I have not been seen by you applauding any America bashing. You may hate me with a vengeance and you have every right to - I even grant you the fact that you have good reason to - but that is no reason whatsoever to accuse me of things I did not do, mr. Neva.

Talk about utter bullshit. There’s not much else coming from you, is there? LL needs to start a separate grid for embittered sociopaths like you.

Shockwave, my remarks were mainly aimed at the others in this discussion who are haters more than you, and at the many looking over their shoulders. And I have to chuckle at yet another green card applicant trying to come to these shores of opportunity, yet stuck in a rut of imagining that this opportunity itself doesn’t come from some key features of the way American is, which are the very source of hatred for some Europeans.

I think we can certainly “go there”, not in some blanket prejudice, of the type “all French are surrender monkeys,” a curious and very nasty and prevalent American phrase, but of the type “I’m finding some Europeans are very steeped and prejudices and hate, and I’m going to fight back.”

It’s not at all racism or hate-mongering to be descriptive about very, very widespread points of view and attitudes that one indeed does find among Europeans that are to be condemned roundly. For example, the very disturbing rabid criticism and hatred of Israel, which more often than not verges on and in fact *is* anti-Semitism, and its vulgar complement, an uncritical and even celebratory approach to the very problematic Palestinian terrorist movement and its suicide bombers. This is a huge phenomenon in Europe, and to pretend it’s somehow “prejudiced” to point it out or “collective guilt” is just out of whack. Everyone can see it.

Let’s walk back the cat to the beginning of this argument, shall we?

I merely posted a blog about which SL-related news sites and blogs were on top. I *gasp* — the horror! — didn’t include Vint Falken because I had no idea she was in the 100,000 rank because she very much appears to me as a niche fashion/art sort of blog and not something you’d consider for the lead top ten.

Here’s what I wrote, then:

“I’m glad you have all that hittage, Vint. I barely recall who you are — but then, that’s the case now — there are way more Europeans than North Americans in Second Life, and it stands to reason that European sites will displace American sites (Vint is Belgian). Sorry, but I just don’t find your blog that interesting for my own purposes and tastes, so I don’t go to it and didn’t think to include it. But you must have a great following — congratulations! And next time since you’re in the 100,000 rank I’ll include it in the list.”

So, whatever the mixed nature of this message — part sarcasism to put this strumpet in her place if she thinks her blog is all that, and part recognition that she does have a following and she should be included — it never “sinks” to the level of calling her, I dunno, a Belgian kiddie diddler or whatever.

She then came on my blog and snarked and sniffed that she’d been left out blah blah. I responded blandly: who are you? Remind us who you are again? That set off her rabid hate adventure, because it pricked her vanity terribly. And here’s what she wrote — falsehoods all:

“Of course Prok, I do understand that you can not, or not wish to look further then that small world you created for yourself within the virtual world that is Second Life. A world that revolves around Prok, and where you can easily leave out the Japanese news blogs, the European blogs, … these are of no importance. Because of course, all new creations, projects, etc. are coming from that cute little island that is called the USA.”

(just as an aside, I have to chuckle at the idea that I’d leave out the Japanese, given that the three top designers in SL from Japan all rent from me and try to do everything possible to give them a good SL — nobody “leaves” out a blog that isn’t in English; they just don’t include it in a top list, sorry, but there it is.)

SO you see how it works, the dynamics of it all. A hateful, prejudiced *ignorant* Belgian girl comes on and vents her hate about the United States, a place that she calls “the cute little island” with heavy sarcasm, and accuses me of being in my own little world.

But Laetizia is nowhere to be found. Laetizia has no pious thoughts about not hating on Americans; no nostrums about “never” bashing anybody. She’s silent — if anything, she applauds. As do the rest of the so-called liberals and tolerant here. It’s utter bullshit, and I’m here to call you all on it.

Europe has a lot of different ethnic group who, as ethnic groups do, often hate each other. When one is stronger, they will try to wipe each other out.

Not sure what indicates I have a skewed belife system?

I have a very clear understanding of the Nazi and Soviet horrors, and also of what happened in South East Asia during WW2 under the Japanese.

What other awful things have happened, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Indonesia or the “Javanese Empire” in East Timor, China in Tibet. It happens everywhere, not just Europe.

None of these counties we mentioned are what you could call Democratic countries, they are all autocracies or they were when these events happened.

If I was Anti-American I wouldn’t be going in the Green Card lottery every year, and I’m not European, I just live here for the moment

Here’s what I have to say about this, take it or leave it.

As unpleasant as it may be to admit, and as ugly as it is to compare genocides, the reality is, the mass killings that you can book to the United States of American, such as of the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears, simply pale as acts, compared to the monstrous acts of genocide in the legal definition perpetrated by regimes such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Sudan, and Cambodia. The scale and magnitude are so far apart, that to make facile comparisons and engage in moral equivalency is pretty reprehensible, in my view. It undermines the reality of the suffering and the reality of what oppression means.

I’m not sure that legally, the destruction of the Native American people and their livlihoods would rise to the definition of “genocide,” just as the Great Hunger in Ireland may not rise to that definition. They certainly qualify as crimes against humanity, and would be known today as “ethnic cleansing,” for example. But the hundreds of thousands, or the million of victims in these devastations on American soil are small in comparison to a Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Sudan, or Cambodia.

Surely you are rational and reasonable and can see the staggering differences, as much as Europeans often would like to take the mote out of America’s eye, rather than removing the log from their own as Europeans presiding over most of the great genocides of the last century.

Indeed, it’s a world tragedy of epic proportions that Europe’s genocides and oppression of those past centuries engendered massive emigration that in turn led to settlers who then conflicted with native peoples, which then in turn led to repressive policies from the federal government to massacre those native peoples. The same can be said for the human tragedy and crime against humanity of slavery.

But let’s get our facts straight here, Shockwave: whatever your belief system that skews you to finding fault with America and the West before you will even cross the street to look at the horrific devastation of Germany or the Soviet Union right in your own back yard, you have to concede that in scale, magnitude, and most importantly *remedy* to stop these situations, America cannot be placed in the docket as World Criminal Number One. It’s one of those astounding fallacies of the facile Internet generation with its blinkered memes that such an idea can even get any traction.

Few like to remember the sordid history of Arab slavery. Few like to examine modern-day slavery in the Caucasus or Sudan. Indeed, Africans selling their fellow Africans into slavery is at issue, but that doesn’t absolve the U.S. and Europe of its role in slavery, of course.

But if there is a deity that can get THAT involved in such a finely-tuned way and not only keep score, but make a judgement, then…why will He waste His divine energies only on settling scores for puny, silly humans? He might in fact be more compassionate than they; certainly, with His all-knowing powers to watch human affairs, He’ll note a curious affinity — even if distended by virtuality and pixels! — between the tendency of Europe to solve its problems with wars and even genocides, and the latter-day phenomenon of people on smug little Internet forums who think the solution to every problem is to *remove someone from the world*.

I guess I’ve probed a nerve here. Think about it.

Oddly enough not many people like to think that it was Africans enslaving other Africans to sell to the rest of the world.

I used to live with Maoris and Pacific Islanders, so I know their history better than most people.

It’s nice that you think my Blog is the same standard as Vints, or that we sound alike.

I just started it as a platform to protest againest avatars that wear stripy socks, and the evils of torus prims.

I never even considered you would even bother to look at it.