"Controversial" Comic free on the web.

[JCoyote]

ANYWAY back on topic, if you read the comic it is no supporter of whatever supposed "Confederate" values people are assuming.

The story is very much a dystopia, just not an extreme or exaggerated one... it's a quite plausible one in an everyday sort of way. With the whole... free, but glass ceiling and old boys club issues multiplied by the situation. Economic forces ended slavery, but cities are still separated a la apartheid, etc. Racism that is less forceful than the whackjobs we see, but more systemic and ingrained in the people and frighteningly accepted as just how things are... Some of it reminds me of the issues Don Albert had running a jazz club in the 40's and 50's in San Antonio. (BTW, a very cool musician to read up on.) The author also didn't make the assumption that things would have remained unchanged til the 1980's from the war, there was apparently still a social drive towards more equality, just one that was lagging farther behind. (Harry Turtledove took a different tactic, showing things getting initially a little better and then take a horrifying turn for the worse.)

Also, there is the believable use of "super heroes" as little more than propaganda fodder and nothing more... while they are very capable, the rest of the world is still dangerous to them and they can die doing heroics that aren't staged. Which makes a lot of sense regarding someone in a bright costume.

Anyway, calling this an endorsement of racism is like calling 1984 or Animal Farm an endorsement of Stalinism.

[UZI4U]

Originally Posted by PT-The Italian Commie

As for FASCIST ITALY, you can bet. Especially since the people who governs this damn Country still allows the existence of Parties and movements that openly declare to base their beliefs and ideology upon Fascism itself. While our postwar Consititution openly forbids them. Not even the "LAW", but the -CONSTITUTION-. Mo'fo's.

As for CATHOLIC CHURCH, well, the Vatican City is an independent State and Italy has no control over it, so...

The Catholic Church, as an extension of Rome and the nations that followed it, once ruled all of Italy. A great part of the Crusades are thus on Italy's hands.

As for the ROMAN EMPIRE, well, I guess the Jews are still a little bit angry for that little problem at Masada and the Diaspora, but speaking dispassionately... don't you think you are going A LITTLE BIT TOO FAR BACK in the history timeline?

So when does it end? When everyone involved in it is dead? If so, America is as innocent of slavery as Italy is innocent for the tens of millions dead at Roman and Crusader hands.

Glad to see you are not friend of a regime that was born only to protect a practice which,

It's a bit more complicated than that.

although tolerated until a certain time, was in open contrast with the fundamental principles upon which your Country was founded.

No debate there.

Yet I still have to point out that when you speak about Rome, you go a little bit too much back in time. The Confederacy, Fascism, Nazism, Communism, have left an heritage that's somehow still alive. But ROME??? Our jurisprudence is of "Roman" offspring (if this can be said at all), but what else, except some beautiful works of art and ruins?

Again I must ask, at what point is the blood washed from the hands by history? How is American slavery, which everyone involved in is long-since dead, different from the crimes of Rome and the Catholic Church?

Now, THIS is an insult to the memory of all those persons who have been persecuted and killed for having politically opposed the Fascist and Nazist regimes, or have given their lives in fighting them from the ranks of the clandestine Resistence movements.

But I guess, in your eyes, them were mo'fo'ing Reds, so they don't count in the number of the "Good guys", or do they?

Out of 31,000,000 Americans, over 2,750,000 (almost 9% of the population) took up arms and 360,000 (1.16%) of them died in open warfare on the nation-state scale to end slavery and crush the government which supported it.

Out of 45,000,000 Italians, a little over 200,000 (0.45% or so) took up arms and about 44,700 (0.01%) died in an unpopular guerrilla war against Italian fascism.

Where those that resisted brave? Yes. Did Italy, as a whole, make any serious effort against the fascists? Not really.

There is absolutely -NO- law of racial segregation currently in effect in any Country of the European Union.

Laws? No. But the fact remains there are many areas of Europe where discrimination and segregation occur by de facto. There are many areas of France that the police dare not go because the presence of their "inferior race" would be violently unwelcome. Not to mention what it's like for your average Frenchman... Or godforbid a Frenchwoman or Jew.

But again, you Americans are against the European Union because it reminds something like "Soviet Union"

Pretty much, bureaucratic tyranny at its finest.

and because it's founded on Social-Democratic principles instead than on libertarian capitalism,

Actually, the fact it is based on lite Socialism is the main reason we're not that worried about you. It gurantees you can never be a serious threat.

or just because there's the danger that it will some day snatch your position of One And Only World-Ruling Superpower©?

I'm more worried about an alliance of anthills achieving world dominance. Not only are you Europeans pathetically incapable of any military or economic threat, you're also spineless wimps who would never dare do anything with what little power you have.

Unless you have some new superweapon capable of making we American's actually give a crap about sternly worded letters of indignation.


Hell, you Europeans are a blessing... You sell your weapons that wonderfully ineffective against ours to nations that hate us, and as a result we get to turn them into nice smoking hulks. If you weren't there, our enemies might buy weapons that are actual threats.

The KKK crackdown only came when the the greatest of your Presidents in the second part of the 20th Century (JFK) decided that it was about time to cut the crap. Otherwise it, and all the racial segregation laws of the South, would must probably have continued to go on much, MUCH further.

JFK was only one part in a much larger situation that let to the crackdown on the KKK, and was not the cause of the civil rights movement. And keep in mind: JFK was elected by the American people, along with those others who brought segregation to an end.

Again, it is proof of America's dislike for racists, not proof of racism.

Once again in my history since I am here, I apologize for having created any controversy, I promise I won't put my head back in this tread again, and I kindly salute you. It's time to go to bed.

Zeus the goose, do you take everything in life so damn seriously? I take my views as serious as anyone, but I don't allow others disagreeing with me to cause me anger.

[Roger]

Originally Posted by UZI4U

...
Laws? No. But the fact remains there are many areas of Europe where discrimination and segregation occur by de facto. There are many areas of France that the police dare not go because the presence of their "inferior race" would be violently unwelcome. Not to mention what it's like for your average Frenchman... Or godforbid a Frenchwoman or Jew.
...

Wrong there are not any areas in France that the police dare not go... it spread desinformation.

[UZI4U]

So you're saying "Zones Urbaines Sensibles" do not exist in French policework?

[Roger]

Originally Posted by UZI4U

So you're saying "Zones Urbaines Sensibles" do not exist in French policework?

Yes "Zones Urbaines Sensibles" exist in France as in other European countries but we have not any areas that the police (or me ) dare not go.

[PT-The Italian Commie]

Originally Posted by UZI4U

So you're saying "Zones Urbaines Sensibles" do not exist in French policework?

This term means "Sensible Urban Zone". It doesn't means that it's a place where Police doesn't dares to go, au contraire that's the designation for zones within a metropolitan area where social-economic reasons have created a situation of high crime density (or high density of criminals within the population; that's not exactly the same thing!). There are also in Italy, their denomination is "Aree Urbane Sensibili", or something else. The meaning is the same.
It doesn't means that Police won't go there. You have seen movies like "Judgement Night" and "Assault on Precinct 13" way too many times (I can't blame you for "Precinct 13" BTW... one of the Carpenter's best ever!), or you might as well have been influenced by "The Nest - Nid de guêpes" (great movie indeed, so much for idiots saying that French cinema is for pansies).

Truth is that in those sensible areas, when Police has to go, you WILL see them going! BY HEAVY FORCE!