User talk:Stan Shebs/archive 3
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Various topics
Stan .. please could you take a look at postage stamps / History. I've checked back and found this text was done by Derek Ross on the 4 November 2002. As far as I can see the is based on the out dated notion that Chalmers invented the postage stamp rather than Rowland Hill. I would just like someone else opinion before I take the whole of an existing section and rewrite it. Many thanks -Allan
Stan .. thanks for the comments on my additions to the stamps sections. I really do know what I am talking about but just have problems getting this down in writting. You may want to look at my web site at www.devoted.to/stamps and see if there is anything there which you think should be added in. The section on the VR Official being a major point where I have done a fair amount of research. - -Tallanent
Stan .. everything on my site is free to use. It was set up to share information with people which is what we are doing here. If there is anything you wish to use - please feel free to do so. - - Regards -Allan
I see... But the warning only really says that the page is listed there; it shouldn't be taken to mean "This is a bad page!" If a page has been well and truly fixed to everyone's satisfaction, I don't think there's no need to keep it listed on Vfd, but in such a case the page should actually be removed from Vfd itself at the same time that the Vfd notice is removed. That way the one-to-one correspondence between entries on Vfd and pages with Vfd warnings on them is maintained... - -Oliver P. 00:12, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Hi Stan, thanks for the comment regarding national parks and pictures. I haven't found a solution that I like. putting the pictures in the table makes the table too wide (and I think for landscape pictures, the extra width of the picture is justified), I can't put the picture next to the table because that would make the page too wide, and I haven't been able to figure out how to get the picture above the table. If you want, you can try moving the stuff around and see if you have more success than I did. Also, I have been formatting the table like it is in WikiProject Protected Areas but moving some stuff around in different parks to see how it looks. any comments you have on the tables would be welcome.
Lorax 00:38, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the copy-edit on Amira Hass but you removed useful external links without putting them anywhere else. If you don't like them in the body of the article you should add them to the external links at the end. Don't just delete them. --Zero 14:13, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Hi Stan, please be careful when you move/rename a page that you check and fix redirects. When you moved MHC to Major Histocompatibility Complex (I've since renamed it to Major histocompatibility complex) there were about 10 broken double redirects left dangling, and there was not a single page that linked directly to Major Histocompatibility Complex. I've fixed most of them now. Otherwise, it was a sensible name change. Thanks. --Lexor 02:10, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Hello Stan!! I dying to read some of the information of the book you mentioned! Sounds juicy... I posted something on Fulvia yesterday. Do you know the full name of her second husband? Cheers, Muriel Gottrop 12:20, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC) - with a sunburn from the Namibia sun...
Hi, I liked most of your changes to Fernando J. Corbató, but I thought the mention of the Turing award in the intro was a bit reptitive. If you don't mind, I'll leave that out. Noel 19:01, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- In other words, you would object to the removal of the Turing Award ref in the first para? Frankly, I don't put much weight on Turing awards - too many people who deserve them don't have them, and too many people who haven't done anything that important have them. But I mainly think referring to it detracts from the punch of a nice short first para. Noel 20:15, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- All I meant by my comments about the Turing awards is that some of the people who did get them weren't as worthy as some who didn't - not too surprizing, as the process by which Turing winners get picked is pretty haphazard (as I found out when I looked into it when I was organizing an effort at MIT to get Corby up for one - this was in the early 80's, and I got diverted when I left). So it's not too surprising the results are flaky; there's not even a formal gathering of nominees, the way there is with the Nobels. I don't have any axe to grind with any of the people who did get them.
