On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 9:42 AM, Daniel J. Matyola <danmaty...@gmail.com> wrote: > That is British propaganda. > > Just what the British did in Ireland alone, for so many centuries, > should keep them from criticizing "continentals." Then there was > Scotland, and Wales. Right here in my home town, they burned down the > courthouse and the church, because the people here were Dutch > Americans instead of English. They committed brutal war crimes in the > Carolinas during the Revolutionary War. > > Look at China, where they forced opium on a nation just to maintain > their tea fix. The Indian subcontinent was given even harsher > treatment. Their invasion of Russia, after the communist revolution, > contributed greatly to the paranoia that controlled Soviet foreign > policy for 75 years. > > The British started the whole nonsense about "the white man's burden." > Now, they criticize the Belgians for following their lead? I don't > buy it. There is no excuse for what Belgium did in the Congo. That > was dreadful, but actually quite limited in time and territory to what > Britain did, all over the globe, with such masterful administrative > skill and military overkil, for cfenturies. > > Dan >
Dan, I'm well aware of what the British did in their colonies. They were not anything resembling nice. The Spanish in particular were worse, much worse. The Dutch were every bit as bad as the British at their worst (particularly in the Dutch East Indies) and never as nice as the British at their best, as were the French and the Portuguese. If you think what happened in Ireland was bad, read some history about the Spanish Netherlands sometime, or frankly some Finnish History (colonized by the Swede's and then taken over by the Russians). Ireland was not subjected to centuries of oppression and frankly most of the tales about the British oppression of the Irish are not historical (Like in Scotland, it was mostly the local nobles doing the oppressing, backed by the British to varying extents). And the Belgians? They followed the French lead in Africa, not the British lead. Oh, and the 'White Man's Burden'? That comes from one extremely sarcastic poem by Kipling warning the US that Colonialism was a bad idea for the colonized and the colonizer both. Also note your comment on British interference after the Communist Revolution is simple nonsense. Paranoia in Russian Foreign Policy has been the norm for centuries. The Communists were if anything less prone to it than their predecessors. If the British and their allies had been successful in aiding the Whites it likely would have saved millions of lives over the last 90 years. -Adam -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
