The Atrocities of Your National Heritage... This is a Fun Thread! :D

[Meight08]

I'm bi-racial.

The atrocities of the English and their Empire are well known. I don't have to go into them. Needless to say that the British Empire and its colonies are responsible for the deaths of millions, the virtual enslavement of millions more and the theft of land on a TITANIC scale.

The atrocities of the Chinese and THEIR empires are less well known. Let me tell you something:

China is now 90~95% Han Chinese. It wasn't always that way. It's 90~95% Han Chinese because the Han systematically conquered and committed genocide against a lot of ethnic minorities in China, who have been reduced to powerless entities living under the perpetual thumb of the Han. China has a long, storied, bloody history of conquest and invasion - the amount of times they conquered the Vietnamese and the Koreans fills out a long list. Granted, China hasn't attempt to conquer any regions recently (except Tibet), but that's not due to them being nice - it's due to them not having the naval capacity to conquer further regions. The only reason why China's Western Expansion stopped was due to the fact that they thought everything to the West was worthless desert. It wasn't due to the kindness of their hearts.

The Chinese attitude towards other races, as typified by some of my relatives, is one of shocking racism. Especially against Tibetans (who they deem to be almost sub-human and retarded) and the Uighers who they deem to all be terrorists and barbarians.

Still, I love China and its people. They make mistakes like anyone else, though. And it's good to remember that.

I thought it was because they now possess all the land that they see as theirs?

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Norwegian here. Apart from the viking ages, we haven't done much in the last two millennia 'cept sit on our mountain peak and mind our own business.
Captcha: Silence is golden
Huh, how oddly appropriate

 

[IamQ]

Finland here, and well... It hasn't been an independant country for very long, so we haven't had much time for any real atrocities.
Well, we were kind of allied with Germany during World War 2. But even there we didn't assist them very much.
If I remember correctly, we treated POW's pretty badly too.
But no, we haven't committed any real crimes towards humanity... Yet.

While no real atrocities, koskenkorva is the most disgusting alcoholic beverage that I have ever drunk.

I can't help you any more than that though, since I'm not Finnish. I am Swedish though, so I guess I can yell and shout at you for trying to defeat us at hockey?

 

[DirtyJunkieScum]

We call Osama bin Laden a terrorist, but al-Qaeda supporters call him a freedom fighter. In the end it all comes down to which side of the fence you sit on.
As for "military/government assets" where dose the military/government get their power from? that's right, the people, so if you kill and/or scare the people enough, you can bring down a military/government, it's a dirty way to fight but sometimes it's the only way you can.

So, you're in Nazi occupied France and Hitler is in a café full of civilians (women and children etc.) you have a bomb strapped to your chest. Now do you pull the trigger or not?? Are you a terrorist or a freedom fighter??

In the end, it all comes down to perspective, which was my original point.

You can be both. Freedom fighter is a name derived from your goals, Terrorist is a name derived from your methods. Well, not yours personally...unless you have something you'd like to tell us?

 

[Griffolion]

I'm British, where do I begin..?

Oh well, it all boils down to humans being humans. Doing under/in the name of a flag/nation is only to be expected.

 

[Karelwolfpup]

What did Scotland ever do wrong? Yeah, we took part in England's shenanigans but I can't think of anything we did on our own. Anyone care to enlighten me?

murdering the Picts? seriously, can anyone claim to be a Pict today? being balls deep in the slave trade harder than anyone else? then again, the slave trade bit caused Adam Smith to write "Wealth of Nations" and helped the eventual banning of the slave trade. but at least you had fun getting to rape, murder, enslave, steal and generally do those things everyone else did as part of an empire ^w^

 

[ArbelaeZ]

COCAINE, SO MUCH COCAINE!!!

 

[Rikomag132]

Well, I'm no expert on our history, but I think the whole raiding other people and stealing all their stuff around year 1000 was pretty bad. That and doing our best to destroy the Sàmi culture.

 

[VeryOddGamer]

I am Swedish though, so I guess I can yell and shout at you for trying to defeat us at hockey?

Don't bother, I don't give a crap about sports, especially hockey.
That might just be me more or less unintentionally trying to distance myself from the stereotypical Finn.

 

[kinapuffar]

Swedish here, sorry for this:

We kind of went around the known world fucking people's shit up and stealing all of their silver. Not really for any particular reason, just because we could.
In our defence, Christianity was kind of an condescending asshole religion, and you weren't really USING your silver for anything. Also we had nothing better to do during the summers, and we really really wanted your silver. But we totally get that for generations, being the monsters you use to scare your children into submission means we didn't give off a really good impression, even though we weren't really bad people at heart, we just had a different view on life and death that was more "liberal" if you will.
 

Also, we kind of enslaved quite a lot of you, especially the Irish... Our bad...

 

[mike1921]

The latter. Why do you want it when the people who actually live in the nation are against it, from all walks of life.

Because I don't want Ireland to become like Korea and be in some permanent limbo where they are forever divided. I rather go for the brutish(and I do realize that it is brutish) way that the US also took when the Confederacy tried to separate from the Union. I mean do you honestly think that if we waited until NI agreed, would there be a united Ireland in our lifetime?

Wow, you think the situation is like Korea? How ignorant to the situation you are!

The relations between Ireland and NI are absolutely fine and are "getting better" all the time. Seriously, this is getting silly.

What? No, I said I don't ever want them to progress to such a state, not that I think that they are currently in such a state.

But they aren't progressing towards that and there is no indication they ever will. Because of that I ask again, why do you think they should be rejoined?

Relations are fine and the people do not want it. Who are you to say what's best for the nation.

The more I talk to that person the more I'm convinced that what's best for the nation doesn't matter to them, it's all about the fact they're still called Ireland. If all of what they consider to be "Ireland" is one country it doesn't matter to them if Ireland is a little worse off, it's a gain just for all of Ireland to be one country in itself. Which is such a naive and silly notion I wouldn't expect it of a four year old.

 

[triggrhappy94]

Ah, the USA: Destabilizing legitimate governments for longer than it's even had it's own government. At least Britain had the good sense to stop after a couple centuries. we started with the Native Americans, but we never really stopped.

This basically sums it up. Let's not forget we also prop up unpopular governments in a lot of the places we destablize

 

[Ravnican]

The Conquest of the Desert [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_the_Desert]. I don't even want to think about all the horrible shit we did. And then you have all the military governments we had and what many consider our darkest moment: the Dirty War [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War]. Let us live crowned in glory... or let us swear in glory to die.

 

[easternflame]

Um, well, The governments and the narco I guess.

narco?

drug dealers.
I'm sorry it was late, if forget these things.
"Narcotraficante" means drug dealer.
THe mexican government works with them on several states.

 

[StBishop]

Australia has a pretty dark past. It's on par with, in fact I'd say worse than Apartheid. That said my knowledge of Apartheid is limited to a semester of modern history in high scool.

Google Stolen Generation if you want more info, the effects of this are still not fully understood. There was also some incredibly racist legislation until relatively recently.

 

[SpiralDots]

What did Scotland ever do wrong? Yeah, we took part in England's shenanigans but I can't think of anything we did on our own. Anyone care to enlighten me?

We were nice and decided that if we were going to be horrible to people, we'd be horrible to ourselves.

The Highland Clearances were pretty awful.

 

[cahtush]

Sweden had the first race study istitute and tried to swedify our minorities during the 19th and early 20th century, kinda like stolen generation light.