- Anyway, this is all by-the-by. I have since thought of a way to make us both happy - take a look at the way I've reorganized the article. Noel 02:43, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Glad you liked the reorder - as soon as I thought of it, I felt that it would be just the thing to make us both happy. I will try and find a listing of his important works - I know many (e.g. his CTSS and Multics papers) and can add them now (will do it right now). For thought processes, the Babbage Institute has a long interview with him online - I'll see if I can find the URL for that and include it too. As to "Corby", my office was 3 doors down from him for about 4 years, does that count? :-) Actually, I just added it to pad out the "married to Emily" para, which was so stubby. Noel 03:42, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- OK, I've added a bunch of his most important papers, along with a link to that oral history I mentioned. See what you think. Noel 04:23, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Glad you like it! Thanks for being cool with my rearrangement. Noel 13:56, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Stan, regarding the Batumi overprints just feel free to go ahead and put in the other stamps you have. I put in the four because it looked better, as with one stamp by itself is pretty hard to read (especially the tree and I don't have an unoverprinted one of those); if you have an unoverprinted tree stamp image it would make sense on cutting down the British occupation overprints to one. — Alex756 06:23, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Stan, re: HMS enterprise. I'm done tweaking it, so go right ahead with your refactoring. Frankly, I fear the pages on those WW-I drifters aren't going to be terribly interesting :) -- Finlay McWalter 19:50, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Hi Stan, I noticed you tried to delete Image:Cosmos orgjub-250px.jpg. I don't know if you noticed but you can't actually delete images at the moment. All you've done is delete the image information page, so the image still exists [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/7/76/Cosmos_orgjub-250px.jpg). You might want to keep a note of somewhere so you can delete it when the problem is fixed. You could list in the "images awaiting deletion" at VfD if you want. Angela 23:43, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)
![[1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/7/76/Cosmos_orgjub-250px.jpg){kind=link}
Dear Stan, i dont think i agree with the "linking" of the laws. What kind of article do you expect to create? A stub? Unless, of course, you have more informations. Some, like the leges Voconiae for the inheritances, i agree, because we can discuss implications. But lex agraria? It is only a definition! Cheers and keep me posted on your doings... Muriel Gottrop 08:24, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Ok, you got me! I'm not really in the mood for unlinking everything :) What about the gossips in the Livy?... Muriel Gottrop
Stan, I noticed that you are interested in postage stamps. I have scanned some Albanian stamps (since the 1940s probably) that I can upload if you are interested. The problem is that they are rather large (I scanned them in bunches). If you know any other Wikipedians that might be interested let me (or them) know. Dori 00:02, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
- I'm going to list them here: User:Dori/Stamps. I've uploaded 10 already. Dori 05:54, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
- I also have some stamps from other countries (mainly from the 1950s and 1960s), so if you need one for a specific country let me know and I'll have a look. By the way, do you know if postage stamps are copyrighteable? I asked on the copyrights page, but no responses so far. I thought they were public domain, but at the worst they probably are under fair use. Dori 03:59, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)
Dear Stan, I have a suggestion: we can create Valerius and say... Valerius is a gens... and so on. Because if i were looking for one of the Valerii, i would Google Valerius. Then gens Valerius and Valerii can be redirects. Are you planning to write a history/biographies of them all? Dont forget the Valeria Messala, Sulla's wife! See you... Muriel Gottrop
Stan, I share your concerns with some of the edits made by User:TakuyaMurata regarding edits of programming topics. He is a fine contributor, but his apparent lack of experience in programming is causing the WP to reflect his limited view of the topic in a number of areas rather than the consensus at large. I have made a long note to this effect on his talk page. If you need some backup on this, please call on me, I think with a few of us guiding him gently away from his over-confident edits, we can fix things up without it degenerating into a war. GRAHAMUK 23:32, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Over at VfD User:Mintguy mentioned that you had grown frustrated by some controversial edits to some computing articles. In response, there's now a new Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing and Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing/Controversial articles to help form consensus on computing topics. Please consider watching the talk pages there and using them to let others know of issues you believe merit peer review. JamesDay 15:48, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Stan,
After the brief appearance of Pragmatic Sanction today on the newly-created list followed by deletion, I decided to finally have a go at it. It would be nice if you could have a look to see what errors still exist in it (factual and grammatical as well as wiki-linkage). (You might also want to have a look at Talk:Judith of Swabia to make sure I haven't made any mistakes there: I'd like to know more about what (seems to be?) her first marriage. -- Someone else 08:02, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Thanks for taking a look, I'm relieved that you didn't find anything glaringly wrong<G>! -- Someone else 00:57, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just saw how if the List of Romans looking. I think you deserve a medal for it! Muriel Gottrop 10:04, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Yes, its just typing, but a lot of it! Romans or not, i dont think i would have the courage of linking all those names! Now, another question: i'm about to post the Munda and Thapsus battles. According to the battles template, we are supposed to give a conflict. I'm tempted to write Caesar's civil war but this doesnt sound right. Other suggestion? Muriel
