"Big Daddy" Idi Amin

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Sid Guttridge
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Re: "Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#3

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Nov 2019, 12:53

Hi Globalization,

......and your point is?

Sid.

Globalization41
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The J. Edgar Hoover Files

#4

Post by Globalization41 » 06 Nov 2019, 13:36

Hey Sid.

The recent Epstein suicide reminded me of J. Edgar Hoover's lost files.

Globalization41.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: "Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#5

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Nov 2019, 13:44

Perhaps, but I am still completely in the dark as to why you have put these links up on AHF.

Is there a connection to Axis history that I am missing?

Cheers,

Sid.

Globalization41
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Axis History

#6

Post by Globalization41 » 06 Nov 2019, 15:46

Hi Sid. Everything is connected to Axis history. If Hitler had been bumped off in WWI, neither of us or no one currently alive would be here. Our parents would never have met up. … Hoover it's suspected maintained separate files on many Nazis and Communists. The Communists filled the void left by the defeat of Nazism. Hoover continued to investigate Communists after WWII. Worldwide Communism was on the march in 1972. The lessons learned by the U.S. in defeating aggression during WWII were being applied in Vietnam. … Kremlin leaders hated Hoover. I believe Kennedy didn't like Hoover. L.B.J. got along with Hoover. Not sure if Elenore Roosevelt was a fan of Hoover. Newspaper editors hated Hoover.

Globalization41.
Last edited by Globalization41 on 06 Nov 2019, 16:36, edited 2 times in total.

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Robert Rojas
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RE: "Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#7

Post by Robert Rojas » 06 Nov 2019, 16:32

Greetings to both citizen Sid Guttridge and the community as a whole. Howdy Sid! Well sir, in deference to your point OR points-of-view as succinctly articulated within your installment of Wednesday - November 06, 2019 - 3:44am, old yours truly is NOT unsympathetic with your consternation on this issue, BUT unlike other sections of our august Axis History Forum, there ARE no specific guidelines that govern the type and nature of CONTENT that is OR is not permissible within the OTHER ERAS section of the forum. It has always been something of a mystery to old yours truly how blatant contemporary political discussion is apparently tolerated out here while management clearly goes ballistic if the same sort of thing is done over on THE LOUNGE section of the forum. Go figure! As the GOOD BOOK says, THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE! Finally, keeping in the "spirit" of the title of this creation by brother G-41:

His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the seas and Conqueor of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.

And I'm content just being Uncle Bob! Well, that's my initial two Yankee cents worth on this wanting topic of interest - for now anyway. As always, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day no matter where you just might happen to find yourself on Terra Firma.

Best Regards,
Uncle Bob :idea: :) :wink: 8-) :thumbsup:
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it" - Robert E. Lee

Sid Guttridge
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Re: "Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#8

Post by Sid Guttridge » 07 Nov 2019, 12:08

Hi Guys,

Well, that being the case, here is my contribution.

My father was in 5th Kings African Rifles over 1958-61 and was one of the instructors on Idi Amin's officers' course (which took place in East Africa, not Sandhurst as is sometimes claimed). He said that Amin was a good sergeant with leadership potential but not officer material educationally.

The problem was that the British had provided all the officers in the KAR for Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika and Nyassaland. Until the end of the 1950s, the highest an African could aspire to was to become a senior NCO, as Amin had. Africans were therefore selected for these more limited roles. Better educated Africans tended to find more lucrative careers in the civilian world.

Thus, when independence for East Africa became a serious proposition in the late 1950s, there were virtually no African soldiers with the education necessary to become officers. As a result, in the absence of a ready alternative, good African NCOs were put on the first officers' courses, standards were lowered to at least allow the creation of a basic officer class before independence, and they were then rapidly over promoted to take over the positions of departing British officers. Amin was the classic example in East Africa.

Cheers,

Sid.

Globalization41
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"Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#9

Post by Globalization41 » 07 Nov 2019, 16:39

Thanks Sid. Your explanation is logical. The most talented locals in general avoided military service due to limited opportunity for promotion. … The British Empire gets a negative credit for not recognizing conditions that facilitated Big Daddy's ISIS-like behavior. However, for the one negative liability of creating Idi Amen (or any other one negative), the British Empire should be given a million positive credits for the improvement of civilization. Without the British Empire, there would have been even more Big Daddies. … Many Big Daddies were created due to anti-imperialist propaganda. Colonies were given their independence too soo. … Canada and Australia believed they were better off sticking with the Motherland. If Uganda had praised or flattered the British and stayed with the Empire, prosperity would have materialized faster. … F.D.R. believed the immediate breakup of the British Empire would move the world closer to social Utopia. Stalin hated the British and always made a max effort to sabotage the Empire. WWII nearly bankrupted the Empire. The pressure was on to expedite independence.

