Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 35

Thread: Comparing Colonial Cultures

  1. #1
    Retired Member
    Join Date
    10th June 2015
    Posts
    1,009
    Thanks
    2,129
    Thanked 3,244 Times in 922 Posts

    Comparing Colonial Cultures

    [Mod Note: The first posts up to and including #24 on page 2 by modwiz were all split off from the Benghazi Report of June 28, 2016 thread.]

    Quote Originally posted by bsbray View Post
    They seem to have been rigged at least since 2000 but the rigging was rather uncontested back then. If there is a second faction vying to take over the presidential office then any rigging won't be uncontested anymore. I would wager that this is why the Brexit vote succeeded.
    I think the British are more honest with their elections than the Americans. The establishment didn't want Brexit, they even employed a strategy involving an assassination of one of their moderates to try to gain traction.

    They are more honest because the people expect transparency, here in Brazil there is even an expression we use to identify this value of "correctness". "Para o Inglês ver" => "For the English to see".

    Government processes that can't be scrutinised or come up short of even under scrutiny get serious attention in England. In Australia, another commonwealth nation that has strong english values, a parlament member had to resign because of about 2k AUD that was inappropriately spent. Whereas here in Brazil, billions (with a b) go missing and politicians look around as though they have been awakened sharply by a slap on the table. Cultural differences.

    I would go so far as to say that this tradition or culture British value is probably the reason their colonies do do much better than other european nations. The ideology that having rich colonies is more valuable to the "Crown" than poor ones, whereas the Portuguese where happy to have a colony they could steal from, regardless of whether it was poor or not. That puts Brexit in an interesting light as to why the values of the EU are being rejected.

    Please chime in here anyone, I don't have any real reference to back any of that up and I might even be wrong.

    PS is is this culture of oversight and verification of our political process that has been highjacked in a way that enables Hillary in these government activities that are quite simply "criminal".
    Last edited by bsbray, 10th July 2016 at 02:18.

  2. The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to lcam88 For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (4th July 2016), bsbray (4th July 2016), Cearna (4th July 2016), Dreamtimer (4th July 2016), Elen (4th July 2016), modwiz (4th July 2016)

  3. #2
    (account terminated) United States
    Join Date
    16th January 2015
    Location
    Au dela
    Posts
    2,901
    Thanks
    17,558
    Thanked 12,648 Times in 2,895 Posts
    Quote Originally posted by lcam88 View Post
    They are more honest because the people expect transparency, here in Brazil there is even an expression we use to identify this value of "correctness". "Para o Inglês ver" => "For the English to see".
    Idioms aside I don't know why I should believe that the British government is any more honest than the US government. Google "Scottish vote rigged" and look at what comes up.


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbJif7vISQg



    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZRYVE4naHc



    Maybe they're just worse at it because they haven't "upgraded" to electronic machines yet. (And hopefully they won't for a good while yet.)

    I wouldn't do too much bragging on the British empire during the colonial period because it's hard to reconcile honesty with the rape, pillage and murder of natives and Africans the same as all of the other European powers during the colonial period. There are lots of good stories about all of that, from the intentional handing out of smallpox-laden blankets to Native Americans, to the enslavement of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, but I'm sure you can imagine. I've studied a good bit of colonial history under Britain and there may have been big cultural differences between Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Dutch, etc., but I don't know if outstanding honesty is the characteristic that particularly sets the British apart from the rest of them.


    Anyway I think we have talked about this topic before and I have already given you a lot of the reasons why I think we are not governed by a single cabal that has a complete monopoly on power and gets everything that it wants.
    Last edited by bsbray, 4th July 2016 at 00:01.

  4. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to bsbray For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (4th July 2016), Cearna (4th July 2016), Dreamtimer (4th July 2016), Elen (4th July 2016), lcam88 (4th July 2016)

  5. #3
    Retired Member
    Join Date
    10th June 2015
    Posts
    1,009
    Thanks
    2,129
    Thanked 3,244 Times in 922 Posts
    Fair enough bsbray. Consider, has the public backlash of that Bush election scandal when Florida started counting ballots by hand ever move beyond the speculation stage and been put to real scrutiny? At last the same type of scrutiny as the Scottish vote you shared?

    If you have a link to a thread here on TOT elaborating evidences examined on the rape, pillage and murder of natives please link. I think most of us are willing to accept such claims because we like to see our leaders in that light, but... anyway, if you share a link I'll read up and comment where it is more appropriate.

