- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had called for Lisbon to find ways to compensate its former colonies, including canceling debt. The government says it has not initiated any process to that effect.
Lisbon is not planning to pay reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism, Portugal’s government said on Saturday.
The statement comes in response to remarks by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who said Portugal could find ways to compensate its former colonies.
Portugal said in a statement that it seeks to “deepen mutual relations, respect for historical truth and increasingly intense and close cooperation, based on reconciliation of brotherly peoples.”
It stressed that it had not launched any “process or program of specific actions” for paying reparations.
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Sorry but being held responsible for what your ancestors did is bullshit. The very same bullshit as trying to reclaim the land your ancestors had. Both are not mine, it’s in the past and I have nothing to do with it.
Also, it is most likely that everyone’s ancestors did some bad things. Sad but it is a process in the human history.
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That’s why wealth redistribution should be applied as indiscriminately as possible based on wealth, instead of discriminate cash payments based on cherry picked events that occurred more recently. Most people born into the rat race aren’t there because of their own failures, but because their lineage were historically screwed by the wealthy stretching back thousands of years, and everyones ancestors contributed to the current state of civilization, so rather than discriminate cash injections which create a new generation of people left behind and continue the imbalance, it should be focused on reducing the deviation from the mean and median both domestically, and internationally.
Do you really believe that cash injections to developed economies will benefit the people instead of their domestic oligarchs?
I don’t disagree. Yes, the effects of what happened are ongoing. You cannot expect to fix a joy of children by paying them money for their father’s loss, they won’t be ever the same. You can only make their living standards better. What’s done is done, no one can revert it. The whole issue is no different than this.
I wish the world was fair but I don’t think it will ever be. We cannot even fix our own countries, own municipals. We can only fix the future by taking an act today, we cannot fix the past.
The migration of tribes had shaped the world. Is there anything we can do about it? Industrial revolution had shaped the world, the world wars had shaped the world. Even though we have no intention to continue affecting the world negatively, there is no end to that. Sorry but we haven’t reached that serenity as homo sapiens. We must work for it but we won’t see it in our lives.
We should learn from our past, however we mustn’t try to fix it since we cannot, it’s plowing water.
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Dude, I’m not descendant of slaves and I’m pretty much a slave of the Portuguese state at the moment. If this corrupt cast of politicians wants to pay reparations, I do not oppose to it, but they need to pay it from their own pockets.
I’m not descendant of slaves
Highly unlikely. Effectively the whole human race is.
I meant directly descendant. And I don’t disagree on your reasoning, it’s true.
What is the difference between direct and indirect descendant? Also how does the original sin interact with the physical body in such a way that it knows how to follow direct descendant lines?
Ok say I am a slave owner and I have five children. The original sin does it couple with my eldest child or all five, does it divide into 5 equal parts or multiple into 5 or does divide in half with each child? What units does ancestor guilt have, is there a SI version or is it just industry standard units? If I adopt a kid does the original sin particles connect to the adopted kid? If one of my “direct” descendents becomes a slave does his inherited original sin particles meet anti-originao sin particles and cancel out or not? Can original sin particles be passed like a STD, say for example one my kids married a women, has a kid with her, then my son dies, woman remaries and has another kid, would that new kid have the original sin particles or just their older sibling? If two people pass through double doors at the same time do the original sin particles form an interference pattern like waves do?
So many questions. Maybe just show me the equations governing your original sin particle wave thing and how it knows how to follow families
I don’t believe the children should pay for they fathers mistakes. I was replying to the OP comment that suggests that we should take into account slavery has something to do with poor conditions some of said descendant of slaves are atm.
I came from a long line of poor people in the sense of money, and only one of my uncles was able to get a degree (from his pocket money and hard work, you have to pay even if it’s a public university), recently a cousin was also able to get a degree as well. And me and my brother pursuit more technical courses.
I can have a decent income by working on projects from abroad but the Portuguese state takes ~70% of that in direct and indirect taxation.
Meanwhile I don’t have a family doctor for 14 years now, and if I need something to be taken care of I need to get help in the private sector. Justice is slow, the streets and public buildings are decaying to a point of rupture, public administration is a complete disgrace in general…
I’m basically a slave to this corrupt politicians. They take my hard work in the form of taxation and provide nothing/almost nothing in return.
It’s not fair that some people have more but the existence of inequality is not enough of a justification to seize property.
Colonialism is a structure, not a historical event. So it still needs to be dealt with. Just because you’re not to blame doesn’t mean you’re not the only one who can do the right thing as voting citizens. Nations that colonise absorbed wealth of other nations and that advantage can still be seen today in infrastructure that was built, wealth amassed. Museums today hold stolen artefacts and even bodies from lands they colonised.
Please don’t use ancestors as a smokescreen for what is happening right in front of our eyes.
