General Chat

Is it me or has a post been changed, which alters the slant somewhat?

Never mind the number of people tortured and murdered by their own leaders. Probably 40million by Mao, somewhere between 25 & 40 million by Stalin. Kim Yong-Un, Pol Pot....

And the Japanese in China and Korea.

And the Spanish in South America.

Actually, the whole world could seek reparation from Italy.

After all, had Pontius Pilate not sentenced Jesus to death then we would not have had Christianity which, let's face it, has been used as an excuse for invasion, brutality, abuse, segregation, discrimination, racism, sexism, war etc etc

And the Italians in Abyssinia! (I haven't spelt that right, have I?)

The Belgians did untold damage to parts of Africa. Look at the Belgian Congo for a start.

This will be why I mentioned Europe and not Great Britain.

If you lived in this country, you would be well aware that the meddling done for well over 100 years, and lasting until at least 1970, by British and French "do-gooders" and missionaries has resulted in a native population that all but lost the whole of it's pre-colonialism well-developed social systems.

This has resulted in several generations of First Nations people who were forced to lose their own languages, their own social and caste systems, and even their religions and religious systems. The children were forcibly taken away from the families and forced into "residential schools", forbidden to speak their own languages, wear their hair as they would at home, and schooled to become servants ................ all because they were considered to be ignorant savages.

Add to that the brutality of physical, emotional and sexual abuse by both male and female people charged with "making savages into suitable servants for our gentle white ladies" ....... and you would clearly see and understand how much damage has been done by the so-called civilized countries that determined THEIR way of life, of law, of religion, etc was the only one and every other country must submit.

The most current example of course is the US which took over after Britain began to get out of the "colonies" to become the British Commonwealth.

My eyes were opened to the horrors of the colonialism practiced by so many countries over the years, including Britain, once I left England and began to live in other countries.

In the case of former British colonies, we gave them big ideas, but we didn't give them the tools OR the education they needed in order to really govern their own countries.



rant over :-)

I think that we should seek reparation from the Italians for invading us over two thousand years ago, and the French for doing the same in 1066. (Yes, I know that Italy didn't exist then, and that the Normans were not strictly French.) I was being facetious. How far are we to go back, blaming the British for everything?

What Rollo said was the countries he mentioned were not part of the British Empire which they weren't. Our involvement in India started with Robert Clive as a trading arrangement and progressed from that point,initially we did not invade India. We now can't possibly be held responsible for what our forefathers did 200 years ago. How can we be?!! You might as well argue that people in present day Germany are responsible for WW2, or that people in modern Japan are responsible for the war in the Far East, they clearly are not, modern day Americans are not responsible for their civil war or the Mexicon war. This country is constantly on a guilt trip about the past. Other European countries did more than their fair share of land grabbing, we weren't the only ones!!

I can recommend the book 'Return of a King' for anyone interested in our involvement with Afghanistan in the 19th century. It tells of an unhappy, unbelievably incompetent saga (think Gilbert & Sullivan meets 'Carry On Up the Khyber') that p'd off numerous people from different tribes and countries, and sowed the seeds of the later Indian uprising.

I quite agree with that person on tv. If you want to stop people migrating you have to tackle the causes of that migration.

Rollo - I agree with absolutely all of that.

Particularly your last para - of course we haven't meddled with any of the countries on that list, have we?

At the time when Robert Clive decided to chance his arm in the Indian sub continent most of it was under the control of the Mogul Empire and had been for hundreds of years. The Moguls ran India for their own personal interests,. They were cruel tyrannical despots and certainly not in any way advanced compared to Japan, Russia or Europe.

What really got India going was the vast amount of capital which the UK poured into India resulting in the creation of a system of law, a tolerably honest bureaucracy (certainly compared to the Moguls), the railway system which is still the steel which holds India together and a very efficient army - which is still top notch. The UK owes India nothing.

In any case very few of the current migrants at Calais come from lands which were at some time part of the British Empire. They come from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia ...

It is our more recent interference that has led to the devastation of modern economies, infrastucture and societies

Africa and India had been evolving alongside Europe for so many thousands of years and India's economy was on a par with ours when Europe spotted wealth and thought they might like it for themselves.

I think, in Asia, Africa and, to a lesser extent, Australasia,two wonderfully enriching components of the world were ruined beyond repair.

Any later interference has been a sort of futile attempt to rectify the damage that has been wrought.

I think we could possibly look a little more closely at our more recent interference!

They are still our fault.

I'm sure what this country and others did two hundred years ago was very reprehensible, but there's nothing we can do about that now, so there's not a lot of point going over it. The problems we have in the here and now are very serious on lots of fronts and at present seemingly unsolvable. On one hand these poor people are clearly desperate, and on the other we are clearly a small island with limited space and infrastructure. A dilemma indeed !!