- Humm... the triumvirate was history by then. What do you think about Last Republican civil war? But maybe it looks a bit americanish... Muriel
Hi Stan, I saw your note over at Talk:Columbia River about a River WikiStandard. Please drop me a note when it gets started -- if for no other reason, I'd like to know what the consensus for presenting the information turns out to be. Thanks! -- llywrch 22:35, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- Thanks for note, I've added a few suggestions myself. And hopefully someone cares enough to respond . . . -- llywrch 00:39, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
(River disambig discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers)
Thanks: the first two paragraphs of Poetry make more sense in the order you put them in. Bmills 14:57, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
A Nice Start
Nice job on the start of the dungeon article. I had been meaning to do it myself for a while, but your version is much better than anything I would've come up with! :^) —Frecklefoot 18:05, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
archiving discussions
Hi, just tried to archive Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context since >32kb, and somehow you ended up replying to the archive rather than the new page (I kept the last discussion on it); I copied it over. Alas, the archive page now shows up in the Watchlist too. Problem is, if you don't use Move, you don't move the Page History as well. Not sure the correct procedure for archiving discussions. Anway, sorry for the confusion. -- Viajero 20:20, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Richard Neustadt
Hi, Richard Neustadt has been unprotected, so feel free to make the article more readable and hopefully stop that edit war for good. -- Minesweeper
Main page
Ooops. Thanks for correcting the main page. I shouldn't touch it when I'm tired. Angela
archiving Talk pages
Hi Stan, I created a new help page, perhaps you could take a look: Wikipedia:How to archive a Talk page. Thanks. -- Viajero 16:43, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I agree with you at Richard Neustadt. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Hi Stan, you might want to take a look at Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version where a new guideline proposes not reverting more than three times in a day. I've protected Richard Neustadt for now. Angela 17:31, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hi Stan, I have a question that I would like to discuss off Wikipedia, but I am afraid I can't email you. Would mind dropping me a mail via my user page? Thanks, Kosebamse 23:19, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Stan, I very much appreciate your input on my user page concerning the question of putting file size in the file name. The guy who raised the question is just a little belligerent (look how his questions were worded) so I really appreciate your support. BTW I suppose you know that finding the file size of an article pic is as trivial as right-clicking the pic and selecting properties (in Windows XP, at least).
Best Wishes,Adrian Pingstone 15:33, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If nobody emails Jimbo, he doesnt really know about a problem. Lirath Q. Pynnor
yah, but if he isn't pinged regularly -- he doesn't realize that more than one person has an issue. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Hi Stan, a new user has rewritten List of Roman Emperors -- only to harm that article, I fear. I reverted his changes. Please compare the differences & express your opinion in the Talk forum. -- llywrch 03:57, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Yeah, I see. I was giving the article a once-over, and thought that changing the date format to mm-dd-yyyy might help, but if you do not agree, you may change them back. ugen64 03:54, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)
Hi, about United States Constitution —the only reason I removed the "brilliant young lawyer" phrase was because it seemed like part of a larger pro-framers bias. The best example might be the sentence that went "They represented a wide range of interests, backgrounds, and stations in life", without even a reference to the criticism that they were all wealthy white landowners. Since there was such a pattern of bias towards the Founding Fathers, and no effort to present possible criticisms, I tended to err on the side of NPOV. Meelar 03:44, Dec 7, 2003
OK, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the help. Meelar 12:55, Dec 7, 2003
Just made an update to United States Constitution. Hope that this one turns out better. Thanks again. Meelar 14:12, Dec 7, 2003
Why'd you move Aelius Verus? Maximus Rex 20:11, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Didn't realize you were going to post a reason on the talk page. From searching Google it seems that "Lucius Aelius" is ambiguous [2] (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Lucius+Aelius%22), or at least the first few hits don't refer to the Aelius that the page is about. My experience (limited) is that he is usually refered to as "Aelius", however this would of course be more ambigous. Perhaps Aelius (Caesar), or is this to far from naming conventions? Maximus Rex 20:24, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Re: Acronym finder
I suppose your right. I won't add any more AF links to wikipedia. Noldoaran (Talk) 01:23, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)
location of reply
Hi Stan, the discussion was moved from Conflicts page to User talk:Viajero/Leumi and I replied just now to you there. Cheers, -- Viajero 13:46, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Sorry for the delay in acknowledging your last reply. At this point, I think it would be best for the two of us to agree to disagree on Chomsky, anti-americanism, state terror, military solutions to political problems and probably other things as well. All the best, -- Viajero 13:45, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Thankyou