    Quote Originally posted by bsbray
    I don't know if outstanding honesty is the characteristic that particularly sets the British apart from the rest of them
    I only use the term to suggest that the outright swindle is something un-English, they will tend to "swindle" openly as they don't see their prepotension as something to be hidden... historically anyway, and in my view.

    Furthermore, it seems to me that Portuguese mentality during the 15 and 1600's was that they would colonise in a way that was deliberately to pretend the rest of the world didn't exist. This mentality has reared its head in certain particularities that are even present today. I'll try to touch on a couple of here.

    In brazil, numbers use a comma where the rest of the world uses a decimal point. 10.25 (10 1/4) is written 10,25. You see, they weren't smart enough to invent fpart notation for mathematics and so they borrowed (like almost every other culture), but they changed to notation so that within their borders (universe) things are done their way. This is the first of many countries I've visited that appears to take pride in a nuance of their legacy in that way.

    Here, electrical outlets follow a "pattern" that initially started ideologically, the Neutral and Phase (N and P) poles in an basic electrical circuit was understood to be opposites and electrical plugs where designed with quite a large gap between the two as though to flaunt to their minion of engineers world how great, or superior their design is, to the point of mandating it. Then when 3 pronged plugs became more popular with the realisation that a 3rd wire Ground (G) was more safe, they added the G prong to their prior design, but, offset by 3mm between the other two. So now you have their initial superior design, crippled by a 3rd pole that then reversed their previous merits of superior design as the poles are now very close together. But it doesn't end there! The proper position of the G pole between N and P is 3 cm above the N <-> P line. So what we always knew, that Ground is terra, is earth, is down has been reversed. Probably the same reason a period for the decimal point was "too standard", that comma was to be used instead.

    Why be such a non-conformist about such little things? I say its a cultural thing, the mentality, tradition is about the backdoor nuance that is ever present because "prepotension" here is something they would like to be open only in the club. Because the English mentality is about a worldly empire, they did not think necessarily about the backdoor as something required, they thought about the front being "proper". To pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist is simply not "thinking empirically ". The imitation of the empiric concept the English used to define measures applied in the nuance is laughable, they missed the point! They certainly didn't think about empire building in the same way as the English.

    And that is where we stand with Benghazi, oversight that is unable to do its function because of nuance or "backdoor prepotension" that misses the point. Democrats are an integral part of oversight, but when they are overseeing one of their own, they are confused about what they are doing.

    Quote Originally posted by bsbray
    ... I think we are not governed by a single cabal that has a complete monopoly on power and gets everything that it wants.
    Not governed by a single cabal?

    PS, I think I might have overcooked the "English honesty" idea above. :/ Fundamentally there is a reason English colonies did so much better than spanish or portuguese colonies. It is an issue dealing with tradition, culture and values, the analogies I share above are meant to touch to those values. I hope that is understood.
    Last edited by lcam88, 4th July 2016 at 01:38.

  6. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to lcam88 For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (4th July 2016), Cearna (4th July 2016), Dreamtimer (4th July 2016), Elen (4th July 2016), modwiz (4th July 2016)

  7. #4
    Administrator Aragorn's Avatar
    Join Date
    17th March 2015
    Location
    Middle-Earth
    Posts
    20,240
    Thanks
    88,437
    Thanked 80,969 Times in 20,255 Posts
    Quote Originally posted by lcam88 View Post
    [...] In brazil, numbers use a comma where the rest of the world uses a decimal point. 10.25 (10 1/4) is written 10,25. [...]
    Well, that depends on how you define "the rest of the world". In the Dutch language — albeit not in its offshoot Afrikaans, because of the former British influence in the development of modern-day South African culture — and in French and German, we also use a decimal comma, and a period as a thousands separator. In fact, this is quite common in Europe, although I'm not sure whether every single European nation follows this notation.

    I have no objections to using a decimal point — I tend to do this myself quite a lot — but I have personally always found a comma as a thousands separator confusing. Maybe it's just my neurology. So I will commonly — and in the spirit of international communication by way of the English language — use a point for decimals and an apostrophe as a thousands separator, which is something I have picked up from an electronic calculator, and which was probably simply related to the crystal banks in the digits on the LCD screen.

    Being a former Portuguese colony, I think that Brazil would probably simply be using the decimal comma because of how prevalent that is in Europe — minus the United Kingdom and Ireland, that is. For that matter, even though the UK has adopted the metric system, they still do use their imperial measurements system as well. Weights are still expressed in pounds and ounces — sometimes even in "stone" — and distances are still expressed in inches, feet, yards and miles. Likewise, volume is still often (but not always) expressed in gallons — being the imperial gallon of course, not the US gallon, which is larger.