It’s not about what somebody’s ancestor did. It’s about what the country as a whole did. Country X had Y policy that oppressed Z group, and has resulted in that group still being impoverished today? Country X is on the hook then. They caused the problem, they need to help clean it up.
so the current citizens of country X should be punished for things that their parents/grandparents/etc did? no that’s stupid - and it doesnt work.
I agree. Please produce 16th century Portugal and have them pay money back.
Duh. No country is going to do this, it will do nothing but open up a can of worms. I mean, what about the ancestors of the African tribes that rounded up the slaves and sold them? Shouldn’t they pay something? What about the countries who fought for slaves to be free? What about all the families of the union soldiers in the US Civil War, shouldn’t they get something? Or, is this whole “reparations” thing only for black Americans whose great, great, great, great grandparents were slaves? It’s silly.
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As opposed too “I know you have nothing to do with what happened 100’s of years ago, but it’s time to pay up.”
Pretty sure spain and portugal used to be muslim colonies themselves, shouldn’t they get paid first then?
Many people were fed up with the Spanish king at that point and invited the Muslims to take over. Spain would not be captured so easily if the inhabitants fought for it instead of against their current rulers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Spain
"The last Visigoth king, Roderick, was not considered a legitimate ruler by all of the inhabitants of the Spanish Kingdom, and some Visigothic nobles aided the Islamic conquest of Spain. One name frequently mentioned is Count Julian of Ceuta who invited Tariq ibn-Ziyad to invade southern Spain because his daughter had been raped by King Roderick. "
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If you just substitute some nouns you get the takeover of Hawaii by the US. I mention this because based on what I am seeing it sounds like some some random local thugs sold out their people to invaders hoping that they would get a better deal for themselves under them vs the king.
Unless you got multiple opinion polls and voting records showing that the “people” supported it I don’t think much of your argument.
Those Italians dug a lot of gold and silver out of the Iberian peninsula too.
Spain and Portugal aren’t full of disease and poverty despite the fact that they used to be colonies, while their former colonies are full of disease and poverty.
That’s largely because of geography. You can’t blame europe for mosquitos existing in africa.
Well I can’t say Spain and Portugal aren’t full of disease and poverty, but that’s probably because of the decades of corporatist fascism and Nazi Germany/Italy/the Vatican quashing the socialist/anarchist governments there to install a dictator, and not because of Al-Andalus which actually brought great prosperity to the region
Well, apparently the Mourish Occupation of the Iberian Peninsula was what brought to the Dark Ages Europe advanced irrigation techniques which spread from there increasing agricultural production, the growth of cities and ultimatelly the Renaissance, so we probably would need to pay them, or at least their descendants (mainly Northern African Arabs).
That said Portugal at least in this is a joke (and I say this as a Portuguese National) - for example some years ago the local politicians came up with a scheme to give the descendants of Jewish Sephardites (a group which was expelled from Portugal in the 15th century) portuguese nationality, which is quite an “interesting” choice of “reparations” taking in account the country’s much more recent and way more harmful history of Slavery.
Anyways, the whole thing is corrupt as fuck, with for example Jewish Organisations in Russia providing wealthy Jewish locals with “proof” of their Sephardite ancestry for the purpose of gaining Portuguese Nationality (which is only worth it because it means EU citizenship), to the point that the present day richest and most well known portuguese national is Roman Abramovich.
This talk now is in the sequence of that crap (which continues, which for example some Hamas hostages given expedited Portuguese Nationality to try and secure their release as “portuguese”), the sudden rise in the recent elections of the far-right party who are the only nationalists around (so the only who frown upon the whole giving away of citizienship to people who never ever even visited the country) and the Portuguese President (who is basically a powerless figure who loves media attention) having suggested that Portugal and Spain should “compensate” former colonies.
Well, apparently the Mourish Occupation of the Iberian Peninsula was what brought to the Dark Ages Europe advanced irrigation techniques which spread from there increasing agricultural production, the growth of cities and ultimatelly the Renaissance, so we probably would need to pay them, or at least their descendants (mainly Northern African Arabs).
I see. This means that if any invader improved a property they took over in any sense of the word the takeover was justified. If for example I steal your car but give a good wash. You should thank me for cleaning it and I was right to steal it, since you were neglecting it.
The Moorish kings were genuinely better rulers on many, many topics, so it’s more like your car thief replaced the transmission with a clear upgrade, but yes, reparations are an innately immoral idea that punishes children for the sins of their parents.
You can not fix the sins of the past, only stop them from happening again.
Many of the former Euro colonies started with stone tools and a nomadic lifestyle and where drug into the modern age (for the time of course) If Europe should repay the descendants of slavers, conquerors, and rapists for the advancements they brought, then by your own logic the colonies owe Europe reparations. Congrats your colonial policy is French!
