Path: ccsf.homeunix.org!ccsf.homeunix.org!news1.wakwak.com!nf1.xephion.ne.jp!onion.ish.org!onodera-news!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!nntp.theplanet.net!inewsm1.nntp.theplanet.net!zen.net.uk!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!202.215.53.66!not-for-mail From: Declan Murphy Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan Subject: Re: Gifu bombing anniversary? Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 19:19:49 +0900 Lines: 67 Message-ID: <3F094945.5030708@hotmail.com> References:

<3F05CA44.9F142BE8@yahoo.co.jp> <545bd492.0307041729.584a4fdd@posting.google.com> <545bd492.0307051812.607d5677@posting.google.com> <545bd492.0307070003.684ecfce@posting.google.com> Reply-To: news@yamasa.org NNTP-Posting-Host: 202.215.53.66 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: fu-berlin.de 1057573156 3321766 202.215.53.66 (16 [139419]) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0rc2) Gecko/20020510 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en Xref: ccsf.homeunix.org fj.life.in-japan:2128 John R. Yamamoto- Wilson wrote: > masayuki yoshida wrote: >>Let me ask you a question, John. Which do you think was a more >>villainous nation as a collonialist, Japan or Britain? > > Only > Southern Ireland (the closest and the most ill-treated) opted definitively > to have nothing to do with the Commonwealth. Along with Burma, Nepal and all of the ex-colonies in the Middle East. The vast majority of course, remain members. Must be Wimbledon or sumthin. > But the British Empire was sold to the public at home as "the white man's > burden" - the plain *duty* of an "advanced" country to reach out a helping > hand to less "advantaged" countries. Of course, during the 18th and early > 19th centuries this was largely hogwash, but by the middle of the 19th > century the idea had permeated - "If we aren't there to *help* them, what > are we there for?" I loved India born, Eton College educated George Orwell's take on it in Burmese Days... He produced a copy of a bilingual paper called the Burmese Patriot. It was a miserable eight-page rag, villainously printed on paper as bad as blotting paper, and composed partly of news stolen from the Rangoon Gazette, partly of weak Nationalist heroics. On the last page the type had slipped and left the entire sheet jet black, as though in mourning for the smallness of the paper’s circulation. The article to which U Po Kyin turned was of a rather different stamp from the rest. It ran: "In these happy times, when we poor blacks are being uplifted by the mighty western civilization, with its manifold blessings such as the cinematograph, machine-guns, syphilis, etc., what subject could be more inspiring than the private lives of our European benefactors? We think therefore that it may interest our readers to hear something of events in the up-country district of Kyauktada. And especially of Mr Macgregor, honoured Deputy Commissioner of said district. Mr Macgregor is of the type of the Fine Old English Gentleman, such as, in these happy days, we have so many examples before our eyes. He is ’a family man’ as our dear English cousins say. Very much a family man is Mr Macgregor. So much so that he has already three children in the district of Kyauktada, where he has been a year, and in his last district of Shwemyo he left six young progenies behind him. Perhaps it is an oversight on Mr Macgregor’s part that he has left these young infants quite unprovided for, and that some of their mothers are in danger of starvation, etc., etc., etc." http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/BurmeseDays/chapter1.html -- "Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote, and a quick listen to the CD of Man of La Mancha will take care of that. Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or if you're American, try English." Dame Edna Everage "If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up," Barry Humphries