I apologise for not being born at the dawn of time and having god-like powers, so that I could prevent war, slavery, death and France.
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I apologise for not being born at the dawn of time and having god-like powers, so that I could prevent war, slavery, death and France.
Scotland was. The Court of Session ruled slavery illegal under Scots Law in the 17th century...Quote:
Originally Posted by KukriKhan
I apologise for my pedantry and the erstwhile magnificence of this land. and for Glen's vodka. And Tennent's beer.
I like Glens vodka
My theme song, and don't say sorry untill you are, how dare you mock my greatness?Quote:
Originally Posted by Whacker
Slavery was an accepted part of every society, including African. It is a joke to think that anyone should apologise for it.
I agree in principle that we shouldn't apologize for stuff our ancestors did centuries ago especially when they were practiced by just about everyone, but on the other hand a lot of people look back at those same periods and glorify their national past, wich in that light is distastefull IMHO.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bopa the Magyar
I hope you aren't talking about the VOC remark of il Balkenende here :juggle2:Quote:
Originally Posted by Fenring
I heard this interview "Africa Ignores Slave-Trade Anniversary" on the radio yesterday, in which 'Charles Onyango-Obbo, a writer for Uganda's largest newspaper, offers his thoughts on why few Africans are taking note of the event.'
Link to the page, with a "Listen" button, to hear the 3-minute interview. Interesting take from a descendant of african slavetrade collaborators.
I wasn't, Balkenende's remark was innocent. The VOC didn't trade in slaves to any meaningful extent. It probably would have been different if he had said WIC, because at some point that company relied on slave trade almost exclusively I recall.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
I thought WIC was a pirate fleet during the dutch/spanish war?
edit: wiki says you are right, new one for me
Both the WIC and VOC were private corporations that had a state-sanctioned monopoly on western and eastern trade respectively. I believe both occasionally engaged in piracy, but other then that I don't know much about either of them.
Slavery was invented and organise by evil lefties based on Marx and Engel writing few centuries before they were born. Typically, this pre-communist concept allowed rich to become richer and any way, some slaves were better treated than so-called free workers…
Capitalism, as the idea that people should NOT owned what they an grab is of course evil;
War, as it was very well understood and exploited by Americans;
Indian Reservations, though the survivors who didn’t died from small pox and alcoholism now get rich off gamblers;
Terrorism, as our mere existence is reason enough to kill people, if needed one;
Hurricanes, because Al Gore says so;
Republicans, (US concept of)surely the spawn of Satan with their uncompassionate, hateful minds;
WWII, next time we will avoid to be attacked by Japan and Germany. We didn’t tried hard enough last time;
The WoT; next time we'll stubbornly ignore people trying to kill us; We will kill them more efficiently before.
AIDs in Africa, how could it not be because of US corporation greed? Why should someone NOT right to make money on Death, Suffering and pain? Who blame doctors?;
AIDs in Homosexuals, as why funding huge programs is the only preventative measure when you can sold expensive medicaments;
Any diseases, anywhere, somehow, it's our fault. Why again blame the industries to want to make profit in selling drugs. It is not their duties, they are not charities. And people enable to pay, too bad for them…
Pollution, invented by those filthy capitalists: Then you obliged people to pay for the decontamination: double money.
Trees being cut in the Amazon, because we build stuff with wood; we build staff with plastic as well…
Self-Reliance, tempting people away from the nanny-state is a deadly sin, excepted for protection of course. Police, Churches, army and judges are here to protect us again these miserable masses we starved to death and oppress. At least the State is good for something.
The USA, founded by killing millions of indigenous people for fun and profit and expanded on the blood of the poor;
Rich people, they didn't earn their money in exploiting first slavery then immigrants then in exporting misery every where; They didn’t kill every people asking for a rise of salary and asking for dignity and rights… The lefties did it, but not nice rightist capitalists…
Poverty, we are ignoring the root causes that conveniently have nothing to do with responsibility, when we are helping dictatorships, stopping any unions to develop (bloody lefties want to take our money and decrease OUR profits), arming rebel generals etc..
Anything someone complains about, anywhere, is somehow our fault;:beam:
So Europeans cannot take pride in their history?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fenring
Pathetic.
I hate all this apologising. We apologise because like everyone else we allowed slavery 200 years ago. However, Britian doesn't have slavery any more, unlike other countries like Pakistan, and I don't see everyone jumping on Pakistan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Duke Malcolm
Slavery was made illegal in England in 1102...
Also Brenus... on your little anti-capitalist rant there... do you realise that William Wilberforce, the leading figure in the abolitionist movement was a Tory? Also did you know that Adam Smith was anti-slavery? Indeed any right-minded liberal economist would be, since slavery removes the incentive structure from working. One gets more and better work from wage labourers.
Slavery was an unfortunate vestige of the more 'left-wing' philosophy of mercantilism. State over individual, deliberate market imperfections to 'make people better off', wage control (zero in the case of slaves...) and all that dross...
On topic though, no we definitely should not say sorry, pay reparations (Dr. Rowan Williams suggests) or any such nonsense. The heaping of blame on whites and the west for the ills of the world as is the vogue at the moment is ridiculous. It drives me up the bloody wall when they do an interview with a black person on the subject of slavery and they say nonsense like "I can still feel the anguish of my ancestors...", yah bloody right you can... the entire incident happenned 200 years ago, it's an irrelavence.