Do you apply the same logic to all other developments too? That descendants of american slaves now live in the US instead of having to run from lions and hippos, or all the western science and technology spread all around the world by european colonizers? That’s a pretty shit argument dude.
Rest of your statements seems logically sound though.
The argument I was making is the same argument you are making: “It’s not at all as simple as many think it is”.
I think it is pretty simple. Everyone fucked up everyone else for a very long time and there is nothing we can do about it but try to help people alive today who need help today.
That would excuse murder, rape, theft and so on as long as it was done yesterday, not today.
Clearly there is some need to place responsability on people, at least up to a point, with some kind of limit of how far one goes in that, both in terms of temporality and directness of the relation of the punished with the criminals and those recieving compensation with the victims.
There are some widelly accepted rules for some of these things: for example somebody who murders somebody else should pay for it no mater how long it takes to catch that person, whilst the children of the murderer should not pay for their father/mother’s crime.
However in other areas it’s not so simple: should the children of somebody who stole money be forced to give it back if they inherited that ill gotten money?! An argument can be made that if they are not forced to return it, they would be enjoying the proceedings of the crime whilst the victims carry on suffering because of not having that money, all of which would be an injustice.
But if they should, how about grandchildren? How about great grandchildren? How about all the present day citizens of a nation whose elites commited crimes centuries ago? Should they all lose a little bit to compensate a group of people only entire verifable link with victims from long long ago is having been born in a present day geographical nation that contains an area were the victimization is thought to have occurred?
Whilst I think group guilt and group victimhood for crimes commited centuries ago - as in the suggestion of the President Of Portugal - is complete total bollocks and a way to whitewash the ill gotten nature of the wealth of most of the Portuguese Old Money (including him, who is the son of a Minister in the time of Fascism, hence old money), I can see how, say, taking away things people inherited which were obtained by theft (for example, returning to the descendants of the owners old paintings stollen by the Nazis) is a fair and just thing to do.
You are just describing statue of limitations
I’m describing the reason why the statute of limitations came to be.
The reason is however more generic that just that, and provides explanation for things like not making the children pay for the crimes of their parents.
As for my overall point of it not being simple, notice how there are different statutes of limitations for different crimes.
Tennesseean here, the only people I’ve ever heard say that lion and hippo line are racists.
I mean, Hippos are statistically one of the largest killers of people where they live, they are adorable killing machines. But yeah it’s a bad line that makes a salient point in this instance
The descendants of slavery owe white people for the privilege of living next to white people, usually in a neighborhood with poorer infrastructure, huh?
That’s what the post I responded to said yes
It’s no secret that large parts of africa are still uncivilized. That doesn’t mean africans are inferior to us, they’re not, but many of them still need to deal with wildlife in ways we do not.
Lul, uncivilized
Should the french also pay reparations to Portugal for all the rape and murder that occured during the french invasions? What about the Romans? Should Italy also pay reparations to most European countries? Should the Scandinavians pay reparations to UK for the viking invasions?
Portugal would actually have to possess spare cash, for them to pay any of their former colonies so much as a penny in reparations
Canada looks disappointed.
Canada is an interesting demonstration, we’ve actually been going hard into funding reservation services and returning land that the government controls. I think the transparency of the government w.r.t. truth and reconciliation has also been helpful… but legitimate reparations? Canada can’t afford to make right the damage that’s been done - the scars we’ve left on some communities is difficult to fully grasp. So what’s the solution? It’s a fucking hard problem.
Heh, I was referring to the fact that chunks of what is now Canada used to be Portuguese colonies.
Huh, as a Canadian, that is new info. Though I wouldn’t call them “chunks” so much as “bits.”
solution
Not that difficult, you just move on. Use money from rich areas to build out poor areas and the elimination of inequality will solve the creation of it
The difficulty is getting people to sign onto eliminating inequality when they benefit from it
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The statement comes in response to remarks by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who said Portugal could find ways to compensate its former colonies.
Portugal said in a statement that it seeks to “deepen mutual relations, respect for historical truth and increasingly intense and close cooperation, based on reconciliation of brotherly peoples.”
Portugal’s colonial era lasted more than five centuries, with the decolonization of some African countries happening as late as 1974 after the fall of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime.
Portugal’s president called on Lisbon to initiate a reparations process in comments made to reporters on Saturday, saying that the issue could not be swept “under the carpet.”
He suggested that Portugal could pay reparations by canceling the debt of former colonies, developing special cooperation programs or providing financing.
The election was called after former Prime Minister Antonio Costa of the center-left Socialist Party stepped down over corruption allegations.
The original article contains 286 words, the summary contains 148 words. Saved 48%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Shame, I was hoping for that stolen gold…
España, nos pagan la deuda?