Globalization41.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: "Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#10

Post by Sid Guttridge » 11 Nov 2019, 13:36

Hi Globalization41,

I am a child of empire, but I would not be as positive about it as you.

If European countries hadn't imposed modern industrial "civilization" on Africa, it would have arrived anyway. Ethiopia is doing quite well compared with all its neighbours despite not being under colonial rule for any length of time.

The African colonies were given independence prematurely only in the sense that the colonisers had done almost nothing to prepare the populations for self rule. After four centuries of Portuguese rule, Moczambique had just four African university graduates. The first government secondary school for Africans in Southern Rhodesia was only opened in 1958. How could they reasonably be expected to run complex modern states successfully from the 1960s with so little preparation? It has taken fifty years of self rule to develop middle classes large enough to do so effectively. Much of Africa now has higher economic growth rates than much of Europe, albeit starting from a very low base.

There are other factors to consider. Until the 1880s there were some quite large, sophisticated states in the interior of Africa, such as the Baganda in Uganda. However, the Italian Army accidentally introduced the European cattle disease rinderpest into Eritrea in the early 1880s and within a decade it had spread the entire length and breadth of Africa, killing most cattle and related wild game and completely destroying the economies of existing African societies. (The British colonial administrator Frederick Lugard detailed the damage done to the Baganda by rinderpest in some detail). It is no coincidence that European colonial powers took over most of Africa in the face of limited resistance during that same decade of the 1880s-1890s.

Furthermore, Africa still has to live with consequences of arbitrary frontiers agreed by European powers at Berlin (in 1884?). These cut across existing tribal, ethnic and cultural boundaries. As a result, very few modern African states can be considered "national" in the same sense as Italy or Denmark. In order to avoid numerous bloodbaths if they were changed after independence, the Organisation of African Unity decided to keep the colonial borders. This has successfully minimised inter-country warfare, but has left most states with internal tensions.

Enough for now,

Cheers,

Sid.

Globalization41
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"Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#11

Post by Globalization41 » 13 Nov 2019, 03:29

Hi Sid. … Canada, Australia, and the U.S. would be less civilized and more like Africa if it weren't for the British Empire. … Europe, Israel, South Korea, and Japan, would be less civilized if it weren't for Britain's offspring America. The Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch Empires were less helpful. … If you don't do anything, then you can't do anything wrong. Many sectors and regions of the world have perfect records because they've done nothing. Their problems are blamed on colonialism. The British Colonialists were not do-nothings. Therefore they get the negative credit. Other European Empires don't get as much negative credit because they gravitated toward do-nothingism (in the form of corruption). … Mexico doesn't blame it's problems on Spain or France. Yet Africa and the Middle East blame many of their problems on the British Empire. France did little in Indochina. Nixon tried to help and he was blamed for the Cambodian genocide. Nixon was innocent. … Without the British Empire, there would be more libertarianism gone wild paving the way for more Big Daddies, but less negative blame for the British Empire.

Globalization41.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: "Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#12

Post by Sid Guttridge » 13 Nov 2019, 12:44

Hi Globalization,

Not necessarily. Culture is not in the DNA. It is transmittable. Given a breathing space and freedom from Old World diseases, the Amerindians, who already had considerable civilizations, were certain to assimilate advantageous aspects of European civilization. Nor were these likely to be restricted to any part of the New World.

An interesting case of rapid adaptability are the Araucanian Indians of Chile, who successfully resisted Spanish encroachment for centuries by adopting captured cannons and using Spanish pike tactics. They did so by getting the expertise from captured Spaniards. Culture and civilization can be transmitted without displacing existing populations. The Cherokees in North America also successfully absorbed lessons from their European neighbours, only for their state to be broken up and forced into exile.

Furthermore, I would suggest that civilization in "Europe, Israel, South Korea, and Japan" largely predated that in Britain and that it was, in any case, first introduced into the British Isles from Europe, not generated locally.

There is no inherent merit in being a "do-something". It has to be the right something to be beneficial. Colonialism was designed to benefit the colonising country, not the colonised populations. Any benefit for the locals was likely to be incidental, usually brought about by the colonizers' desire to exploit their labour.

