2013-08-08
The Pigs and the Economist
Nice reminder of all the dangerous cliches that propagate in the European media: The Pigs: the Economist pastiche that's taking on the press. These cliches would be funny in normal circumstances, but they actually cost Southern European nations a lot. Without these prejudices, the approach to the effect the financial crisis had in our nations would have been entirely different. So, I suggest the PIGS nations fight back with our own prejudices, ironically, of course. Keep reminding everybody that without lazy Portugal and Spain figuring out the technology and know-how to navigate the World, Europe and the West would be altogether different. There would have been no America or even a British Empire. Instead of progressive beautiful people living in Ikea-designer houses and Nokia phones, Scandinavia would be populated by illiterate, poor and smelly barbarians. Indeed, without the Portuguese removing the power of the Sultan of Cairo from the Indian Ocean, and the Spanish money from the Americas to feed the Habsgurg nobility, all of Europe would be Ottoman...
# posted by Luis Rocha @ 18:01 
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Ah yes, if you can't win arguments about the present, change the subject and talk about the past.
The fact that countries like Spain and Portugal were powerful 400 years ago is irrelevant, except to historians.
No US or British Empire without Spain and Portugal? Sounds good to me. However, many British imperialists were more inspired by Athens and Rome than by Madrid and Lisbon.
And even better for the indigenous peoples of Asia, Africa or the Americas who were screwed (often literally) by the Iberian Catholics.
The fact that countries like Spain and Portugal were powerful 400 years ago is irrelevant, except to historians.
No US or British Empire without Spain and Portugal? Sounds good to me. However, many British imperialists were more inspired by Athens and Rome than by Madrid and Lisbon.
And even better for the indigenous peoples of Asia, Africa or the Americas who were screwed (often literally) by the Iberian Catholics.
Dear Ken,
Who cares if British imperialists were inspired by Greeks or Romans---we all are! The point is that the British Empire needed to Portuguese and Spanish navigation know-how and charts to do what they did. Australia was "Grand Java" on a Portuguese map 150 years before Cook---a map, later on, stolen by a British pirate ship at the service of the English King.
Also, I am not defending or attacking Empires here. My point is that from a planetary viewpoint, Europeans are all the same people. Those Europeans who use the PIGS term, should think about that and what would their countries be without the contributions from those PIGS.
Who cares if British imperialists were inspired by Greeks or Romans---we all are! The point is that the British Empire needed to Portuguese and Spanish navigation know-how and charts to do what they did. Australia was "Grand Java" on a Portuguese map 150 years before Cook---a map, later on, stolen by a British pirate ship at the service of the English King.
Also, I am not defending or attacking Empires here. My point is that from a planetary viewpoint, Europeans are all the same people. Those Europeans who use the PIGS term, should think about that and what would their countries be without the contributions from those PIGS.
Dear Ken,
The notion of indigenous is itself problematic. Everybody has been screwing everybody else since we were humans---only someone who has no idea about African, Asian, or pre-european American history could thing that only Iberian Catholics were the master-screws. Good thing we have genetics to sort all that out these days.
As for real genocide, have you ever wondered why there are so many more native-American-looking people in places that speak the language of those Iberian Catholics, than in places where English is spoken? In the US, the only state that has a majority native-American population, is where those nasty Spaniards stayed longer (New Mexico). I have been living in Indiana for 10 years, and have not seen a single "Indian" while there. What do you think happened to them? We could go over every British and Dutch colony there is and I bet you the film is not favorable to them---do you know about the Opium wars?
Apartheid is a dutch word, tropicalismo is a Portuguese one.
The notion of indigenous is itself problematic. Everybody has been screwing everybody else since we were humans---only someone who has no idea about African, Asian, or pre-european American history could thing that only Iberian Catholics were the master-screws. Good thing we have genetics to sort all that out these days.
As for real genocide, have you ever wondered why there are so many more native-American-looking people in places that speak the language of those Iberian Catholics, than in places where English is spoken? In the US, the only state that has a majority native-American population, is where those nasty Spaniards stayed longer (New Mexico). I have been living in Indiana for 10 years, and have not seen a single "Indian" while there. What do you think happened to them? We could go over every British and Dutch colony there is and I bet you the film is not favorable to them---do you know about the Opium wars?
Apartheid is a dutch word, tropicalismo is a Portuguese one.
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