Hong Kong: Britain's 22-year shame

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

What is it with someone always having to be evil? But it wouldn't be challenging for most to interpret a career like Xi's as evil, if you must use the term.

It's about perspective.

We think Nazis are evil because Nazis killed Jews, Gypsies, Gays etc. as a matter of policy, so we hunt and imprison Nazis. Nazis killed those because they believed they were evil.

So who is evil - you for stopping the Nazi from killing the evil Jew or the evil Nazi for killing the evil Jew?

The answer comes from whether or not you believe the Jew is evil, as to any character trait you or Nazi posses. It doesn't matter if the Nazi loves his wife and children, goes to Church, gives to charity, or if you're a womanising slob fuelled by cigarettes and whisky.

Likewise Xi, he's a Tyrant, but he's also brought China unprecedented wealth, massively increased standards of living and virtually ended the One Child policy.

YOUR perspective defines what YOU believe to be Good and Evil - this does not make you automatically right.

Sounds like the standard dodge - 'you don't want us to spend this money on Indians, or else it can't go to you, dear peasants.' Not that it was going to in the first place.

The discomfort the question of reparations may cause shouldn't interfere with consideration of whether it is technically merited, which one can't do without a fundamental acceptance of colonialism as calamity. Anyway, perhaps India would like to try some freedom of movement today; not all reparations need be monetary.

We are not allowed to give anyone from the Commonwealth Freedom of Movement - the EU said so. As regards india specifically, they've actually told us they don't really care for our aid any more - they're doing fine, thanks. CAn't remember if they still take the money, though.

As regards reparations generally - as far as I'm concerned everyone involved is dead and I consider it immoral to inflict harm of those no living for the sake of those long gone.

You're convinced your opinion holds great sway among Maoli and Puerto Ricans? Sounds like an instance of the observer's standards overriding accurate representation of cultural context.

By all means, show me some polls. Native Americans on the Mainland still refuse to participate in American Civil Society for the most part and still live on reservations. I'm not suggesting natives in the Americas want "independence" I'm challenging your blith dismissal of any dissatisfaction they might feel.

Correct. You were saying that India is literally not America. I agree, in the trivial sense...

Then why refer to "alternate histories"?

Flowery literary devices and heavy use of adjectives? That's not characteristic of this thread. Maybe the number of clauses I was connecting was too high.

Subject - verb - object in the first sentence of a paragraph with everything clearly identified by name - that's all I want. If two clauses are separated by a full stop they are separate sentences and require their own SVB. Period.

For specific crimes as statutorily constructed. Not all crimes need a specific mens rea, and I'm not limiting myself to statutory crimes anyway. Legality is not morality. If I drop a lump of dog feces in someone's drink when they aren't looking, few would have trouble agreeing that the act I did was a bad one. My intent is irrelevant to the quality of badness of the act - I could have wanted to do it to hurt the person, I could have thought I was helping them, I could somehow have accomplished it by accident. Which is not to say that intent can't be relevant with respect to anything at all. It can be relevant in conditioning how others will react to me in the aftermath, and I in turn.

The basic legal principles are based on the idea that the law is just. You can't be guilty without mens rea in Common Law because someone cannot be held accountable for something they did not intend or could not reasonably foresee. This is not always the case in Statute Law, of course, but that's a separate point.

I mean, you're the one who introduced the term "evil"

I referred to the "evils" of the British government in the modern day against its own citizens - chiefly in unilaterally stripping millions of citizen of the right of abode even before their home countries were independent. Tuuvi Is the one who introduced the idea that Colonialism as a system was "evil", not me.

Without engaging in the philosophical distinctions between bad vs. good and right vs. wrong, the moral valence of an act is typically discernible immediately or even essentially.

Only within a given moral framework - if one does not need to debate that framework the morality of the act is usually immediately apparent. When one is presented with two competing moral systems one first has to choose between them.

When a thief burglarizes a home we can debate just how bad it is (e.g. what was stolen, from whom, by whom, why), but even a consequentialist who affirms the possibility that the theft could be not-bad or even good ('Austin Powers stole the nuclear launch codes from Dr. Evil'), even that person could agree that stealing in itself is bad. And yes, technically I'm introducing confusion with the parenthetical because the semantics of theft in that circumstance are debatable, but the concept should be clear.

Stealing from Dr Evil is good, stealing from evil Hitler is good so long as the theft is not banal (you're not just stealing their ready cash to spend on booze.) The act of theft presupposes theat the person being stolen from has the right to the thing being stolen. If someone steals my bike and I take it back it might look like stealing to an outsider - but it's my bike.

We can try to assess long-term impact, though it is very difficult (because all of the past is inextricable from all of the present). For example, we can estimate the physical and epidemiological consequences of US deployment of Agent Orange in Vietnam, but we can also try to measure those consequences up to the present day. It is however impossible to assess ultimate impact, which is beyond the present day and well beyond human history (existence).

You are correct, we cannot asses longterm impact beyond the current time in a way that is useful for assigning a value for reparations. Although, we can asses the intended long-term impact. Stealing a nuclear scientist from the Nazis will stop the Nazis getting the bomb first.

More later, sleep now.