Does that answer your question, cupcake?

Yes, if the question was “are there people who still believe the fairytale that due to their high-precision mass-manufacturing industrial base in the 19th century, the manifest destiny and natural right of the colonial powers was to hang on to Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands and South America forever?”

Which, as history tells us, is exactly what happened next.

Yours truly,

Sugar Plum-Fizzlebritches III.

Self-rule isn’t a leftist position, it’s the default position for all countries. You seem to have the bizarre notion that being ruled by others is, for Africa, the natural way to go. The colonial mindset is mighty ingrained.

The “cupcake” bullshit isn’t at all helpful, BTW.

Well if that were the case, Mercurius, then I reckon you’d be forced to abandon leftist positions wholesale. Somehow I don’t see that coming, so I reckon there are other forces remaining at play (not to your credit).

“…what do you suggest….?”

You know, after the battle of Little Big Horn, in which the US Army was decisively routed by the Lakota Sioux, somebody asked a victorious Lakota warrior how long the battle had lasted.

He famously replied, “about as long as it takes for a hungry man to eat his dinner.”

How poetic. But if you had asked the same question of a defeated US Army soldier, he would have answered, “Well let me look at my high-precision mass-manufactured time-measuring device and I’ll tell you.”. And in that moment you could tell who would win the battle, and who would win the war.

Does that answer your question, cupcake?

The economic consequence of the Black Death (or at least a temporal correlation) was a period of stagnant economies as well (lasting at least a century), so I’m not sure why he’s wishing that on Africa and other countries dealing with an HIV/AIDS crisis.

Robert suggested that this whole episode is a “tragic example of what happens when politicians ignore scientific advice they don’t like”. That, to me, seems like a worthwhile point and one we could usefully apply here in Australia and elsewhere in all sorts of areas including resource management, medicine and, heck, just about anything.

But what does Razor do? Ignores the potential lesson and asserts a lot of pious nostrums about self rule and leftists. What’s Razor getting at here? That a colonial right government which ignored the medical advice about AIDS would somehow magically *avoid* having hundreds of thousands of AIDS babies?

JPZ, what do *you* suggest is a logical, reasoned response to such mindless twaddle?

Personally, I think a loud raspberry accompanied by flatulent flapping of right hand under left armpit would be a response roughly on par with the level of grown-upedness that Razor’s remark suggests. In that light, my response was a paragon of forbearance.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it’s beneath contempt to use dead AIDS babies to push a political barrow?

So, like I said, man up Razor and go tell those Africans what’s good for ‘em: a nice bit of colonial oversight is just what they need, eh, what?

Ocka, pleez.