Okay, so today again I was accosted by somebody on the Internet (a UK politician this time) who told me that I should be ashamed for living in a country that built its financial success on the blood of oppressed people.

I am not sure about the exact connotation, you know, Nazi gold, Sudanese Warlord bank accounts, etc.

I am pretty sure that you have heard them all by this stage.

How do you all deal with this sort of thing?
What is your response?
Do you defend the country or just grin and pat your wallet?
Do you think it is true or false?

Okay, let the fun begin!

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Living it up in Gersau.

Ask him how he feels about his nation, that invaded Australia

I don't want to mention yet how I handled the situation because I am still interested to see who will raise the points that I did.

Cliches and idioms are always useful in these situations:

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

And America, and India, and...

Who did Switzerland invade?

Tom

Pretty much all the world's wealth was/is built on the backs of oppressed/poor people. CH is the best place in Europe to keep it safe. What else can be said about this?

IIRC, Liechtenstein periodically takes a pasting

I don't think the Royal Family got the fortune by helping the orphans...

Probably not - are they not swiss. Sort of surprising as I was under the impression they came from German stock ....
PS - Neither did the Roman Catholic Church
Attila the Hun
The Kennedy Family
Dick Cheney
The Bushes
The Rosthchilds
Or Berlusconi


What has that got to do with the wealth of CH?

They got it by having sex with their cousins

as opposed to UK politicians who have renovated their houses & apartments on the money of honest british tax payers.

That's the point. The guy is from UK and get all emotional because the OP lives in country ''build on the blood of the oppressed''.

Is UK never been involve in anything or got something from the ''blood of the oppressed''? Like any countries, the UK history has some bad stuff too.

Pretty cool comment from the nation that brought you the concentration camps in the Boer war in South Africa. Never too brave to slaughter the odd woman or child in the name of the empire what old boy...., but then again, the Brits always did like to write history from their angle.

Generalizations, generalizations. If you go check your history, you'll see that Nazi gold ended up in all sorts of places, if my memory serves me right, Britain, Portugal and rather ironically the newly formed Israel. Just imagine you're fleeing the Nazis in Germany, wouldn't you try and take what you can in assets and try to keep them in a safe as place as possible, hoping that you can go back to what you've built when (if) the regime changes again.

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Crash your karma into little bits of happiness

Tis a lovely bit of trolling from a South African ....

Napoleon used concentration camps long before the Brits did against the Boers, and the Germans used them in what is now Namibia.
The boers were also not exactly renowned for there humanity towards their locals. However two, rights don't make wrong ...

Whatever was done in ZA was not in the same league as Germany, Russia , the Balkans or Cambodia ... but don't let the facts get in the way of Brit bashing .....

The comment was about the Swiss - and I would be amazed of the phone call ever took place ..

Wait, a politician who is from a country that exhibits ancient relics it stole from former colonized countries in its museums, and whose history is largely occupied by its success in exploiting other countries is asking you to feel ashamed about living in a geopolitically neutral centered country that hasn't fought a war since Napoleon? The english have a lot of great sayings and quips that can be used for this politician. "Do one" or "Do me a favor" are appropriate responses in this instance. The politician is probably jealous about the fact that you have a visa to live in Switzerland and he just got rejected for his.

Brave talking from the American Corner
Land stolen from the Natives
Slavery - and States who wanted to carry on the tradition well after Britain abandoned it!
Grenada
Vietnam
Iraq ... twice,
Nicaragua / Central America in general ....
Lets discuss waterboarding, rendition, Dick Cheney's bank account

My comment was not supposed to indirectly give credance or justification towards the past foreign policies of the US. However, I do think if the US had never acted as a hegemon you would have probably grown up speaking high german or russian. That's if you would have been born at all.

America. F yeah.

No , but felt that you could comment on the UK's past foreign policy - slightly hypocritical , perhaps ...
Yes, we thank you for arriving late and charging us for your services - a debt that was paid of 5 years ago I believe.

Re being born - if it hadn't been for all those Brits, Irish,, Germans, Italians, and Russians , neither would have you ....

If the Bay of Pigs fiasco had kicked off - none of us would be here either

The original poster is a South African ... so lets actually talk about economies recently built on oppression ....

Just one question---is the topic of this thread on whether Switzerland was "built on the blood of the oppressed" (which I personally think is ridiculous) or whether any other countries qualify for that title? For the record, my country qualifies because of the history of slavery.