English as a universal language

[Sharkith]

No, people have simply responded to the comments that specifically highlighted the things the British empire did wrong, that's unfair when it's not only the British empire that did things wrong.

It's like saying "muslims blow people up", it's true in one context but it's hardly a fair picture to paint of all muslims is it?

as far as I can see defending the point (whatever this point is) is undermining your own argument about wars leading to stability.

If for example German society decided that they were not the only ones who were bad in the second world war and that after all the British and Americans had carpet bombed Dresden and deliberately targetted civilian populations.

Lets go on. In todays political climate you find certain political groups tripping over themselves to deny history by arguing that the holocaust was over-exaggerated. So lets say that German society agrees to the re-writing of history and denies the holocaust. Not only this but they generalise and say that genocide has been part of any empire building in history and that all they did was follow the same line that others had taken including the British. So German society does this and move on in the way your suggesting that we should here (because its not fair!). Lets say Germany does this.

Who does this open the door for politically?

[Sharkith]

That's just it though, a discussion about the spread of the English language due to British imperialism can be had without any judgement of the level of brutality involved - there's no need to judge the British in that discussion, however if the British are being judged as part of that discussion surely a response is equally fair?

Crickey Xest, is it truly possible to seperate imperialism from some form of brutality or another?

[Ovi]

Sharkith,

I think you are confusing 2 seperate points, probably caused by my clumsy way of trying to exlpain them.

My original point was that I am not ashamed of the British Empire because no-one knew any better at the time.

That is quite a seperate statement from saying that what they did was wrong, by what we now know.

In judging whether to be ashamed we shouldn't view the actions with hindsight, we should compare the actions to what else was happening at the time.

To judge whether what they did was right or wrong, and what lessons to learn then of course we need to use hindsight.

[Xest]

as far as I can see defending the point (whatever this point is) is undermining your own argument about wars leading to stability.

If for example German society decided that they were not the only ones who were bad in the second world war and that after all the British and Americans had carpet bombed Dresden and deliberately targetted civilian populations.

Lets go on. In todays political climate you find certain political groups tripping over themselves to deny history by arguing that the holocaust was over-exaggerated. So lets say that German society agrees to the re-writing of history and denies the holocaust. Not only this but they generalise and say that genocide has been part of any empire building in history and that all they did was follow the same line that others had taken including the British. So German society does this and move on in the way your suggesting that we should here (because its not fair!). Lets say Germany does this.

Who does this open the door for politically?

You're still simply not getting the underlying point. No one's denying that what happened back then was bad compared to todays standards (although your argument about the holocaust is false in that what the Germans did WAS bad compared to the standards of the time).

[Gandelf]

I'd like to make an important point:-

Who writes the history books?
Everyone seems to the give the impression that their point of view is authoratitive. But, where do these people get their authoratitive information from? How can we know that such information (whatever version you use) is the truth? A lot of what happened in the past, happened years before any of us were born. We cannot talk with authority because we do not have first-hand experience of what actually happened. We rely on what we've read, seen on TV, in films, what other people have said, etc, but how can we be certain it's the truth? How do you safeguard against historians including things in their writings that are untrue? How can we safeguard against historians who are biassed in their attitude and allow that bias to be reflected in what they say?

[Ovi]

I'd like to make an important point:-

Who writes the history books?
Everyone seems to the give the impression that their point of view is authoratitive. But, where do these people get their authoratitive information from? How can we know that such information (whatever version you use) is the truth? A lot of what happened in the past, happened years before any of us were born. We cannot talk with authority because we do not have first-hand experience of what actually happened. We rely on what we've read, seen on TV, in films, what other people have said, etc, but how can we be certain it's the truth? How do you safeguard against historians including things in their writings that are untrue? How can we safeguard against historians who are biassed in their attitude and allow that bias to be reflected in what they say?

Simple answer, you can't.

It is no coincidence that the "good guys" win most wars, as the winners generally are the ones who write about it, or enforce their views on the losers who write about it too.

