Euro-centric distortions on African Antiquity and it's importance/relvance in today's world

OK I have to go through my rant. See http://wiki.idebate.org... The way a debate works is first one side takes a position and defends it; then the opposition takes a stand disagreeing with them and they take turns admiring their own stand and trashing the other guy's. I am really considered quite a radical in these parts when I insist this is the way it works. It will take a long time for this to become accepted in debate.com land and it certainly is terribly unfair to let the opposition take a stand just like the other guy but that's just the way these unfair rules are written. These unfair rules should be changed becuse better debates happen when all you have to do is make some stupid statement like "Murder is wrong" and no matter what happens at the end of the debate it is scored by stupidly asking if you still believe that murder is wrong. http://www.debate.org... But I argued that since murder is the illegal killing of another person with malice aforethought that a better statement would be that ANY killing of another person with malice aforethought is wrong. It's a good thing this sleazy tactic was soundly defeated by the judges. Everyone knows that murder is wrong. Quoting now from LD Debate Terms: Value: The value is usually given in the wording of the resolution. Its purpose is to establish context (what the resolution is about, the topic of debate), and to establish ground (what part of the resolution each side must defend). The value should not be confused with something that most might think of as a value, i.e., something that is necessarily intrinsically good (such as freedom or liberty). Rather, a value should be thought of as a position or a stance of belief within the presence of other positions or stances— it is relational. In this sense, a resolution may have a value of "increased environmental regulation" or "civil disobedience." In short, the value (sometimes referred to as a value premise) is the position that the resolution is asking you to defend. Thus, in the resolution "violence is a justified response to political oppression," the affirmative value is violence and the negative value is political oppression. The debate should then focus on the contexts in which the choice between the two value positions must be made. Many coaches and debaters think that the value is rarely presented in the resolution. This position holds that a value must be something of intrinsic worth, i.e., something that might be commonly believed to be a value. The result is that debaters very frequently argue values, such as liberty, freedom, or justice, which may sound wonderful but do not necessarily apply to the resolution. In these instances, the debate rarely, if ever, deals with issues of concern to the resolution. Value objection: An argument used primarily in nonpolicy debate which argues that there exists a competing value to the affirmative value. The argument has to be proven to be more important than the affirmative value. Criteria: There a several interpretations of criteria in LD. There is no definitive answer. One interpretation is that criteria are a set of standards used to evaluate conflict between the affirmative and negative value premise. Thus, the criteria is contextually found in the resolution through words such as "ought" and "justified" which inform debaters of the type of standards and justifications needed to uphold competing values. For example, in the resolution "violence is a justified response to political oppression," the criteria for the debate are the standards chosen to determine the conditions of when or if violence can be "justified" in response to political oppression. In other words, what determines when or if violence can be justified? The criteria are often referred to as a lens or a weighing mechanism because all arguments in the debate need to be shuttled through the standard. A second interpretation is that the criteria are the standards used to define the value. In other words, if the value is justice, the criteria are the standards for determining a just conditions. In this interpretation, the values are rarely taken from the resolution, and often taken from the words "ought" or "justified," what in the above definition of are considered the words that define the criteria, not the value. In any case, by definition, a criteria is a standard, the real question, and one that should be debated in every round, is what it is a standard for and of. It is also critical to know how the value and criteria are intended to relate.