Stan, I'd just like to thankyou for responding to Viajero's attacks against me earlier. I wasn't able to do so yesterday, as I had a fever and couldn't get to the computer. I'm glad that someone spoke up while I was gone. Also, since User:Viajero/Leumi shows only quotes representing one side (with the exception of my responses), do you know if it's within the rules to add some of the ones you and others wrote? I know it's technically a user page but since it's not an actual User page but more of a side article...Just wondering what you thought. Thanks again for your help. Leumi 17:08, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hi, just thought I'd give you a heads-up. I noticed that some of your interests were military in nature. The other day I noticed that counter-terrorism was a wreck. I'll admit I don't know enough about it to write a decent article, so I thought you might, or at least might know someone who could. It seems like it would be a fairly good subject. Thanks. Meelar 10:11, Dec 12, 2003
Hi Stan, i visited the article of Characters on Chilean stamp. By Jose Carrera you mean Jose Miguel Carrera? Pls check it.
I'm collecting data (precise date) to do a bio. (See Federico Santa María) Baloo rch 18:21, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Sorry - have tried to fix your CIA edits.Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair! 14:13, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Stan, somehow the page for CV-31 USS Bon Homme Richard has got somewhat screwed up. I accidentally put the table on to the page in such a way as to incorporate all of the text from the page in the bottom part of the cell. I've fixed that, but for some reason, the table is now below the text, rather than above it as in other equivalent aircraft carrier pages. The text also doesn't have proper paragraphs, despite being split into such on the editing page.
Help!!
David Newton 04:54, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Please disregard, I accidentally forgot to put in the closing tag for the the table. David Newton 04:58, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Re: Lots of new carrier text
At the moment, I'm not engaged in wikifying the text. I've done it for the Essex class ships that were imported from DANFS, but not the Midway class or the CVLs. At the moment, I'm putting in lots of redirects so that the various hull codes of the carriers all lead to the same article. David Newton 07:04, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I've now wikified the new carrier entries to some extent. However, they probably need a bit more work. David Newton 19:38, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Stan,
José Miguel Carrera is ready to read!. Grammar and typo corrections (and other collaborations) are wellcome!!
Baloo rch 20:31, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hello Stan,
an encyclopedia's task is to report facts, not to rate them. Labeling something "ironically" is a rating in my eyes, and I would let the reader rate this himself. If the irony is not obvious to him, there probably isn't any. Having to hint the reader towards irony is not necessarily good prose in my eyes. -- JeLuF 21:11, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)
- Yes Stan, indeed, if I find an article that says X is the best athlete or similar, I change it. Even if many authorities agree, I never found a situation where there was not at least one who disagreed. Calling someone the best or greatest is not NPOV. -- JeLuF 22:26, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)
- "ironically" and "greatest" differ in one point. If you take a look at Shakespeare, you'll read is considered by many to have been the greatest writer the English language has ever known, which is something else than is the greatest writer. Every instance of ironically I deleted was of the later form. I don't see irony in leaving a company and joining it again later. This is something I see quite frequently. Irony might exist if the person left the company in anger. -- JeLuF 11:58, Dec 21, 2003 (UTC)
Stan--
I can't get excited about capitals either, in fact I rather we didn't, it makes the text seem to shout at you (and I'm chiefly a bird person). But that particular knot of species seemed to have mostly got them, so I standardised. I'm not really a fish expert, just tidying up some issues that impinge on areas I do know about, and then it spreads.... -- seglea 00:08, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Topsail
from VfD Well, thank you very much. Now I'll have to start from scratch on this; as the most important sails on a square-rigged ship, there is quite a lot to say about them, but being sucked into futile attempts to reason with 172, I don't ever get time to work on actual article writing. Stan 08:54, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Stan, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to annoy you by listing topsail on VfD. I really had no idea it was expandable beyond a simple dictionary definiton. I didn't think there was a lot to be about a sail, but then I know nothing about the topic. However, I'm well aware that you do, so I'm trusting your judgement and un-nominating this from VfD. Good luck with it if you can escape 172 for a while. Actually, it would probably be good for you do that anyway. I worry about people getting burnt out when they get into those sorts of disputes. Angela. 11:30, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Stan, did you get my mail? --Robert Merkel 12:19, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)
In response to your latest comments on the Mugabe page:
Your comments demonstrate a naïve optimism. Your idyllic fantasy has no basis in reality. From time to time, violence is necessary for human progress. One must not only consider the costs of change, but the costs of maintaining the status quo. Human progress ? invariably and inevitably ? has always required a degree of human suffering. This continues to be the case (and the present era is not some "end of history" in which reality has suddenly disappeared). One must be wary of your brand of simplistic idealism (and personalized history) seeing history as static and all contexts as one in the same. Peace, stability, and prosperity are not a mere matter of "getting the policies right" or having nice men in charge. A market-oriented reforms plus elections do not always guarantee democratic sustainability and quality in the long-run. One has to ask who is bearing which burdens in any transition.
