10 ms·
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation To call upon a neighbour and to say: -- "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight, U
by rcurry 11y ago
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: --
"We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: --
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"
- Rudyard Kipling
- throwaway09128 11y agonever deal with terrorists
- Kieselstein 11y agoBomb their families instead?
- cm2187 11y agoQuestionable solution but I bet it would help for hackers! Impunity is what fuels this type of criminal behavior.
- imglorp 11y agoIf victims need to be consistent. When terrorists are shown that they'll either get a bomb through the roof or nothing, but never payment, then they'll change their business plan.
- sspiff 11y agoThe goal of most contemporary terrorist is not personal enrichment.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- eru 11y agoIt is hanging out with their buddies. See http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror#the-problem http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror#t... and http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective
- linschn 11y agoThis strategy has worked so well in Israel/Palestine /s.
- jacquesm 11y agoThat's because the situation between Israel and Palestine is a bit more complex than the proponents of that particular strategy in that particular case would like to have you believe.
- troels 11y agoThey are not terrorists though. Their goal isn't to harm their target - their goal is to enrich them selves through ransom.
- geofft 11y agoPoems by the man who romanticized the colonization of my grandparents' country are always cool, but the logic doesn't hold up. If you're not as well-armed as the British Empire, and you very much do not have the resources to defeat the Dane, it's nice that the end of the game is oppression and shame, but you're going to lose well before you even get to endgame.
- SHIT_TALKER 11y agoThe British created your grandparents' country and you should be thankful to them for it. It was nothing but fortunate for India to have sensible men like Charles James Napier working to put an end to barbarism like Sati: A story for which Napier is often noted involved Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities. This was the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. As first recounted by his brother William, he replied: "Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_James_Napier#Service_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_James_Napier#Service_i...
- jacquesm 11y agoThe fact that colonialism had some beneficial side-effects does not make it right and does not oblige anybody to be thankful.
- SHIT_TALKER 11y agoWhen you are weak, you take what you can get. It was much better to have been colonized by the British, who actually had an interest in nation-building and respect for law and human rights (to the extent they deemed their subjects capable of handling them), than, say, to have become the personal fiefdom of Leopold II of Belgium.
- skybrian 11y agoSometimes this is good advice. For some rather vivid counterexamples, read up on Genghis Khan. Computer security is of course a whole different thing.
- 69_years_and 11y agoYes, pros and cons, its quite possible that by paying one then has enough breathing space to set up better defences.
- brianwawok 11y agoThe wrath of the Khans was amazing. Seemed like your odds of dying were pretty high either way. Give him all your stuff and starve. Or say no and get beheaded..
- intrasight 11y agoAnd let's not forget that 1 in 200 people around the world are his direct descendants
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- christophilus 11y agohttps://xkcd.com/1545/ https://xkcd.com/1545/
- intrasight 11y agonice one!
- effie 11y agoHow do you know that?
- brianwawok 11y ago
- Estragon 11y agoI guess Kipling's knowledge of this had a practical basis, since he was one of the chief apologists for the systematic extortion the British Empire used to enrich itself.
- SeanDav 11y ago(Note - I am from one of the countries invaded and occupied by Britain) I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times but it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars. That was pretty amazing. By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc. Being invaded (not just plundered) by major cultures has generally had good benefits - in the long term - for the invaded nation as they get a lot of the characteristics of the stronger nation. Again, keep in mind that this is not the modern way of looking at things, which is why we have the United Nations and other international organizations.
- fsloth 11y agoI'm not sure what you are saying here. That by past standards they were not totally horrible, or that becoming colonized was a fair trade due to all of the "benefits"? As an example, Japan nor China was never colonized, they were totally ass-backwardian to late 19th century and appear at least to foreign eyes quite modern nowadays.
- jacquesm 11y agoSee also: The life of Brian, 'What have the Romans ever done for us'. As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is. That the UK gave up India is a pretty complex affair but you can bet that the 'let's fight' option was only taken off the table when someone did some basic math. Whether or not the invaded countries got 'enormous benefits' is immaterial, we do not live in the alternate universe where India was not a British colony, in which universe India may have been better off or it may have been worse, we simply can not know. All we do know is that in this universe we (nowadays) take a dim view of such colonization, including those colonizations in our collective past. That some countries were 'not as bad' as others and that they left the places they invaded (and usually plundered) in some ways in better shape is imo immaterial to that.
- ordinary 11y agoWouldn't this apply the other way around as well? If you become known as a blackmailer who's true to their word, wouldn't your payment rate go up?
- teekert 11y agoI really hate to think that some of the btc I donated is now with some criminal.
- yongjik 11y ago(Off-topic) That story is absurd, considering that a lot of modern diplomacy is essentially deciding how much Dane-geld you should pay to appease America, Russia, or (insert your regional power here), and how much you could expect in return for promising that you will not pay the Dane-geld to the other side. If you don't play, you end up like North Korea, ever so proud for their fierce independence, cut off from everyone else. I find this cute tale, from a subject of the British Empire, doubly insulting. If you are powerful and you can extract Dane-geld from others, fine, but stop insinuating that other people pay Dane-geld because they're stupid.