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Post by Red Rackham on Nov 14, 2022 5:58:21 GMT
That brings a lump to my throat, wonderful stuff.
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Post by Toreador on Nov 14, 2022 6:29:03 GMT
Did it ever occur to you that they liked us because we were major players in the opium trade? They hated us for it, but these missionaries were from before the Opium Wars. You see we once did get on with them because we were buyers of a lot of tea. People these days are really nasty towards the Christian Church and totally forget that it was the world's first truly international organisation and had offices in most countries. It was indeed that because we already had these offices we could then progress onto trade, and hence how the empire was built. Around 1860 though the Chinese experienced the dark side of us, and have never forgotten it. The sale of opium was for the purpose of taking over China. The Chinese were too tough though and it was like the British were used to getting their way and toppled every place they decided to until China, where apparently it was a kind of draw in the end. They met their match. Large tranches of the Chinese people loved opium and its effect, the rulers worried about it, mainly because they saw power slipping away rather than any concern about the health of their people. Though the missionaries may have been before the Opium Wars, it ignores the fact that opium had been shipped to China long before the opium wars, as far back as Georgian times and the money it earned was substantially used for buying other Chinese commodities, particularly tea. Missionary has been a scourge, not an advantage. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2022 6:58:07 GMT
The thing is, Red, all cultures have virtues like honesty, truthfulness, justice, etc but differ in the expression of these. We don't borrow these from one another because they exist in all cultures. What has happened is "cultural relativism". "emotional literacy" and a host of "rights" belonging to an ever increasing number of groups. They are, ironically, dividing humanity up, not uniting it.
Forum debates get nowhere mostly because they are full of people with only one point of view - their own. They form little cliques and attack, bully and insult anyone who differs let alone dissents. This seems to be a part of human nature, but is largely absent in those with high intelligence and more profound perception of reality. The norm is to form groups hostile to other groups. Perhaps this is how Nature keeps groups intact. Those who can step outside the box are not the average nor are they in the majority.
If one looks back on one's childhood nasty bastards will be here with brass knobs on. They were part of our own groups and haven't gone away. I doubt whether anything will make them vanish any time soon. It will always be the cunning leading the gullible and getting the individuals pushed out, burned alive, beheaded or libelled. Humanity is a sort of unfinished task. Whoever started us off went away before finishing the job. We are now wondering where we came from and believing every false tale about ourselves that a number of psychotically deranged ideologues can think of to keep us working to make them rich. We won't improve much if we wake up to this. We will simply start something else that keeps our shackles firmly in place. If you are unlike the mob, stay away from it as much as you can. If it decides you are a traitor to some mad belief you will end up dangling off the end of a rope and no one will lift a finger to save you. History repeats itself because we don't learn from it.
I have realised that there is a reason we don't learn from it. And I suspect that reason is not external or anyone else's fault. It is inside us and we are unable to tame it because we don't want to tame it. We like it. We're bastards and anyone who comes to this planet in peace is going to get killed, stuffed and put in a museum. It's what we have done to everything else we have ever come across.
If aliens find us and think we have a beautiful world from which they can draw prosperity they will either kill us or enslave us. We might even recognise them  . |
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Post by Dan Dare on Nov 14, 2022 10:22:42 GMT
It's at this point I usually recommend Scruton's England, An Elegy. Written over twenty years ago this, what Hitchens called 'a long farewell', catalogues the aspects of our English culture that had already disappeared without more than a very few of us even noticing. www.amazon.co.uk/England-Elegy-Roger-Scruton/dp/0826480756 |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2022 12:43:27 GMT
Whether some of us noticed or not, it still happened. The thing is, can it be resuscitated or is it too late? And would anyone be permitted to repair the damage or is that now a cardinal, of not a mortal, sin?
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Post by Dan Dare on Nov 14, 2022 12:49:01 GMT
My own view is that it is already too late and the only potential option still available is a territorial solution like that once proposed for Apartheid-era South Africa.
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Post by dappy on Nov 14, 2022 12:55:03 GMT
Would you apply the same rules to British ex-pats living in say France, Dan?