    When it comes to automotive applications, the vehicle's power is still expressed in horsepower in the UK, but this is then the German industry standard horsepower, commonly written as "PS", "DIN PS" or "DIN HP" — DIN stands for "Deutsche Industrie Norm" and "PS" stands for "Pferdestärke". Acronymians use bhp — for "brake horsepower" — which yields a slightly lower value than PS for the amount of power developed by the same engine — and they refer to the PS value as "metric horsepower", even though there is no such thing, because horsepower is not a metric unit. Fuel consumption is expressed in "miles to the gallon" — which is also what the Acronymians use, although they say "miles per gallon" — and torque is expressed in pound-feet (lb.ft) or foot-pounds (ft.lb).

    The European mainland expresses torque in Newton-meters (Nm), automotive power in PS (*) — with the metric value in kW (kilowatts) added between brackets — and fuel consumption in "liters per 100 km". The Dutch have experimented with expressing fuel consumption in "kilometers per liter" for a while — analogous to the "miles per gallon" used in the US and the UK — but they eventually dropped it in favor of "liters per 100 km" as the rest of Europe found the numbers too difficult to relate to.

    Official government instances and insurance companies exclusively use kW for rating automotive power, but the kW never caught on in the rest of Europe for expressing automotive power; people keep on using (German) horsepower as the more familiar unit. We do use Watts or kW for electrical appliances, though. Australia on the other hand has completely adopted the metric system and expresses even automotive engine power only in kW anymore.


    (*) In France and Southern Europe, they use "CV" ("chevaux") instead, and in the Dutch language, we use "PK" ("paardenkracht"), but this is the same unit as PS. It's merely a translation of the German word "Pferdestärke".
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

  8. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to Aragorn For This Useful Post:

    bsbray (4th July 2016), Cearna (4th July 2016), Elen (4th July 2016), lcam88 (4th July 2016), modwiz (4th July 2016)

  9. #5
    Retired Member
    Join Date
    13th September 2013
    Location
    Blue Mountains NSW
    Posts
    1,056
    Thanks
    27,209
    Thanked 6,042 Times in 1,040 Posts
    Quote Originally posted by Aragorn View Post
    Well, that depends on how you define "the rest of the world". In the Dutch language — albeit not in its offshoot Afrikaans, because of the former British influence in the development of modern-day South African culture — and in French and German, we also use a decimal comma, and a period as a thousands separator. In fact, this is quite common in Europe, although I'm not sure whether every single European nation follows this notation.

    I have no objections to using a decimal point — I tend to do this myself quite a lot — but I have personally always found a comma as a thousands separator confusing. Maybe it's just my neurology. So I will commonly — and in the spirit of international communication by way of the English language — use a point for decimals and an apostrophe as a thousands separator, which is something I have picked up from an electronic calculator, and which was probably simply related to the crystal banks in the digits on the LCD screen.

    Being a former Portuguese colony, I think that Brazil would probably simply be using the decimal comma because of how prevalent that is in Europe — minus the United Kingdom and Ireland, that is. For that matter, even though the UK has adopted the metric system, they still do use their imperial measurements system as well. Weights are still expressed in pounds and ounces — sometimes even in "stone" — and distances are still expressed in inches, feet, yards and miles. Likewise, volume is still often (but not always) expressed in gallons — being the imperial gallon of course, not the US gallon, which is larger.

    When it comes to automotive applications, the vehicle's power is still expressed in horsepower in the UK, but this is then the German industry standard horsepower, commonly written as "PS", "DIN PS" or "DIN HP" — DIN stands for "Deutsche Industrie Norm" and "PS" stands for "Pferdestärke". Acronymians use bhp — for "brake horsepower" — which yields a slightly lower value than PS for the amount of power developed by the same engine — and they refer to the PS value as "metric horsepower", even though there is no such thing, because horsepower is not a metric unit. Fuel consumption is expressed in "miles to the gallon" — which is also what the Acronymians use, although they say "miles per gallon" — and torque is expressed in pound-feet (lb.ft) or foot-pounds (ft.lb).

    The European mainland expresses torque in Newton-meters (Nm), automotive power in PS (*) — with the metric value in kW (kilowatts) added between brackets — and fuel consumption in "liters per 100 km". The Dutch have experimented with expressing fuel consumption in "kilometers per liter" for a while — analogous to the "miles per gallon" used in the US and the UK — but they eventually dropped it in favor of "liters per 100 km" as the rest of Europe found the numbers too difficult to relate to.