By virtue of your comments, you don't seem to have any grasp of conflicts over landownership in agrarian societies. Perhaps you have fallen victim to the popular (sanitized) Anglo-American historical accounts, which emphasize some sort of Anglo-Saxon genesis for cooperation and compromise (whatever that is), and peaceful processes of democratic institution building stretching back to the Magna Carta. Contrary to the sheer rubbish and fairy tales common in popular histories, the costs of modern achievements are immense. Violence and coercion helped produced these results everywhere. Just because they took place over a longer span of time in some places than others must not blind us to the fact that, all and all, the greater amount of violence has been exercised by the upper classes against the lower. The establishment of modern democratic institutions has depended on the elimination of the "peasant problem." That is, democratic progress has always been predicated on enormous suffering in such processes such as the Enclosure Acts and the Highland Clearances.
You also have to consider, at times, the costs of going without a revolution. France certainly would not have become a stable democracy if violence had not weakened the social bases of reactionary forces. Considering 1848 is very suggestive, although I could endlessly go through other examples. Yes, far more blood was shed on the streets of Paris than those of Berlin. On March 15, 1848, the subjects of King Wilhelm IV thus vented their long-repressed political aspirations in violent rioting in Berlin as barricades were erected all over the French capital to contain urban combat between Parisians and the army. As France's Louis Philippe fled to England, the Prussian king ? cowed and coerced ? capitulated to revolutionary demands, promising a constitution, a parliament, and support for German unification. But from the point of view of Wilhelm IV, at least his regime was standing. In France, where the conservative aristocracy was soundly pushed aside by the Revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848, the new Second Republic erupted into civil war between rival revolutionary groups ? the bourgeois moderates who favored order and constitutional democracy and the socialists, supported by mobs the Parisian working class. In Paris unemployed workers, with the cry of "bread or lead", hoisted the red flag ? the first time that the red flag emerged as a symbol of the proletariat - and erected barricades to overthrow the Second Republic. Not since the Reign of Terror had Paris seen fighting on this scale, later crushed by savage repression that left a bitter hatred between the French working class and bourgeois elements. In contrast to France, in Germany, the political and economic links were there for an agreement between the landed aristocracy and industrial capitalists. The Junkers managed to draw the independent peasants under their wind and to form an alliance with sections of big industry that were happy to receive their assistance in order to keep the industrial workers in their place with a combination of repression and paternalism. Ultimately, this peculiar path would establish the political culture and the socio-economic structures in which Nazism was able to emerge as a response to depression, disorder, and unfulfilled nationalistic aspirations. Perhaps if revolutionary forces had destroyed more of the old order in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan, fascism would have been avoidable in the 1930s.
When the United States was hit hard by the Great Depression, we elected FDR. Germany, on the other hand, gets Hitler. Leading up to the Civil War, the US bourgeoisie, not threatened by the revolutionary sentiments of the urban proletariat and uprising peasantry, lacked the incentives to unite with agrarian elites as in Germany or Italy. Instead, the connection between Northern capitalism and Western farming finally helped to make unnecessary for a time the coalition between urban and landed elites and hence the one compromise that could have avoided the war. In this sense, we get a much darker view of the rise of liberal democratic system in England, France, and the United States. In the United States, a victory for non-violence and compromise would have been a victory for injustice and reaction. In other words, compromise, moderation, good-sense, and non-violence would have required appeasement of slave power. Under close examination, not political system turns out to be too savory historically after all. Progress comes at a high price.