Generally, I think the British Empire was a positive institution, even though it was designed purely for the benefit of the UK. In every British colony populations grew greatly under British rule (though in Australasia and the Pacific this was not so of the original populations, who were exposed to Old World diseases, as the Amerindians had been). The only exception is Ireland but, given that there are at least 40 million people of Irish descent in the USA and many millions more in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, what was bad for the island of Ireland demographically was not necessarily bad for the Irish people in the wider British empire.

And why shouldn't some of the problems of Africa and the Middle East be blamed on the British and other colonizers? They drew arbitrary lines on maps after WWI and picked and chose who could inherit a state after WWII. The Kurds, the largest population in the world without their own state, were certainly hard done by then and still are today. Anglo-Saxon civilization has disappointed them repeatedly. Israel, by contrast, was created under the ambiguous cover of British rule of Palestine, so on the whole Israelis should probably be quite grateful for the British empire, while Palestinians generally have reason to resent it.

Cheers,

Sid.

Globalization41
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"Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#13

Post by Globalization41 » 13 Nov 2019, 15:53

Hey Sid. Let me supplement your post with some more points. … The American Indians of today are far better off than the Indians of Chili (and 95% of the world's population as well) due to the British Empire. … Indians in America are highly respected. Sports teams and gunships are named in honor of the American Indian. The Cleveland Indians baseball team and the Apache Gunship are examples. Starving artists write songs about Indians. Millions of U.S. citizens enrich Indians by patronizing Indian-owned casinos on reservations. Gambling is easy money if you own the cassino. … Turkey and Israel do not name soccer teams or weapons platforms after the Kurds or Palestinians. … To Americans, Ireland and Britain are like divorced parents. The parents hate each other, but the kids still like both of them. … The negatives of the 1948 creation of Israel are often sited. However, in the case of women's rights, Israel in 1948 was like a Normandy beachhead in the vast Middle East. The Jews were originally framed by the anonymously published Protocols of Zion. The Protocols were used as a pretext for antisemitism. All of this, for good or bad, eventually contributed to a strong Israel. … The Palestinians should take construction lessons from the Israeli settlers. Building nice-looking houses would be more beneficial for civilization than protesting. However, due to the entrenched ideology of carrying forward generational grudges, all individuals in the Middle East have veto power over the peace process.

Globalization41.

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Robert Rojas
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RE: "Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#14

Post by Robert Rojas » 13 Nov 2019, 16:36

Greetings to both brother Globalization41 and the community as a whole. Howdy G-41! Well sir. in reference to your posting of Wednesday - November 13, 2019 - 5:53am, old yours truly must duly concede that I thoroughly enjoyed your clever and quite apropos analogy of "To Americans, Ireland and Britain are like divorced parents. The parents hate each other, but the kids still like the both of them". THAT IS ALL SO TRUE and I'm not even Irish or English by ethnic ancestry, but God only knows how many folks I've known during the course of my life that are! Well, that's my latest two Yankee cents worth on this colorful exercise in demographics - for now anyway. As always, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day in your corner of our once GOLDEN STATE that a few folks still call California.

Best Regards From Contra Costa County,
Uncle Bob :idea: :) :P :lol: :wink: 8-) :thumbsup:
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it" - Robert E. Lee

Sid Guttridge
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Re: "Big Daddy" Idi Amin

#15

Post by Sid Guttridge » 14 Nov 2019, 15:31

Hi Globalization,

Most of what you write of Indians being respected in the USA is superficial. Naming sports teams or helicopters after them does the Amerindians no good. Their "reservations" are often unproductive for anything else except casinos, which are hardly the high points of western civilization anyway! The Cherokees and Nez Perce, to take just two examples, had their land taken off them precisely because it was productive. The respectful thing might be to give it back rather than engaging in token exercises like naming dams and tearful folk songs after them.

The British certainly don't hate the Irish, not least because, in the widest sense, the Irish are British. Some Irish may retain some historical resentments against the UK, with some reason, but by and large most don't seem to.

I am not sure that Israel stands out as a beacon for women's rights anywhere except the Middle East! Apart from the talents of its Jewish population, what built Israel was US political cover, arms and money. Perhaps if the Israelis had allowed Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, they wouldn't need your suggested Israeli expertise in building new ones!

I think you are right in writing, ".....due to the entrenched ideology of carrying forward generational grudges, all individuals in the Middle East have veto power over the peace process." Perhaps the recognition of Israel in 1948 was a mistake in the first place?

Cheers,

Sid.

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