Friday, July 27, 2012
Must not joke about Africans
GREEK triple jumper Voula Papachristou has been kicked out of the Olympics for a racist tweet about Africans.
The 23-year-old Papachristou had written that "with so many Africans in Greece, at least the mosquitoes of West Nile will eat homemade food".
Although she subsequently deleted the message after a huge public backlash, the Hellenic Olympic Committee decided to drop her from the squad for London.
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21 comments:
I think she meant to say "With so many Africans in Greece, at least the mosquitoes of West Nile will get some home cooking". At any rate, clearly not racist or offensive - maybe even a little clever.
What IS thoroughly disgusting is the reaction of the Greek officials. How dare they kick her off the team even after she was forced to apologize for nothing. I'd love to say what I'm thinking, but I don't want the FBI knocking on my door, and as far as I know they still can't read thoughts.
The real reason she was booted is that she also made comments that appeared to be in support of a right wing political party and that will not fly in leftist greece.
MDH
No free speech in the new European Soviet Union
Fear not Voula, there are hundreds-of-millions of people around the world who agree with you. You don't need Greese. In fact, and quite obviously, nobody does.
Sounds like a political speech hit rather than some fabricated outrage over phantom racism.
Utterly sad that she has been stripped of a lifetime opportunity over such total crap.
again, liberals more concerned with words than actions. how sad. Europe is in sad shape.
Africans can be white so this isn't a racist statement. Africa isn't even a country.
I don't hear any africans making any of these dumb comments. Its sounds to me as if she doesn't want africans in Greece
2:27 so what if she doesn't? that's her opinion, deal with it.
2:27 uhhh, what is an African and how would you know if they made a comment or not?
It's becoming more clear with each passing day that we made a huge mistake in not allowing Hitler to keep Europe. What better way to get back at him.
3:45 PM is so indoctrinated with American chauvinism that he/she seems to believe that it was up to the USA to allow or not allow Hitler to keep "Europe", as though he had it already. The Soviets would not have let him have their part, nor would the Brits, with or without any help from the US. And of course Hitler was already developing his rockets to fire at New York without the Americans having any to send back. The Germans were also working on atomic weapons and the US ones were only as a result of EUROPEAN scientists, and the subsequent NASA rockets resulted from capturing German scientists. Of course as Hitler had declared war on the US, the US was forced to join the other mostly British Empire forces to defeat him, but could also capitalize on taking the place of the bankrupted European empires and become a super-power. In other words Hitler allowed the US to become what it is today!
Anon 3;18, if not for the US, all you British (and European) pansys would be speaking German today, something i see as a huge improvement. As it turns out, Europe was not worth the cost and effort.
3:18 moron, the Soviets are what allowed Hitler to do what he did, they sided with Hitler to begin with.
Oh, come on, folks... if the question of skin colour didn't enter into it, this would have been funny as hell... let's say the mosquitoes were native to Brixton, as opposed to North Africa... Do you seriously think the results would be the same?
You can't talk about blacks, joke about blacks, or associate with blacks. Sooner or later something you might consider as innocent will be used to brand you as a racist. Unfortunately this means you have to take the racist step of distancing yourself from associated in any manner from those of dark skin color. Just don't say anything about it when you do it. It's self preservation of your reputation and in some instances your physical well being. Gotta love this post racial world we live in, eh?
4:33 AM - you clearly didn't read the post properly. Hitler's activities in the end allowed the US to become a superpower.
Unlike the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe, the UK had defeated the Luftwaffe in 1940 and had given itself plenty of time to set up an elaborate plan to undermine any attempted invasion, which in any case was impossible without German air or sea supremacy, but on land any attempted occupation would be undermined by carefully pre-arranged sabotage, assuming the Nazis even had enough resources to occupy and subdue the whole UK for any significant time before it became unsustainable, especially if the Soviets were at their back and British Empire forces were at another back.
In short, Americans are too full of themselves, and their current "empire" is on the brink of collapse like so many empires before it!
the UK had defeated the Luftwaffe in 1940 and had given itself plenty of time to set up an elaborate plan to undermine any attempted invasion
According to the histories I've read, it was a very, very near thing. Apparently the British were within days of collapse, in large part due to the V1's and V2's, when Hitler backed off to invade Russia.
Without American shipping, England would have fallen much sooner due to a lack of food and other supplies. But we were happy to do that for our friends even before joining the fighting.
Note, this is not a slam against England. Their steely resolve, courage and genuine creativity also played a huge role in fighting off Hitler. (Yes, the Battle of Britain was a British success.) But being a island nation, resources were simply a practical issue.
By themselves, I think England would have been forced to surrender. Taking back the rest of Europe would have been a pipe dream.
On the other hand, without England, America would not have been able to prosecute a successful war against Hitler, either. Bombing campaigns would have been impossible, let alone staging the kind of large scale invasion necessary to win the war.
There were only two reasons why Hitler was defeated.
1) Hitler was an idiot. He split his forces instead of finishing England off. He tried to invade Russia, which he really didn't have the strength to do. And he frittered away his technical superiority with irrational demands. (For example, their jet fighter would have entered the war about 2 years earlier if he hadn't demanded that they be able to carry bombs.)
2) The team effort of America and England (and yes, Russia, for what that was worth).
I see no reason to denigrate Britain over their place in WWII. They were in a tough spot. The Nazis really were a powerful enemy. The British were far more resilient than could be asked of anyone. But yes, they did need America's help. I don't think there's any shame in that.
it was not racist.
Luke you are mostly right re WWII if not religion :). The V rockets were indeed a serious threat, although the Germans never got supremacy over the RAF and Royal Navy to even launch a successful invasion but they could maybe have starved Britain, depending on how much support there was from the British Empire and others (if the US declined to help sufficiently). Even with a successful ivasion there were many elaborate plans to make it unsustainable for the Germans, and the Brits at that time would have gladly done everything to frustrate the occupiers as they had nothing much to lose by then, but had a huge population to do it with, despite a few who would be traitors or seek personal power as collaborators. Evidently there were plans to make Canada a base for a UK government in exile, until Germany and the USSR destroyed themselves in a war of attrition. And by then the US was forced to face Hitler without the UK as a base, as you mentioned.
There's the other possible outcome, that if Britain faced inevitable defeat (and despite Churchill saying Britain would never surrender), it could have sought terms to avoid actual occupation, as that would have been costly and difficult for the Germans who would have been glad just to have Britain out of the war. That would have been bad for the US who would have been forced into the war by then, and not only couldn't use the British Isles as a launching pad to attack German occupied Europe but the Germans would have some at least of the Royal Navy and other British military resources to add to their own.
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