Beirut Explosion

From Beirut accident (was it?) to Atomic war to east European massacres to Shaka Zulu the amazing nation builder of Africa in 12 posts.

I love this forum!!

 

The guide at this weekend told us the story of Pip, a stray dog picked up by one of the combatants at Rourkes Drift who barked in the direction of the quiet stealthy impi attacks at night when the defenders could not see - before the roof thatch caught fire.
In their story the dog was s hero and he and owner survived and became stars on the after-dinner speakers circuit in London and Pip was being buried in a human cemetery with his owner!

I only mention this because on the way home we came across a small dog injured in the road. It was a miniature pincher in perfect condition apart from a badly injured leg. No ID.
Of course the missus insists we find a vet and paid for his rehabilitation

He stayed with the vet who advertised to try to find the owner.Four weeks later the missus drives back to Newcastle from Joburg to pick up this expensively rehabilitated dog with a gammy leg.
We called him Pip.



As another aside the brilliant guide and raconteur mentioned in the article above - David Rattray- who owned the Fugatives Drift Lodge where we stayed, was shot dead by a gang of intruders 2 years after we were there.
We couldn’t believe it.

This mindless violence and crime was one reason we left SA.

 

Something else I gleaned from the book was that Henry Hook was a first class soldier
as opposed to the malingerer portrayed in the film. In fact his relatives walked out
of the premier in disgust .

 

I follow a lot of history pages on FB and there've been a few posts about Hiroshima. The thing that is most striking to me, is how Americans in the comments are near universal in their praise for the event. No reflection on needless civilian deaths, 75 years later. Just a universal belief that "it was necessary and saved a million lives."

I think the Cold War has had a profound affect on American national identity which means they are, as a population and a state, utterly incapable of reflecting on their nation's horrendous behaviour over the past 100 years as they have grown from a young, emerging nation into the world's leading superpower.

 

The Halifax incident. A lamentable day for all of humanity:

 

There's a strong, liberal revisionism around white, European colonial history right now, which is, IMO a bit blinded to fact. I read a story recently about a boat load of British, massacred and cannibalised by Maori, because they whipped the prince of the tribe. The comments were largely triumphant at this act of rebellion, by the poor, noble Maoris, which included infanticide.

Frankly, the fact is most conquered nations were themselves, conquerors of others. The modern painting of Native Americans, indigenous Africans etc. as some sort of peace loving, progressive, noble peoples, all in touch with the earth and so forth before Europeans came and invaded, is becoming all pervasive. People are even head cannoning very modern ideas like transgender rights into societies with the flimsiest of pretext.

Of course, colonialism from the British, French, Spanish, Dutch and others, was barbaric. Some of the actions of the conquering nations were reprehensible and deserve absolute condemnation through modern evaluation, but pretending that the European is the world's source of evil over all the lovely, peace loving natives of everywhere else is just fantasy. We were just stronger and more effective in our methods of being barbaric than the Aztecs, the Asanti, the Indians etc.

 

Whilst the atomic bombs did kill somewhere between 130-260k civilians, there were 40-150k civilians killed in the conventional warfare invasion of Okinowa, and based on that experience projections for invasion of the Japanese home islands of c500k allied soldier deaths and 5 - 10 million (!) Japanese deaths.

Purely in terms of deaths the bombs were the least worst solution.

I tend to have little sympathy for Japan, they murdered over 10m during ww2 and committed war crimes every bit as vile as the Nazis.

 

The history of the Zulu kingdom and their rise under Shaka is fascinating stuff.

Way back originally from central Africa, the Bantu peoples migrated south and the Nguni group included the Zulu which was a small insignificant tribe that settled in what is now KwaZulu Natal area north of Durban.

Shaka was illegitimate and ostracised with his mother out of his clan. He wanted revenge, became a good fighter and leader.
He made men run and fight without sandals, introduced the short wide bladed stabbing spear and bigger cowhide shield and introduced strategies and tactics like the ‘buffalo horn’ outflanking manoeuvre in battle.
Ruthless, any tribe who resisted he killed all men and the women and boys were incorporated.

