...are you nostradamus in disguise?...clarky, been in the potting shed?

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Was having a discussion this morning about which country is the all time worst when it comes to starting wars/poor human rights record/general foul play over history and the like. Japan (over to you kegsy mate) and England seemed to be most popular, and Germany was obviously in there, but is there any statistical proof?

-- swift (oliverfowler@excite.co.uk), September 06, 2001 Answers awful people

-- swift (oliverfowler@excite.co.uk), September 06, 2001.

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Is it the USA?

-- Rik (rik@ntlsports.com), September 06, 2001.

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Definitely the UK. You have to go back a helluva way to come up with a confrontation in which the Brits weren't one of the aggressors, and I reckon it's only cos we won most of them that we've missed out on a lot of condemnation.

-- Pit Bill (pit_bill@yahoo.com), September 06, 2001.

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Yugoslavia, South Africa, Ethiopia for internal atrocities, actually China, Vietnam... the list goes on and on....

-- sparxx (pray@ibl.bm), September 06, 2001.

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but WHO is the granddaddy of badness?

-- swift (oliverfowler@excite.co.uk), September 06, 2001.

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the genocide in Ethiopia is hard to top....

-- sparxx (pray@ibl.bm), September 06, 2001.

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...... unfortunately, someone will try.

-- clarky (al_k_traz@yahoo.com), September 06, 2001.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

Answers

PB..I think yer way of the mark with your answer, The UK. I'm struggling to find times when the British were the aggressor..for no good reason. India?....not really. The Brits were there as merchants long before we were there as a militia and we were there to defend British interest. Australia?.....nope. Canada?....Nope. France throughout history?...nope. Spain?....I can't rememeber England ever taking an Armada up the Med on-spec can you?

Did we wipe out the Red Indians or the Incas or anyone else for that matter?

Naa mate..we ain't in the same league as some of the nut-job races out there.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001


The Jormans have to be in the running or is that too obvious.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

LR, "for no good reason" is a poor phrase. I'd guess everyone who ever did anything believed they did it for a good reason.

Catholics protest at lack of basic human rights in N.Ireland .... good reason Army sent into protect them ..... good reason Catholics feel oppressed by army too, march to object ..... good reason Army shoots protesters on Bloody Sunday ...... good reason ? Catholics see 13 of them killed by army, rise up to fight the murders .... good reason Loyalists who see Catholics killing British soldiers start to kill even more of them .... good reason IRA - Loyalists - Army - IRA - Loyalists tit for tat .... good reasons all

Who started it ?

On another thread I've mentioned maturity of nations. The UK excesses may well be too far back in history but the general suppression of countries under the banner of trade and the British Empire can't be just brushed away. One of the reasons the Scots hate the English is because of the history of suppression, the wiping out of the Highlanders.

If Britain/England can so upset Irish and Scots with their policy then I find it difficult to belive that there were not similar, or worse, attitudes on foriegn soil. I don't have examples I just find it hard to believe.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001


Mac..it's unfair of you to take a badly penned phrase and turn it around using the troubles in NI to paint the United Kingdom in a bad way. You can talk as much as you want about "England" wiping out the Highlanders but you fail to mention the centuries of inter-clan rivalry leading to savage butchery. No Englishmen involved in the Glen Coe massacre was there? We also have Scots fighting Scots at Culloden which is ALWAYS overlooked too. Naa mate...the way the world shapes itself over the years has to allow for a certain amount of physical "moulding". The whole of England was enjoying a new revolution in the way of their lives......becoming civil and pioneering while up the road marauding savages were still commiting mass murder for the sake of stealing someone's cow.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

Swifty, how can you have statistical evidence unless you specify what the criteria are? How many points for human-rights abuses? How many for starting a war?

In terms of fatalities, the worst country has to be China, simply by virtue of the obscene amounts of man-power that could be expended on Imperialist/Communist ideology.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001



LR
The significant point in my post was that we won most of the 'arguments' so gaining the privelege of recoding the facts with our bias, with the losers ending up as the villains.

As far as individual atrocities go, we probably can't compete with the likes of Pol Pot etc, but just for the length of time we were 'moulding' foreigners to our way of thinking, we must be fairly high up in total figures.

I can't see much difference in taking, say, 500 years to wipe out 6,000,000 people or managing to do it in 6 years, it's the time scale that makes one appear much more horrendous than the other.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001


But there is a difference Pit.....all those years ago, "moulding" was accepted...just like there was a time when drink-driving was accepted. If you want to talk about length of time we were moulding foreingners look how long the Romans were camped in Britain...centuries...and what have the Romans ever done for us :-)

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

Gave us the aqueduct...?

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

straight roads ...... central heating ....... horse racing ....... municipal swimming pools.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

Totti

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001


Totti signed for us has he?

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

Oh feck of Rik...have you WHIFFED their pools?...they stink :-)

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001

....and what have the Romans ever done for us ?.....

That could be the title of an interesting documentary :-)

It was accepted by the people doing the 'moulding', but I'd be very surprised if those being 'moulded' would accept or could be convinced other than by brute force, that it was for their own good in the long run, and the corpses littering the road to enlightenment were a necessary price that had to be paid.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001


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