    Official government instances and insurance companies exclusively use kW for rating automotive power, but the kW never caught on in the rest of Europe for expressing automotive power; people keep on using (German) horsepower as the more familiar unit. We do use Watts or kW for electrical appliances, though. Australia on the other hand has completely adopted the metric system and expresses even automotive engine power only in kW anymore.


    (*) In France and Southern Europe, they use "CV" ("chevaux") instead, and in the Dutch language, we use "PK" ("paardenkracht"), but this is the same unit as PS. It's merely a translation of the German word "Pferdestärke".


    Are you surprised that we need to have some system development going on somewhere - and people have decided to opt out and live in their own little world. I grew up, with pounds, shillings and pence and the avoidupois system, which we learnt off by heart, from 3rd class on, some of which I still remember, and still use, because all our sewing work was done, in inches, feet and yards and I know how big 5/8th of an inch seam allowance is like the back of my hand, but it's eqivialent in metric, still eludes me to some extent.

    Then we went metric - fortunately for the most part we are isolated in our own little island continent, for our oldies would never cope with what you have just expressed, because as I keep saying, large numbers of us only speak Strine, and some of us possibly Indonesian or Japanese, because of trade arrangements, unless we have another language background, some in primary school even learn aboriginal, but the number of dialects used makes even that difficult.

    Oh what a tangled web, needs to be re-woven somewhere???????

  10. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to Cearna For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (4th July 2016), bsbray (4th July 2016), Dreamtimer (4th July 2016), Elen (4th July 2016), modwiz (4th July 2016)

  11. #6
    Senior Member Morocco modwiz's Avatar
    Join Date
    13th September 2013
    Location
    Nestled in Appalachia
    Posts
    6,720
    Thanks
    40,125
    Thanked 41,242 Times in 6,698 Posts
    Quote Originally posted by Cearna View Post
    Are you surprised that we need to have some system development going on somewhere - and people have decided to opt out and live in their own little world. I grew up, with pounds, shillings and pence and the avoidupois system, which we learnt off by heart, from 3rd class on, some of which I still remember, and still use, because all our sewing work was done, in inches, feet and yards and I know how big 5/8th of an inch seam allowance is like the back of my hand, but it's eqivialent in metric, still eludes me to some extent.

    Then we went metric - fortunately for the most part we are isolated in our own little island continent, for our oldies would never cope with what you have just expressed, because as I keep saying, large numbers of us only speak Strine, and some of us possibly Indonesian or Japanese, because of trade arrangements, unless we have another language background, some in primary school even learn aboriginal, but the number of dialects used makes even that difficult.

    Oh what a tangled web, needs to be re-woven somewhere???????
    Metric system "feels" inorganic to me. A system based in 10 does not fit will with sacred geometry either. Although they can have some relationship with each other. For instance, Pi is 3.14xxxxxxxx and Phi is 1.618xxx. These are based on a decimal system to express them in numbers yet, they allow us to understand and "compute" circles and segments based in geometry. For math decimals work. For organic things, measurements of volumes and lengths, I like the Imperial system. I am keeping this very short.
    Last edited by modwiz, 4th July 2016 at 08:10.
    "To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize" -- Voltaire

    "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."-- Eleanor Roosevelt

    "Misery loves company. Wisdom has to look for it." -- Anonymous

  12. The Following 7 Users Say Thank You to modwiz For This Useful Post:

    aKnightThatSaysNi (13th July 2016), Aragorn (4th July 2016), bsbray (4th July 2016), Cearna (4th July 2016), Dreamtimer (4th July 2016), Elen (4th July 2016), lcam88 (4th July 2016)

  13. #7
    (account terminated) United States
    Join Date
    16th January 2015
    Location
    Au dela
    Posts
    2,901
    Thanks
    17,558
    Thanked 12,648 Times in 2,895 Posts
    Quote Originally posted by lcam88 View Post
    Fair enough bsbray. Consider, has the public backlash of that Bush election scandal when Florida started counting ballots by hand ever move beyond the speculation stage and been put to real scrutiny? At last the same type of scrutiny as the Scottish vote you shared?
    I don't think either have ever been scrutinized by anyone other than the general public, except this public hearing about US election fraud:


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEzY2tnwExs


    If something similar has occurred about the Scotland vote I don't know about it, and I think the point is pretty moot anyway. I have never seen any reason why any government in Europe, or any major government anywhere else in the world, should be significantly less corrupt so that voter fraud would not occur.