Standing armies and training, men were fighters incorporated into regiments and women did the domestic stuff and worked the fields!
Misogyny at it’s best er, worst.

Their dancing and singing and stick fighting is a sight to behold.

 

There has been much intelligent and respectful debate regarding history here , albeit the o.p.
being de-railed!. I find history fascinating and I am grateful to the other posters for enlightening
me. However
the politics thread just gets reduced to petty name calling and i am equally guilty as anyone
else *hangs head in shame

 

Yes I’ve learnt some interesting history from other posters on this thread.

As for the OP and this thread, Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East and Lebanon is a Christian and Muslim country with local political parties divided along religious and foreign govt support lines with those foreign states using Lebanon in their proxy power plays.

Serious corruption on all sides is rife apparently and as usual the people suffer.
This explosion is apparently just indicative of the inefficiencies of the civil society - as who in their right mind would store a 2.7k tonne unstable bomb for years in your only port and main population centre?

A disaster waiting to happen now bringing more misery to this small country ..

 

https://news.sky.com/video/share-12045049

 

When the Spanish arrived at what is now Peru, the Incas were in the middle of a bloody civil war.

 

And yes the Conquistadors committed atrocities, but it was just because they were more efficient at being brutal than the people they overran

 

Mexico is another history basket case .
In the early 1800s they defeated the Spanish then the country descended into civil
war between republicans/immigrants and centrists culminating in a loss of a huge
amount of land . BTW my namesake surrendered and was executed at the Alamo.


Argentina moaning about the Falklands Islands is just one bunch of colonists complaining
about another . Spanish speaking is the clue.

 

Dont think Las Malvinas were ever theirs either were they?

 

Pfft. That's nothing. It took my lot 10 years to take Troy.

 

That's crazy, you can see how there were so many injured with that amount of shrapnel!

 

Falklands have been called that longer than Argentina has been called Argentina AFAIAA

 

They should have enticed them with pies.

 

In the end, we smuggled ourselves in, inside a giant, hollow pastry shell.

 

History is not what it seems and there’s always the other side not told or deemed not politically correct.

The close relatives of my forebears were taken as slaves and sold off to Africans!

That’s right, the world has forgotten how we poor island peoples (yes white people) in this country were raided by African slavers and sold off to a life of misery in hot foreign lands where we couldn’t speak the language.
Nobody mentions that in the current narrative on slavery do they?

 

To be fair, Aphrodite is 'My Lot' and she was on the side of the Trojans. She bloody caused the whole thing, in fact. I have to say, she deserved it when Diomedes gave her a bit of a thrashing.

 

bollx did the ive seen the film & Brad Pitt managed it in less than 90mins m8

 

Lebanon imports something like 95% of food (just another example of the corruption/incompetence of the various Muslin/Christian/Druze mafias who run the country). It has received aid (fertiliser) from all over the world to kick start its agriculture, unfortunately all the farmers were chased off the land in the various civil wars and infrastructure development/renewal was in urban areas.

 

Agreed.

The pendulum has swung so far in the bias of quoted history on some topics that it’s difficult to argue against the perceived politically correct narrative without being called out as being a bigot/racist/biased/ignorant/out of touch/fascist/capitalist/colonialist/imperialist etc etc.

The Slave trade in Bristol is an interesting example with all the recent publicity.

The perception of many is that Bristol benefitted hugely and was virtually built on the back of profits from the African slave trade.
But ‘English’ heritage white slaves had been traded out of Bristol long (centuries) before African slaves were seen in Bristol.

Also, apparently the Irish exploited we poor English in this trade which was news to me.

An interesting perspective ...

 

He didn't surrender. He was shot and died a hero. I saw it on the TV ....several times.

 

He was, and I quote, "King of the wild frontier"

 

This is because there is a lot of "divide and conquer" going on at the moment.
In fact we couldn't be more divided if we tried.

 

That was Adam Ant surely ?