i'm sorry that my post sounded harsh. i'll admit... it was a drunken posting. i didn't mean for it to sound harsh / attacking though and i'm sorry for that. when i read it now i am cringing a little. not very diplomatic of me.

but... i'm fairly sure it was on topic...

with respect to not 'standing aside and doing nothing' i think that really does apply to situations such as the following (crimes against persons):

Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death just outside her appartment in Brooklyn (over the period of around half an hour). While around 34 neighbours heard at least part of the attack the majority of them didn't call the police. They did nohting.

> According to the New York Times, in an article dated December 28th, 1974, ten years after the murder, 25-year-old Sandra Zahler was beaten to death early Christmas morning in an apartment of the building which overlooked the site of the Genovese attack. Neighbors again said they heard screams and "fierce struggles" but did nothing.

> The story of Genovese's murder became an almost-instant parable about the supposed callousness, or at least apathy to others' plight, of either New York City, urban America, or humanity in general. Much of this framing of the event came in reaction to an investigative article [3] in the New York Times written by Martin Gansberg and published on March 27, two weeks after the murder. The article bore the provocative headline "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police"; the public view of the story crystallized around a quote from the article, from an unidentified neighbor who saw part of the attack but deliberated, before finally getting another neighbor to call the police: "I didn't want to get involved."

Other reports, cited by Harlan Ellison in his book Harlan Ellison's Watching, stated that one man turned up his radio so that he wouldn't hear Genovese's screams.


I think people have a duty to intervene with respect to crimes against persons.

I'm having trouble with the notion that Mellors or other peoples lives would actually be better off if this man is deported to Nigeria, however.

I guess I'm thinking 'live and let live'.

BUT:

Done done can't be undone
(Unless one gives him some warning to split, I guess)

I guess Mellors posted about it because he was feeling... Divided? If he had already made up his mind I think it would have been only fair for him to tell us which way he had made it up because it seems as though support for one side is often interpreted as an attack on the other.

I really didn't mean to attack anyone. I guess my heart goes out to the underdogs of this world... And I'll bow out now so the thread doesn't get locked...