    If you have a link to a thread here on TOT elaborating evidences examined on the rape, pillage and murder of natives please link. I think most of us are willing to accept such claims because we like to see our leaders in that light, but... anyway, if you share a link I'll read up and comment where it is more appropriate.
    I don't have time to dig up the entire history of European or even just British offenses against Native Americans but I'm sure you could find lots of things on Google if you really wanted. It would save me the time of finding it for you and I would be very appreciative. I thought it was fairly well understood that no one was exactly treating the natives with kindness and respect, to put it mildly (except for the Quakers of Pennsylvania). Here is a Wikipedia page about the Siege of Fort Pitt where British leaders conspired to spread smallpox to native tribes by giving them contaminated blankets, to get you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt

    I only use the term to suggest that the outright swindle is something un-English, they will tend to "swindle" openly as they don't see their prepotension as something to be hidden... historically anyway, and in my view.
    Yes, I have no idea what you are basing these views on. Your original point was that you don't think elections can be rigged as easily in Britain because they insist upon more transparency and this sort of thing, but I haven't seen the things you apparently have which have led you to believe that. European government in general strikes me as more bureaucratic and convoluted if anything.

    And that is where we stand with Benghazi, oversight that is unable to do its function because of nuance or "backdoor prepotension" that misses the point.
    I don't know if you're aware of it but Britain was involved in the operations against Libya, and MI6 is running around doing the same things as the CIA and Mossad and all the rest. I wonder where James Bond fits into your idea of the British. These are the classical underworld cabal types you know.

    Not governed by a single cabal?
    Yes, as in I think there is more competition for power going on in the world than you imply when you say "they" won't allow this or that, as if there is just one group running things.

    PS, I think I might have overcooked the "English honesty" idea above. :/ Fundamentally there is a reason English colonies did so much better than spanish or portuguese colonies. It is an issue dealing with tradition, culture and values, the analogies I share above are meant to touch to those values. I hope that is understood.
    This is actually something that a lot of research has gone into, comparing and contrasting the colonization efforts of various countries. It's massively complex, as you can imagine if you think of the different internal situations going on in each country, the natural resources and manpower available to each country, their different styles of government, the different kinds of revolutions that evolved to create those governments (Mexico, for example, was embroiled in civil wars and revolutions for a long time and was not nearly as stable as the US early on), the demographics of the population (class divisions, racial tensions), economic systems, trade relations, etc. Culture is tied in with all of these things but it's not a simple subject. The British still had fairly rigid social classes (from royalty and nobility on down to peasants and slaves, still a feudal system at heart) at the time of the US revolution, and the US did away with all of that except of course for slavery, which had a lot to do with accelerating social and economic development since there was much more social/class mobility. So it gets complicated when you take all of these things into account.

  14. The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to bsbray For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (4th July 2016), Cearna (4th July 2016), Dreamtimer (4th July 2016), Elen (4th July 2016), lcam88 (4th July 2016), modwiz (4th July 2016)

  15. #8
    Retired Member
    Join Date
    10th June 2015
    Posts
    1,009
    Thanks
    2,129
    Thanked 3,244 Times in 922 Posts
    Thanks Aragorn and bsbray, points taken,

    Perhaps the use of comma delimited fparts have a history deeper than we know. I didn't know it was so widespread in Europe I never noticed the comma during my time in France or Italy. To me the delimitation of thousands groupings using period is more odd than the comma or even a simple space. So odd indeed that I am complaining about the comma delimited decimal parts as though it is a sign of portuguese decadence! <facepalm/> I'm a programmer so I do have to fret over it.

    Measurements of power and torque, indeed seem more empirical as used in industry, perhaps because it is more straight forward to think of force in terms pounds than newtons? I don't know. A HP (horsepower) is essentially that, the average amount of work an "average" horse can produce over a period of 12 hours. The vagueness about what is an average horse... <eye roll/> maybe the germans had to keep the english honest about it?

    Thanks for keeping it straight bsbray. I appreciate it. So perhaps election rigging is just as much a part of democracy as voting? What does that say about democracy? And considering those "Cabal" groups, what does it say about them?