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Nov 14, 2022 12:55:36 GMT
They hated us for it, but these missionaries were from before the Opium Wars. You see we once did get on with them because we were buyers of a lot of tea. People these days are really nasty towards the Christian Church and totally forget that it was the world's first truly international organisation and had offices in most countries. It was indeed that because we already had these offices we could then progress onto trade, and hence how the empire was built. Around 1860 though the Chinese experienced the dark side of us, and have never forgotten it. The sale of opium was for the purpose of taking over China. The Chinese were too tough though and it was like the British were used to getting their way and toppled every place they decided to until China, where apparently it was a kind of draw in the end. They met their match. Large tranches of the Chinese people loved opium and its effect, the rulers worried about it, mainly because they saw power slipping away rather than any concern about the health of their people. Though the missionaries may have been before the Opium Wars, it ignores the fact that opium had been shipped to China long before the opium wars, as far back as Georgian times and the money it earned was substantially used for buying other Chinese commodities, particularly tea. Missionary has been a scourge, not an advantage. How do you know the emperors were not concerned for the people they ruled? |
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Post by jeg er on Nov 14, 2022 12:59:27 GMT
Would you apply the same rules to British ex-pats living in say France, Dan? or british immigrants living in France, even? |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Nov 14, 2022 13:06:16 GMT
Whether some of us noticed or not, it still happened. The thing is, can it be resuscitated or is it too late? And would anyone be permitted to repair the damage or is that now a cardinal, of not a mortal, sin? I certainly noticed, and at a young age as well. The stupidity of the Brits though is they do not think, but follow the next person. I've said it til I was blue in the face, but few got it. Alcohol does wonders in lowering the intelligence. I think it is the number one tool of choice for rulers.
You know the system was practising gender bending in the first schools I went to. Object and you are punished. I was one who got punished, then I decided to launch counter attacks. I've probably got some Russian blood in me somewhere, as they don't take any nonsense either. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Nov 14, 2022 13:14:34 GMT
My own view is that it is already too late and the only potential option still available is a territorial solution like that once proposed for Apartheid-era South Africa. I think what will happen is the Brits will carry on blindly and arrogantly and simply not notice what is going on. They will go to their local pub as usual, everything will look normal but the pub being part of a chain and the chain owned by China. Then they go to their shops and the same thing. The names are the same, as in ye olde shop of Blighty, but it will all be just image, and like the pub and everything else the ultimate owners are Chinese billionaires. They will be allowed to act out their fantasies that they rule the waves. They will all have the lowest and simplest jobs in the system. They will not be asked to do anything more complicated than take drinks orders, but all the drink and everything else is made by advanced machines. They never see them. Robots have skilfully 3D printed an entire 14th century pub, and it all looks so British. |
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Post by Dan Dare on Nov 14, 2022 13:52:36 GMT
Would you apply the same rules to British ex-pats living in say France, Dan? No. British expats anywhere are unlikely to outnumber the natives or to vie for political control, both of which are likely future developments in the UK.
Least of all in France, where the last I heard the average age of resident Brits is 68 and their tfr is effectively zero.
European expats in France hold few dangers for the French nation, which is not something that could be confidently said about its ex-colonial population from the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa and Indo-China. The French solution of course is to pretend they're as French as they are to the extent that the state does not even want to know how many are actually there are and what their breeding patterns are like.
At least the Brits will get to see what's confronting them when the next batch of census data is released. How many actually get the message is of course another matter entirely.
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Post by dappy on Nov 14, 2022 14:04:45 GMT
The hypocrisy flows out of you, Dan.
Rather than dig yourselves all these holes, would it not be more sensible to just be honest and simply post and repost ad nauseam "I don't like black people"
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Post by Dan Dare on Nov 14, 2022 14:11:42 GMT
It's very silly of you to rely on the fallacy of false equivalence in trying to claim that British expats in France, or anywhere else for that matter, represent the same sort of existential threat as do the teeming millions of Afro-Asians who have settled in the West since World War II.
If the best you can up with as a counter-argument is to insult your adversary you might wish to consider confining your remarks to other parts of the forum where such things are tolerated.
Do it again here and I will report you for violation of the rules.
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Post by dappy on Nov 14, 2022 14:13:41 GMT
Go for it Dan.
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