There is a saying (and a very good Extreme album) "Three sides to every story; yours, mine & the truth".

The way to get closest to the truth is to read "yours" and "mine" and guess where in the middle the truth comes. In a wider context there are usually multiple accounts to read, the more different account you read the closer to the truth you are likely to guess as long as they are from a varying perspectives of course.

[Alexandrinus]

kids what you doing here.....??
FH diskussions are so .....simple i whine on you and you whine back....this is to much i cannot read all sorry.
------------------------------
really mates the fact is, atm the FG FG socity is rebuilding, there was a huge hole when the über FG's left,its coming back and with the end of the holidays there will be no need for more cluster.

think that was the original plot of the treat thx

[Xest]

I'd like to make an important point:-

Who writes the history books?
Everyone seems to the give the impression that their point of view is authoratitive. But, where do these people get their authoratitive information from? How can we know that such information (whatever version you use) is the truth? A lot of what happened in the past, happened years before any of us were born. We cannot talk with authority because we do not have first-hand experience of what actually happened. We rely on what we've read, seen on TV, in films, what other people have said, etc, but how can we be certain it's the truth? How do you safeguard against historians including things in their writings that are untrue? How can we safeguard against historians who are biassed in their attitude and allow that bias to be reflected in what they say?

You can't, the best you can do is work from multiple sources to the best extent possible. Looking into World War II a fair bit from different sources world wide paints a very different picture to what I was taught at school, I was always taught the British won the war with a bit of American help, Americans seem to be taught they won the war but the more real picture seems to be that after England ensured air superiority in the battle of Britain they became pretty uninvadeable and Russia was making a strong push, whilst it may have taken longer, or Russia may have got greedy and taken over most of Europe it seems a pretty safe bet that Russia would've defeated the nazis without D-Day happening, when looking at it objectively Russia really does seem to be the country that deserves credit for ending the war in the way we know it over any other.

With new media like Wikipedia being editable world wide to allow everyones point of view to be shown and the countless blogs around the net you can paint a much better picture than ever before. You'll still never be able to find perfect truth however without experiencing it first hand.

[Ovi]

With new media like Wikipedia being editable world wide to allow everyones point of view to be shown and the countless blogs around the net you can paint a much better picture than ever before. You'll still never be able to find perfect truth however without experiencing it first hand.

Wikepedia comes with it's own problems though, since anyone can edit anyone can slant things their way.

Did they not change the posting rules because someone editted something deliberately wrong? Maybe you need to register now or something.

[Xest]

Wikepedia comes with it's own problems though, since anyone can edit anyone can slant things their way.

Did they not change the posting rules because someone editted something deliberately wrong? Maybe you need to register now or something.

Yeah there's a lot of safeguards in place now, you can get pretty decent information there - certainly more major articles are heavily scrutinised regularly. Some topics are locked so that only moderators can change them in the case that an article is pretty complete and so on, you do get the odd problem of course but it's fairly reliable - flaws are being ironed out pretty quickly.

I was going to post as an example in response to Gandelfs post the happenings in Israel/Lebanon in the last few days and the way blogs have uncovered some bias reporting there however I didn't have time so didn't bother however it seems I don't need to, the BBC has posted it's own summary of it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 775393.stm

The irony of the BBC post though is that it almost seems like a biased attack on other media outlets in itself however the BBC is equally guilty of being anti-Israeli both historically and nowadays. One obvious point you'll notice is that when figures of Israeli casualties are quoted they seperate civilian and military casualties, yet when it comes to Lebanese casualties they don't make the distinction and, in the way they present the figure it often suggests that 900 Lebanese civilians have been killed - that's not the case, a good few hundred of those Lebanese at absolute minimum are likely to be militants (Although, who's to say a military death is any less of a tragedy than a civilian death? that's a question for another day though!). Playing on figures like that is a typical yet subtle tactic the media uses to sway public opinion in a rather non-obvious way. In terms of the current Israel/Lebanon crisis to get the closest truth you can I recommend reading Israeli and Lebanese blogs and then somehow working out the mid point