    Quote Originally posted by bsbray
    Your original point was that you don't think elections can be rigged as easily in Britain because they insist upon more transparency...
    Yes indeed, I also have my doubts; there are other possible reasons for the Brexit results that are equally speculative... Off topic. (as if that really matters here)

    While the issue of how and why English colonies are more successful may be made complicated, it fundamentally comes down to values and culture IMO, it comes down to the people involved acting in ways that fill the "details" aspect lost in history. Complications tend only to try to grapple with something not easily understood.

    Since you mention Mexico, Cortez arrived set spanish values and traditions into the population. Same as in most of south america where conquistadors tried to duplicate what he had done. Brazil is the exception, and it isn't much better. In Africa, there are french and italian colonies that all seem to have suffered the hand of european values. You can make it all as complicated as you want, but England created colonies that over all have better social order. I suppose that is the word I was looking for all this time, "order". The English have quite a bloody history, filled with war and death, undeniably a price for their idea of order.

    Considering order... the dutch, specifically the East India Trading company... The most successful and longest running "corporation" in the world... That says something for their values and culture... They didn't burden themselves with colonies for the most part. I think they may have tried.

    Pardon me for the off-topic. Benghazi... Does anyone care about Benghazi at all?

  16. The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to lcam88 For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (4th July 2016), bsbray (6th July 2016), Cearna (6th July 2016), Dreamtimer (4th July 2016), Elen (4th July 2016), modwiz (5th July 2016)

  17. #9
    (account terminated) United States
    Join Date
    16th January 2015
    Location
    Au dela
    Posts
    2,901
    Thanks
    17,558
    Thanked 12,648 Times in 2,895 Posts
    Quote Originally posted by lcam88 View Post
    In Africa, there are french and italian colonies that all seem to have suffered the hand of european values. You can make it all as complicated as you want, but England created colonies that over all have better social order.
    The English had colonies in Africa that didn't work out very well for them either. One of the biggest problems with all of these South American countries founded by the Iberians is that since the 1800's the US has been screwing with them, and particularly since the creation of the CIA. A lot of the instability you're blaming on Spanish or Portuguese culture could just as well be blamed on the US overthrowing governments all over Central and South America and generally causing chaos to its own benefit. We don't overthrow governments like Canada or Australia because the people there are already very well controlled.

    Quote Originally posted by Novusod View Post
    The only reasons these investigations were put forward was to show Washington insiders that Hillary Clinton was above the law. The general US public is too stupid to read between the lines and will swallow the official story of her being not guilty. The FBI's statement is telling. They know she is guilty but they are not going to press charges just because... Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi i
    The director probably has his hands tied or he's indebted to them or being blackmailed in some way.

    Clinton Body Count


    Here's an animation of Bill cutting it up while leaving a funeral of a "friend" until he sees a camera and goes into fake cry mode. These guys are mob types and wouldn't mind putting out a hit on somebody if they had to.


  18. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to bsbray For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (6th July 2016), Cearna (7th July 2016), Dreamtimer (6th July 2016), Elen (6th July 2016), modwiz (6th July 2016)

  19. #10
    Retired Member
    Join Date
    10th June 2015
    Posts
    1,009
    Thanks
    2,129
    Thanked 3,244 Times in 922 Posts
    The fact is many other groups tried to duplicate what Cortez managed to do with the Aztecs: => "Cortez model" values being instilled in colonies designed to enable a value grab... That is different from setting up an system of "integrity and governability", of social order, the way the british where interested in doing. (I used quotes there because those values are subjectively used).

    I agree that lack of "integrity and governability" in the early history of a colony would make it much easier for CIA to corrupt, indeed these places where conceived corrupt as soon as colonizers prioritized their value grab.

    If you want to get into the nuances, I think it is more fit to start by blaming colonizers/conquistadores for the values they introduced into their colonies. But to say then that the values of Spanish or Portuguese colonizers/conquistadores where cultural exceptions from the national norm is a weak position. That those "cortez model" values may have been much more culturally intrinsic to the colonizers is quite arguable; they only needed to find perhaps primitive peoples they could freely submit to their ideals. So, if you want understand that I "blame" Spanish or Portuguese culture, indeed I think there are valid points to say such blame would not be misplaced.

    But even ignoring that, the motive of extracting wealth using a Cortez-like model introduces social values that increase the chances of "social failure".

    My entire point is simply that the English colonizers didn't burden their colonies with those social values as much (or at all) as other european colonizers certainly did.

    English ex-colonies in Africa... South Africa is a relative success. They did the apartheid thing instead of only mass murder of the natives that time around. Indeed South Africa is probably the best African country for you and I to think about living in. I certainly think it is better than Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Mozambique...

    We are off topic.