Back to the land issue, taking a longer historical view, and asking under what conditions land problems had been repressed or restored in the past is suggestive of the causes of peasant insurrections. Let's start with Europe.
Certain forms of 'modernization' are especially likely to upset any form of equilibrium that may establish itself in the relationship between peasant community and the landed upper class and to put new strains on the mechanisms linking them together. We can arbitrarily start the story after the Treaty of Westphalia, where the royal authority has increased and intensified the burden on the peasantry in order to meet the costs of expanding military establishment and administrative bureaucracy, as well as an expensive policy of courtly magnificence, the growth of royal absolutism may contribute to heavy peasant explosions. The Bourbon kings and Russian tsars each in their very different ways used this combination of devices to tame their respective nobilities at the cost of substantial suffering among the peasants.
After the late eighteenth century, with the breakdown of mercantilism and royal-absolutism in Europe, the spread of market-oriented capitalist relations (and the ensuing shift from labor-intensive toward capital-intensive production, and spread of industrialization and urbanization) propelled the rise of an integrated economic and political structure. The days of wrath were coming for a series of agrarian, pre-capitalistic, "backward" societies throughout the world, from the Italian and American South to India. One must even place the Civil War in the context of the general abolition of un-free labor systems in the nineteenth century, from slavery in the western hemisphere, to serfdom in Russia and robot in the Austrian empire. But it does not point to the inevitable success of a president with anti-slavery leanings in 1860. However, this was not necessarily the case everywhere.
Where the peasants have revolted, there are indications that new and capitalist methods of pumping the economic surplus out of the peasantry had been added while the traditional ones lingered on or were even intensified. In any event, one of the greatest dangers for an ancien regime during the earlier phases of transition to the world of commerce and industry is to lose the support of the upper crust of the peasantry.
Important links that had once been effective agents for social stability were breaking down. This is not simply a matter of how much land is available. Social institutions are just as important as the amount of land in determining whether or not peasants are forced to revolt. To explain behavior solely in terms of culture and values, in contrast, is circular reasoning. Cultural values do not descend from heaven (or from software engineers named Stan who like Gandhi) to influence the course of history in general and Zimbabweans in particular. They are based on the observations of certain similarities in the way groups of people behave.
Cultural and social continuities do not require explanation. Both have to be recreated anew in each generation with great pain and suffering. To maintain and transmit a value system, so enter violence from time to time. As a rule of thumb, political stability always required the inclusion of the overlord (historically the priest in Europe) as members of the village community who perform services necessary for the agricultural cycle and the social cohesion of the village for which they receive roughly proportionate privileges and material rewards. Either directly or indirectly the immediate overlord played a vital part in the life of the village. In feudal societies he was the seigneur; in bureaucratic China he was the landlord dependent on the Imperial bureaucracy; in parts of India the zamindar, a figure roughly halfway between the bureaucratic official and the feudal seigneur. The general task of the secular overlord was to provide security against the external enemies. His task has been to help give legitimacy to the prevailing social order and to provide a way of both explaining and coping with those misfortunes and disasters for which the individual peasant's traditional economic and social techniques were inadequate. In return for the performance of these functions, the overlord with the priest extracted an economic surplus from the peasants in the form of labor, agriculture products, or even money.
There is conclusive historical evidence to suggest that where the links arising out of this relationship between overlord and peasants community are strong, the tendency toward peasant rebellion (and later revolution) is feeble. Extending this analogy to an agro-capitalist plantation economy (an African latifundia economy, of sorts), one has to note that there are really no positive links, only negative ones. Consider, of course, the colonial history and the legacy of white racism.
In both China and Russia, for example, the links were tenuous and peasant upheavals endemic to these states, even though the structure of the peasant communities themselves were about as different as could be imagined. In Japan, where the peasant revolution was kept under control, the linkage was very effective. There are some puzzles and contradictions in the evidence. In India, strictly political power did not reach into the village except in certain areas in pre-British times. But there was a strong linkage to authority through the priesthood.