The trouble is that there's far to much misinformation on the subject bandied around, misinformation that's embedded in identity politics, namely Afro-Carribean people identifying themselves in reference to slavery and to their struggle against their supposed nemesis: white people. This is why there are calls for apologies, because it's the only thing they have, so even if we apologised now, 10 years down the line there'd be a call for another one. Indeed a lot of peoples suffer from their identity being derived solely as 'victims' of whites: the entire post-colonial Latin-American socio-economic theory of development (which a lot of other ex-colonies elsewhere have unfortunately embraced) is based on it. Apologies will just deepen their dependence on such fatuousness.
There are far more recent and relavent things communities should be apologising for... why don't the black community take the lead and apologise and pay reparations for all the damage they caused to the police (and hence the state) and innoncent home-owners and shop-keepers whose windows were smashed, cars burned and property stolen in their multiple 'race riots'...?
It's pretty obvious he means something much less drastic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bopa the Magyar
Sure, you people can take all the pride in your history -- there's nothing wrong with that. But what I suspect he's talking about is along the lines of glorifying the past. "We were a great empire back then; we were all proud people back then; it was good back then; we were the richest and most civilized people in the world back then..." People often completely forget that the beauty and prosperity of the Renaissance might as well be partially and/or indirectly funded by the ruinous, brutal actions of conquistadors and slave-traders thousands of miles away.
There's no need to apologize for "past" crimes by "white people" or whatever. But it is wise to recognize that the past is not all Lords and Ladies. After all, Japan has been, quite rightfully, heavily criticized for its ugly refusal to come to terms with a certain brutal episode of its history; and Germany commended for the very opposite.
Point is, no need for apology -- don't distort and "purify" the past either. That revisionist attitude is the stuff that helps propel blind nationalism forward. It's obviously moronic to blame a person for whatever crimes his or her ancestors commit; a question thus remains, is it logical to extend the position so that a person could not truly claim the glory of his or her ancestors also?
Oh, and to generally address the thread, could you people stop pretending to be apologizing? It sort of lost its point to tedious repetition soon after page 1, if not earlier. We get it, it's stupid to "apologize" for something like that, especially on a practical basis. In fact, it's quite moronic. That doesn't mean you all should then act all outraged and prideful and sarcastically display a pretension of apology to express your indignation over and over and over again.
In any case, official apologies for "past crimes" are often made for political and/or symbolic gestures intended usually to ease present tensions or to bring closure to such issues. "Political correctness" advocates' arguments don't usually carry the same weight or are of the same nature anyway.
It just appears to me that the anti-PC crowd, in the backlashes against the PC crowd, often acts out in the same lack of sensibility that they profess to despise in the first place, much to my...disappointment. In an effort to oppose, they become blind to certain facts, viewpoints, and other issues that they would've agreed upon as legitimate and reasonable otherwise.
In that case I'm not sorry. :smash:
“Do you realise that William Wilberforce, the leading figure in the abolitionist movement was a Tory? Also did you know that Adam Smith was anti-slavery? Indeed any right-minded liberal economist would be, since slavery removes the incentive structure from working. One gets more and better work from wage labourers.”. Oh, two nice righties…
Do YOU know that in fact slavery cost more than the so-call free workers at the time… And that is why it was abandoned… Read he debate in US before the civil war, it is very interesting. Basically and summarised, the South telling the North to give them the same amount of free-workers and slavery will be abolished. Why? Because when a slave is too young it can’t work, when a slave is sick it can’t work, when a slave is too old he can’t work. But the owner still has to pay for the food, the clothes and lodging. But when that happened to a free worker, he was just fired…
Slavery was NOT organised by lefties… The concept of lefties didn’t exist when slavery started (I mean in the meaning of the Triangular Trade), but well organised profit based on exploitation yes. Ok, it wasn’t the same capitalism, and the period was different but…
In fact, I am against apologising for all the past things. And my “rant” was more a reaction of the whining of the Righties, poor Rich unfairly accused… Slavery is a left-wing thing, according to you… You should read little more real lefties, and you will learn few things. I do not know the one from your country, but in mine, they did revolutions which succeeded, sometimes… They free the slaves, they give equal rights to women and they saved children from forced labour in factories owned by your liberal and nice righties…
I would agree about the disinformation. The African are as guilty of the slavery as the Europeans, Arabs and Asians. The kingdoms involved in the trade were Africans. White men were dying of malaria before the quinine. And yes the slavery organised by the Ottoman Empire was as cruel and violent than the Triangular Trade, and nobody ask Turkey to apologise and to compensate Serbia, Bulgaria and all other Balkan States for 500 years of occupation and slavery…
However, I just have a thought: we celebrate victories two hundred years after, even more. So if a country can be proud of its ancestors and “we” won, why couldn’t “we” apologise? You and I have nothing to do with what our ancestors did… That works in both sides…
“State over individual, deliberate market imperfections to 'make people better off', wage control (zero in the case of slaves...) and all that dross...” Read Bakounine, Louise Michel or Babeuf, and the anarchist movement theories, and you will just touch what the lefties, the hard one, think about the State…
Antiochus III nailed it.
Regarding the Japanese, that was some genuine flip-floppery of their minister-president :wall:
Slavery rather fell out of fashion in England when the Normans appeared. Slaves don't work as hard as free men who merely have to pay almost all their money to their lord, but might get to keep some of it if they are lucky. Everyone wins!