    It seems US Government has adopted "value grab" social values with the Clinton inditement position. That is real perspective for what residents of a spanish colony must have had during the introduction of "spanish values" in their community.

    Quote Originally posted by bsbray
    These guys are mob types and wouldn't mind putting out a hit on somebody if they had to.
    And they did. The investigators got this story all wrong.
    Last edited by lcam88, 6th July 2016 at 18:19.

  20. The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to lcam88 For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (6th July 2016), bsbray (6th July 2016), Cearna (7th July 2016), Dreamtimer (6th July 2016), Elen (7th July 2016), modwiz (6th July 2016)

  21. #11
    (account terminated) United States
    Join Date
    16th January 2015
    Location
    Au dela
    Posts
    2,901
    Thanks
    17,558
    Thanked 12,648 Times in 2,895 Posts
    Quote Originally posted by lcam88 View Post
    The fact is many other groups tried to duplicate what Cortez managed to do with the Aztecs: => "Cortez model" values being instilled in colonies designed to enable a value grab... That is different from setting up an system of "integrity and governability", of social order, the way the british where interested in doing. (I used quotes there because those values are subjectively used).
    Cortez was in many ways a representative of the Catholic Church. Which reminds me that one of the biggest differences between the English and Dutch colonies versus the French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies is that the former were Protestant while the latter were Catholic. The Anglican church was strict in the American colonies (in Virginia they lynched Puritans and Quakers from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania from time to time, if they happened to wander across the border) but the Protestants were more ascetic and reserved than their Catholic counterparts who were accustomed to just paying their way out of sins (not an option for the Protestants).

    In fact if you tried to really get at the heart, the core thing about British culture that you think has made the British colonies more organized (however we want to define that, and I think defining it more precisely would really help clarify this issue) is bound to be tied up in all of these other factors that I'm talking about. You have to also remember that before the US became a super power, the world did not look like it did today, and you may be attributing things to the colonial period that really have their root in the imperialist period.

    English ex-colonies in Africa... South Africa is a relative success. They did the apartheid thing instead of only mass murder of the natives that time around. Indeed South Africa is probably the best African country for you and I to think about living in. I certainly think it is better than Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Mozambique...
    Depends on how you want to look at it I guess. Even though it's a predominantly black country it was ruled by a white minority for about 60 years, so that was the most immediate thing that the British left to it. Nigeria was another British colony and the corruption there is so bad that it's basically mob rule.

    And yes I know we are slightly off topic.

  22. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to bsbray For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (6th July 2016), Cearna (7th July 2016), Elen (7th July 2016), lcam88 (6th July 2016), modwiz (6th July 2016)

  23. #12
    Retired Member
    Join Date
    10th June 2015
    Posts
    1,009
    Thanks
    2,129
    Thanked 3,244 Times in 922 Posts
    Yes, heavy Catholic influence. No doubt. But still cortez must have add his own spice to the recipe, a spice that then was used in many other colonization events, as though it where acceptable. If the church was still finishing its fight against the matriarchal belief systems from the prior age of humanity (my contention), it would not specify how "conversion" was to take place, only that conversion was mandated.

    Is having been influenced by the Catholic church an acceptable excuse to then dismiss the seedings of these corruption cultural values in Spanish or Portuguese colonies? Even if colonizers/conquistadors added something of their own into the mix?

    Nigeria. I didn't know it was a british venture. Thanks for that too. Some fail...

    This point of Catholic influence, it was indeed more rejected by the British. Protestants... Good point has sparked the degradation of my arguments footing.

    Is the point you are making that the Catholic influence has more influence in the 3rd world system than culture?
    Last edited by lcam88, 6th July 2016 at 20:37.

  24. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to lcam88 For This Useful Post:

    bsbray (6th July 2016), Cearna (7th July 2016), Dreamtimer (6th July 2016), Elen (7th July 2016)

  25. #13
    (account terminated) United States
    Join Date
    16th January 2015
    Location
    Au dela
    Posts
    2,901
    Thanks
    17,558
    Thanked 12,648 Times in 2,895 Posts
    Quote Originally posted by lcam88 View Post
    Yes, heavy Catholic influence. No doubt. But still cortez must have add his own spice to the recipe, a spice that then was used in many other colonization events, as though it where acceptable.
    Can you define for me exactly what you mean here by his "spice"? If you mean taking Native American land by force and killing lots of people (what he was probably most famous for, his military conquests), the British colonists did that too. The British colonists (followed by the US government) actually seem to have been less concerned about converting and integrating natives in the end, preferring just to push them farther and farther west and/or kill them. That's why there is less native blood in the populations of former British colonies today than you see in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, etc.

