RE: Some thoughts

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 19-11-02 AT 07:50 PM (GMT)]” I think I told you before that Britain was not cruel to the same level of the Spanish and Portugese. Why you need to equate England with the conquistadors of Spain astounds me. The fact is cruel rule had nothing to do with how powerful a nation was, that is a lame and ignorant excuse by you. At the height of colonial times, Britain was the most powerful nation, no other nation could even hold a candle to their feats. “

Sorry Sam, with all do respect, but you`re just BS here. England not as cruel as the Spanish conquistadores. Mmm, again, who were the ones who invented concentration camps? The Germans, I guess not. I don`t think it really matters who were the cruelest. And Britain was a powerful nation, but at what cost? How many wars with Spain, France, Austria, the United Provinces (at least 3)?? Britain was not so cruel, at the times of the first colonisation, because the country was still a mess. Only Elizabeth I could organise the country a bit, but while Spain was discovering the world, England was going through multiple civil wars.

” Human rights may have been a “new” concept for you Spaniards, but not for us Asians.”

Human rights as they exist today are actually a product of Jewish-Christian belief. In theory, Christianity was the first religion on the European continent who preached tollerance, but we all know what happened during the Crusades. Though I have the greatest respect for Asian phylosophy, Human rights as they exist today are really a western invention. But long before Europe was getting civilised, Indian tribes had already civilisations which preached tollerance.

RE: Very funny, but in Dutch unfortunately

Hihi, das inderdaad wel grappig.

Asjemenou, als je tenminste een woordje hollands spreekt he.

}> De Verenigde Staten, je naait het steeds

RE: Who Cares?

… The Turks in eastern Europe (almost conquered Vienna)
… The Americans on the Philippines
… China in Tibet
… Morocco in the western-Sahara

…

RE: UN resolutions

I don’t include Turkey in it as I don’t consider Turkey to be a European country and I don’t think it should ever join the EU.

RE: UN resolutions

I think it is important that every member of the EU should back the enlargement. If Turkey would join in 2004, than the EU would have nothing else to do than calm the tensions between Greece and Turkey. I think the EU has other things to focus on.

As for Belgium, I can only say our gov’t supports the membership of Poland, Czech Rep., the Baltic States, Malta, Slovenia, Hungary and Cyrpus. Bulgaria, Romania and others will not join before 2020 or even later.

RE: Cyprus issue

As I said before, the chances of Turkey joining the EU are marginal. The EU doesn’t even make a secret of it anymore that it fears the ‘Islam’, and most Europeans seem to support the EU in that way.

What should happen to Cyprus. Well, some officials from Belgium have gone to Cyprus to explain how we try to keep peace here with 2 different cultures. I’m sure there are enough people in Cyprus who have the brains to organise a state in which both minorities could live peacefully, and I don’t think this has anything to do with EU-membership or not. Ofcourse, it would be in Turkey’s own interests if they would call back their troops out of Cyrpus. Even if they will not join the EU, keeping a good relationship between the two mediteranian powers would be preferable.

RE: Ambitions As A Child??????

I always wanted to become a helicopter pilot. As I grew up in Koksijde, I have always been impressed by those Sea King helicopters performing heroic acts (at least in my eyes back then).

RE: Some thoughts

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 17-11-02 AT 04:03 PM (GMT)]”But history is history, and it´s only to learn from it.”

A very interesting point of discussion you brought up. First of all, it’s naive to place todays values in a historical context. As Keltic said, The Aztecs were probably more cruel than the Spanish, still nobody talks about them. Why? Because they simply don’t exist anymore? Or because it’s so much easier to pick on the Spanish.
I think focussing on Spain and Britain’s bad points does not give a an exact point of what the situation was back then. As we said, we are using modern values and place them simply into the history as if it happened today.

Ohh and before anyone starts accusing me of being euro-centric, I’m not. I’m perfectly aware of the problems related to colonialism. But simply saying that all the conquistadores did was bad is just not true. Some of them had good intentions, others were just after the gold. Spreading the christian belief was just a priority in the 16th century, by all means necessairy. Is it so different from today’s new belief, the economy??? Don’t we also bomb countries to spread our god, the almighty dollar, or the less almighty euro. And don’t we also want to finish off the devil himself, today being referred as Saddam :7. Maybe this sounds a bit silly, but I hope you understand what I want to say. Just because we now have other values, because we give more about the dollar than the pope, doesn’t mean we are better.
We should not judge the people of then, maybe they find our way of approaching conflicts as disgusting as we think about them.

“L’histoire se repête.”

I don’t think we will ever learn from history, because by the time you see the similarity in it, it’s already too late.