In contrast, an overlord who does not keep the peace, who takes away most of the peasants' food, rapes and plunders ? as happened over wide areas of China in the nineteenth and twentieth century ? is clearly exploitative. In between this situation and objective justice are all sorts of gradations where the ratio between services rendered and all the surplus taken from the peasants is open to dispute. The peasant wars that brought China into the modern era, for example, had a rational and realistic basis. The arrangements of the old order were breaking down after 2,500 years. The more that departed from this basis, the more deception and force was needed to keep the old order alive until China the proclamation of the People's Republic in 1949.
On an abstract level, we seen the notion of rewards and privileges commensurate with the services rendered by the upper class. The point at issue is whether or not one can make an objective assessment of the contributions of qualitatively different activities, such as fighting and tilling the soil, to the continued existence of a specific society. Thus, we must understand what makes the exchange seem equitable. Now, we are ready to look at Zimbabwe.
This issue did not start with Mugabe. It started at the end of the 19th century when British colonialists seized the land from the indigenous population divided it up among themselves. Since then, black Zimbabweans, on what they see as their ancestral lands, have been employed as low-paid laborers on the farms.
In 1980, after a 17-year guerilla struggle (known as the Second Chimurenga - the first was the heroic resistance Cecil Rhodes' thugs 110 years ago) for land and its fair redistribution pitting black liberation movements and the 250,000 white Rhodesians, multiracial elections finally came. Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party won the independence elections by a wide margin. It has been noted that upon his election he extended a hand of reconciliation to the small number of whites remaining in the country. Regardless of popular claims to the contrary today, Mugabe's policy of national reconciliation articulated in 1980 was principled and genuine, rather than a position of weakness or opportunism. Nor was not a demonstration of a lack of political will. His government considered the land reform process a collective responsibility. The so-called "Lancaster House Constitution" was drawn up by the various armies and political parties that fought this, and the British government. Mugabe was pressured by neighboring pro-Western regimes to sign, and land, as one would expect, was the contentious, salient issue. To counter Soviet and Communist influence, however, the US and British governments offered to buy land from willing white settlers who could not black majority rule (preferring instead to flee to and apartheid South Africa, Britain, or Australia) and a fund was established. Some land was purchased by the land fund, originally estimated at $2 billion USD, but few peasants were resettled.
The official land policy was thus anchored to the so-called "willing buyer-willing seller" concept. Within this framework, the government buys a number of hectares of farmland to resettle a certain number of indigenous farmers. By and large, however, the remaining whites and the ignored the emerging black-majority political process while retaining control of the economy.
For two decades, Mugabe tried the peaceful path (i.e. the path of post-aparthied South Africa), but it was not a workable one. Peaceful solutions often inhibit social progress because they are contingent on the preservation of existing social relations. And this was the story in Zimbabwe from independence in 1980 until popular frustrations over the land issue could no longer be contained. In his private and political discussions, Mugabe now says that the hand of friendship was ignored. However, the privileged classes of the colonial rule were, to say the least, reluctant to their land to the state on the basis of the program. However, it was not a simple reluctance of targeted white landowners to sell some of their excessive land per se.
"Willing buyer, willing seller" just encouraged those who possess excessive land to increase their prices, rendering it difficult for the government to purchase land for resettlement of landless citizens. As anyone with an elementary grasp of market economics would grasp, the whites suddenly hiked their prices as a bloc. Dealing with the problem of soaring public debt typical of developing countries, it was simply too expensive for the state to redistribute commercial lands.
More disturbingly, some white landowners harbored hopes of becoming "instant millionaires" through the scheme. Since "willing buyer, willing seller" is essentially a "free market" program, the white land owners argued that this rendered it difficult to sell their land at a reasonable price. Right now, this is their rationale in Namibia, which is committed to this smokescreen of a program. BTW, just wait: invasions of white-owned farms will be going on in Namibia pretty soon, whether the government there wants it or now. Even South Africa and Bostwana will be next too. Anyhow, most of the fertile land in the country was left in the hands of whites. As such the government cannot acquire land when and where it wants it.
By the early '90s, only a mere 70,000 peasants had been resettled. Most of whom lacked the infrastructure to work the plots that were allocated to them. Worsening matters, with world Communism on the wane, the British and Americans governments cut their losses, alleging "corruption" (undoubtedly, a large share of abandoned and expropriated white farms did end up in the hands of the rising indigenous elites, especially wealthy businessmen and government officials). Moreover, the Zimbabwe government in '92 was forced into an IMF-backed structural adjustment program (SAP) and fiscal austerity regime that drastically cut the government's budgets, leaving little to funds devoted to compensate "willing sellers." The feeble program was dead by this point.
The government's policy of purchasing white-owned farms was moving too slowly in correcting unequal patterns of landownership. Meanwhile, unemployment had risen to 35%, and was even higher among the young. It was becoming harder and harder for the government to urge landless people to be patient, especially considering that the redistribution scheme had no realistic prospects of success whatsoever. Keep in mind that land is a matter of life and death for many.
Two decades from independence, Zimbabwe's economy (like almost all in Sub-Saharan Africa) was facing sharp decline. HIV-AIDS was a crisis in its own right. A third to half of the workforce was unemployed, the government was under the stranglehold of an IMF austerity regime and under the bondage of exorbitant levels of interest on its public debt, and popular frustrations were increasingly hard to contain. "Willing buyer, willing seller" failed. Nor could Zimbabwe rely on outside aid. Nor would this issue just disappear. By the late '90s the government finally reached the day of reckoning. It had to confront the problem of how to really redistribute the land once and for all. Violence, by this point, was inevitable. Either the regime was going to collapse, leave a power vacuum, and set the stage for a civil war. Or Mugabe had to reign in his own base of support and decimate the militant war veterans. Or Mugabe had to stand up to the international community, take on the privileged elites who dominated his country for over a century, and settle the land issue once and for all. This wasn't time for making salt on the beach for Mugabe.
Increasingly, cries for the government expropriation of land without payment were becoming louder and louder. Anything can happen when the landless continue to be frustrated. Historically, it is a veritable time-bomb. As countless times before in history, it led to a situation where the frustration and anger of the people boiled over. Violence was unleashed in Zimbabwe under the banner of a demand for land.
Land-hungry Zimbabweans, in turn, see hiking land prices due to rising government demand this as utterly immoral and parasitic. Claims to ancestral land are the cornerstone of the campaign for the restoration of land to indigenous communities in Zimbabwe. Nothing stirs up the political mood of the farmers and other rural citizens more than the land issue. To the land-hungry Zimbabweans, this is a stark moral conflict based on the demand for the restoration of ancestral land rights (traditionally considered inalienable in their culture). To them, the racist caste privileged under the old regime is to blame. To them, it was a conflict that arose as a result of the designs of white greed, racism, and imperialism.
Violence, near-breakdown, or regime collapse is common under conditions of extreme and growing inequality. Outside Africa, recent events in Bolivia are suggestive. Rejecting a government plan to export gas to the US, protests by peasant and indigenous groups (especially coca leaf farmers who oppose the eradication of their crops in the US-backed anti-drug campaign, forced neoliberal President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to resign. Some 80 people died in clashes during the one-month standoff. Moreover, the current Peruvian regime is just as unpopular. One need only think of the bloody Central American conflicts of the 1980s, the urban riots in Argentina in 1993, the Chiapas uprising in Mexico in 1994, Fujimori's personalistic rule in Peru, the elections of former coup leaders or dictators in Venezuela and Bolivia, the assassination of political leaders in Paraguay, growing warfare in Colombia in 1999, and the extraordinary rise in daily violence throughout the Americas. Do you personalize these conflicts as well? 172 15:43, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I have taken in your concern and did research on Fouquieria splendens myself and have replaced the article refrence to the American Southwest with which states it is found in and specifically what part of Texas it is found in. F. splendens is not found in Oklahoma which is grouped in the southwest, but is found in California. Now that I think about Califoria probably needs specificity I gave to Texas as well. I'll change that as soon as I finish this post. I hope this meets with your approval, please tell me if it does not. They are native to Mexico and the bordering US states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and parts of southwestern Texas, favoring low arid hillsides. JCarriker December, 23, 2003
Hi
Hi! Thanks for adding Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum to List of museums! Peace Profound. Optim 23:44, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the excellent contribution to Operation Claret Paul, in Saudi