    Is having been influenced by the Catholic church an acceptable excuse to then dismiss the seedings of these corruption cultural values in Spanish or Portuguese colonies? Even if colonizers/conquistadors added something of their own into the mix?
    Can you try to define more exactly what you mean by corrupted cultural values? Also I'm not trying to excuse anything in a moral sense, I'm just giving you examples of some of the many differences in the paths that colonizers and their colonies took that have led to the situation today, and this all happened in stages over the course of a few hundred years.

    Nigeria. I didn't know it was a british venture. Thanks for that too. Some fail...
    I think it would help a lot if we define these terms like "fail" or "corrupt" in something measurable rather than just abstract ideas. Maybe we could use the Human Development Index, in which case Argentina and Chile have very high ratings and are not at all failures, despite Chile at least having geographical handicaps.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

    Also interesting to note on here is that of the top 10 countries by this ranking, 9 of them have Protestant backgrounds and only one (Ireland) is Catholic. But Nigeria is not ranked very well at all.

    Is the point you are making that the Catholic influence has more influence in the 3rd world system than culture?
    I don't think you can separate religion from culture in the colonial era when the church was the center of every community, both Protestant and Catholic. "Culture" is an abstract idea that encompasses a lot of things. In the US we're often said to have a consumer culture. You can't have that without a strong capitalist economy, so economy and international trade also affect culture. If you don't have a strong economy then you're going to have a lot of poor people and that usually leads to slums, unrest and violence, which just can't be helped if the economy isn't being organized in some way.

    I guess we could split this off into a "Contrasting Colonial Powers" thread or something if you want.

  26. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to bsbray For This Useful Post:

    Cearna (7th July 2016), Dreamtimer (9th July 2016), Elen (7th July 2016), lcam88 (7th July 2016)

  27. #14
    Senior Member Morocco modwiz's Avatar
    Join Date
    13th September 2013
    Location
    Nestled in Appalachia
    Posts
    6,720
    Thanks
    40,125
    Thanked 41,242 Times in 6,698 Posts
    There is another interesting breakdown of religions. The Anglican or Episcopal church refer to themselves as the Holy Catholic church. Protestants start with Martin Luther and the Reformation. If we can extrapolate from the videos Sylvie has made, the re-writing of history begins in earnest at this period with the Gutenberg press creating new books to rapidly replace the burnt original manuscripts with "new" versions. So, one sees the Protestant movement as a way for Rome to have someone do a lot of their dirty work and play the role of attack dog. More witches were burned in Germany, by Protestants, than the Roman Church could ever hope to. In many ways, the Reformation could have its roots with the Jesuits. So, Anglican, as Protestants is more of a Rome church thing than is obvious. Lumping the Holy Catholic church in with Protestants is taking liberties, IMO. Henry the Vlll never considered himself a lapsed Catholic. He excommunicated Rome, lol.
    Last edited by modwiz, 6th July 2016 at 22:03.
    "To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize" -- Voltaire

    "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."-- Eleanor Roosevelt

    "Misery loves company. Wisdom has to look for it." -- Anonymous

  28. The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to modwiz For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (7th July 2016), bsbray (6th July 2016), Cearna (7th July 2016), Dreamtimer (9th July 2016), Elen (7th July 2016), lcam88 (7th July 2016)

  29. #15
    (account terminated) United States
    Join Date
    16th January 2015
    Location
    Au dela
    Posts
    2,901
    Thanks
    17,558
    Thanked 12,648 Times in 2,895 Posts
    That's a good point about the Anglicans, modwiz. In the US the real protestants were mostly landing in the North and you can see that these are exactly the same states where industrialization first developed here, and a lot of other progressive things. Of course how much those two things are related can be debated but the split from both Rome and the Anglicans (the Quakers and Puritans were persecuted in England too) seems to become most significant when all of these people started taking the words of Jesus deadly serious instead of just listening to a bunch of Latin gibberish and paying their tithes. That's not that the strict Protestants were the greatest bunch in the world but I am convinced that they were absolutely genuine in their faith, at least the ones who fled to America for it.

  30. The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to bsbray For This Useful Post:

    Aragorn (7th July 2016), Cearna (7th July 2016), Dreamtimer (7th July 2016), Elen (7th July 2016), lcam88 (7th July 2016), modwiz (6th July 2016)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •