3 ms·

Hang on a minute... is this guy saying the country that * had the largest supply of slaves[1], * tried to levy taxes on American tea, * broke China and force

by tezza 8y ago

Hang on a minute... is this guy saying the country that * had the largest supply of slaves[1], * tried to levy taxes on American tea, * broke China and forced them to buy their own Opium * invented concentration camps to defeat the Dutch Boers[2] * used Gibraltar as a control point for the entire Mediterranean * erased most Tasmanian Aboriginals [3] did something dodgy in India ?? [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_interactive_of_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_s... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War

dang 8y ago
Please do not take HN threads into ideological and national flamewar. The tell-tale signs of this being a bad comment for HN are: (a) the snark, and (b) the list of talking points. Combined with the flammatory topic, it amounts to vandalism, so please don't do this here.
- somebadguy 8y ago
  Yeah yeah whatever
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Is the comment really that inflammatory? I think it's good to point that a lot of the "civilized" nations did a lot very bad things at the same time they were talking about freedom and humanity.
  - dang 8y ago
    The topic is inflammatory, which means flamebait guarantees flamewars. The comment was flamebaity in the ways I described. It's possible to write about these things in a less flamebaity way—that's just not the style people reach for by default on the internet. I agree with your second sentence btw.
    - tezza 8y ago
      as i said it was more lighthearted. i wrote it at a bus stop after work in London, nothing snarky intended. ive used bullet points A LOT in many comments over the years. it used to be “citation needed” back in the day, so i still supply them.
      - dang 8y ago
        It sounds like I misread you - sorry about that! Moderation is pattern matching and that means making mistakes when the pattern doesn't really match. Unfortunately, there's a sense in which it still makes no difference because the comment fits the flamewar-starting pattern whether you were posting in that spirit or not. But I would have phrased my reply differently if I'd read you more precisely.
    - Ngunyan 8y ago
      I know you are just doing your job, but what tezza did is called British humour.
- tezza 8y ago
  who are you to police this ? ( i found out below ). seriously you are way off track here. okay... looked. you seem to be someone who wants to and is entrusted with policing HN. So I will say, that i did not intend as a snark at all, more light hearted banter. if you check my posting history you will find a track record of formatting my posts similar to this. i did not have a stick-it-to-the-english pamphlet lying around that i cut n pasted. its all stuff that ive actually come across. and it did add to the article as far as i can tell
gumby 8y ago
> [Britain] tried to levy taxes on American tea, BTW there's an Indian connection there too (I assume you're talking about the Boston Tea Party). The cause of that episode was the British eliminating the tax on tea and at the same time giving the East India Company a tea monopoly in the North American colonies. When I was in school in Boston the official line was that the tea party demonstrators were smugglers upset at the monopoly and reduction in tax (the New England coastline is well structured for and remains a big smuggling area, especially heroin and human trafficking). I have no idea if the story is still told that way in the Boston schools. I was also taught that the clever colonists used to hide behind the bushes and pop out to shoot the stupid British marching down the streets in their bright red uniforms. I know that by 1970 that narrative had been replaced as the guerrilla warfare in Viet Nam was now being presented as "unfair" None of which is a criticism of the USA or UK, merely a comment on how our narratives "evolve".
- cannonedhamster 8y ago
  Another Bostonian here. :) I don't think that guerilla warfare is considered "unfair" by the US military today (can't speak for the 70s), the US still encourages it when it suits them, especially when encouraging regime change. Asymmetrical warfare requires guerilla tactics by the less conventionally powerful armies against more conventional armies. The schools conveniently ignored the Native American assistance in fighting the British, and overstate the actual impact of the peasant rebellion. It was an organized army with discipline founded on the French that really cemented the colonists win over the British. George Washington really is one of the few Americans that was as amazing as his legend, if not more so. Americans also really don't give enough credit to the French for their assistance. We sort of gloss over that point, however we did at least return the favor in WW1 and WW2 as well as taking over the mission in Vietnam. So I think I pretty much wrote all of this to agree that yes our narratives definitely evolve. Have an awesome weekend.
ykevinator 8y ago
Still has the highest supply of slaves

by tezza 8y ago

dang 8y ago

Please do not take HN threads into ideological and national flamewar. The tell-tale signs of this being a bad comment for HN are: (a) the snark, and (b) the list of talking points. Combined with the flammatory topic, it amounts to vandalism, so please don't do this here.

somebadguy 8y ago
Yeah yeah whatever
maxxxxx 8y ago
Is the comment really that inflammatory? I think it's good to point that a lot of the "civilized" nations did a lot very bad things at the same time they were talking about freedom and humanity.
- dang 8y ago
  The topic is inflammatory, which means flamebait guarantees flamewars. The comment was flamebaity in the ways I described. It's possible to write about these things in a less flamebaity way—that's just not the style people reach for by default on the internet. I agree with your second sentence btw.
  - tezza 8y ago
    as i said it was more lighthearted. i wrote it at a bus stop after work in London, nothing snarky intended. ive used bullet points A LOT in many comments over the years. it used to be “citation needed” back in the day, so i still supply them.
    - dang 8y ago
      It sounds like I misread you - sorry about that! Moderation is pattern matching and that means making mistakes when the pattern doesn't really match. Unfortunately, there's a sense in which it still makes no difference because the comment fits the flamewar-starting pattern whether you were posting in that spirit or not. But I would have phrased my reply differently if I'd read you more precisely.
  - Ngunyan 8y ago
    I know you are just doing your job, but what tezza did is called British humour.
tezza 8y ago
who are you to police this ? ( i found out below ). seriously you are way off track here. okay... looked. you seem to be someone who wants to and is entrusted with policing HN. So I will say, that i did not intend as a snark at all, more light hearted banter. if you check my posting history you will find a track record of formatting my posts similar to this. i did not have a stick-it-to-the-english pamphlet lying around that i cut n pasted. its all stuff that ive actually come across. and it did add to the article as far as i can tell

gumby 8y ago

> [Britain] tried to levy taxes on American tea, BTW there's an Indian connection there too (I assume you're talking about the Boston Tea Party). The cause of that episode was the British eliminating the tax on tea and at the same time giving the East India Company a tea monopoly in the North American colonies. When I was in school in Boston the official line was that the tea party demonstrators were smugglers upset at the monopoly and reduction in tax (the New England coastline is well structured for and remains a big smuggling area, especially heroin and human trafficking). I have no idea if the story is still told that way in the Boston schools. I was also taught that the clever colonists used to hide behind the bushes and pop out to shoot the stupid British marching down the streets in their bright red uniforms. I know that by 1970 that narrative had been replaced as the guerrilla warfare in Viet Nam was now being presented as "unfair" None of which is a criticism of the USA or UK, merely a comment on how our narratives "evolve".

cannonedhamster 8y ago
Another Bostonian here. :) I don't think that guerilla warfare is considered "unfair" by the US military today (can't speak for the 70s), the US still encourages it when it suits them, especially when encouraging regime change. Asymmetrical warfare requires guerilla tactics by the less conventionally powerful armies against more conventional armies. The schools conveniently ignored the Native American assistance in fighting the British, and overstate the actual impact of the peasant rebellion. It was an organized army with discipline founded on the French that really cemented the colonists win over the British. George Washington really is one of the few Americans that was as amazing as his legend, if not more so. Americans also really don't give enough credit to the French for their assistance. We sort of gloss over that point, however we did at least return the favor in WW1 and WW2 as well as taking over the mission in Vietnam. So I think I pretty much wrote all of this to agree that yes our narratives definitely evolve. Have an awesome weekend.

ykevinator 8y ago

Still has the highest supply of slaves