worth. The culmination of this vile ‘purity’ ideology was Nazi Germany and even with the end of that movement, we have not seen the end white supremacist ideology.

This is a very unique problem that still has horrific reverberations to this day. I would not be so quick to absolve European colonial powers and their descendant nation states who still benefit from neocolonialism today. Reparations is a complex issue but I think verbal acknowledgment of accountability and an honest teaching of history would be a start in those nations that have been ongoing beneficiaries of these inhumane institutions.

To summarize, I’ll leave you with quotes representative of the worldview of one of the most revered figures in modern colonial/Western history:

​"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

​"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

​"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror."

​"I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them… I believe that as the civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations."

Winston Churchill

Pretty standard for a post colonial / global south nation with limited resources. Especially when the alternative is to go without electricity.

Here’s the rub - the UN charter doesn’t have a seperate set of rules for countries you don’t think are civilized. That’s not how international law works.

We either try to have a rules based international order or we don’t. Without it, we sow the seeds for nuclear proliferation and great power / law of the jungle politics.

Non Western aligned vessels are getting through albeit slowly. Several Asian countries have received deliveries of liquid petroleum gas and China is still getting oil. In fact Iran has said they will let oil tankers through if the oil is purchased in yuan (to undermine the petrodollar).

Reportedly there is a secure channel between the island of Qeshm and Larak that they are using to get these ships through.

You’re right though legitimacy is everything when it comes to how we preceive who lives where. One has to wonder how legitimacy slowly becomes tacit approval for genocide though.

If we zoom out and look at the bigger picture, Israel would not exist as it does today without Britain’s steadfast backing.

The empire’s successor (America) has provided similarly unwavering support.

Throughout most of my lifetime I have watched Western countries (mostly vassals of the US) turn a blind eye to genocide in Gaza.

More recently the double standards have become most apparent with the war in Ukraine. Western nations took the diplomatic approach of wagging their finger at nations maintaining relations with Russia while asking “have you thought what this will do to your credibility?”

All while giving their full throated support to Israel for most of the past 50 years and before that. Any thought to how that affects your credibility?

These are the double standards that slowly rot away the foundations of civilization.

Imperialism bad if it’s being done to me, ok if we are doing it to someone else. Surely we can be more sophisticated than that.

“Some lines” - what a dismissive way to put it. A British child rapist (Louis Mountbatten, great uncle of present day child rapist former prince Andrew) haphazardly drew a border in South Asia which led to the largest forced migration in human history and two million deaths. The idea that lines don’t mean anything speaks to an abysmal state of history education. There are libraries of work commenting on how the lines drawn by colonial powers in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia have contributed to ongoing conflicts in these regions today.

It’s just splendid that world gets to watch a colonial settler project akin to what European colonial powers were doing 200 years ago all because “Great” Britain promises land to a group of people 100 years ago.