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?
> 
> <snippity doo dah, snippity eh>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