Like I said, Avatar awakened some long-dormant nationalism in me. I love that movie, as if it was my own. Impressed with the technology, the love, the effort, and am just enjoying the story.
Not since Dances With Wolves with that actor I don't really enjoy - Kevin Costner - or South Park's Dances With Smurfs have the crimes of colonialists and exploitation motherfuckers be shown in all its glory.
But fuck fantasy, let's get real.
Around 500 years ago, invaders from Portugal came over here and killed a lot of people. Why? They needed cinnamon. Took our land, kicked our asses, fucked the women... For what? For cinnamon. For star anise. Particularly cloves, nutmeg and mace grown mostly in the Maluku Islands, also known as the Spice Islands back in the day.
Enslaved us for fucking food! So they could open Auntie Annie's and some shit. If you go to Europe, and find a stripper named Cinna-buns, know that cinnamon came from around here, and India. That's our heritage right there, in the names of a stripper.
And then the Dutch took over. From 1641 till 1824. Almost 183 years of occupation, with periods under British control due to the Napoleonic Wars. 183 years of invasion.
Think about that for a moment. Considering that the life expentacy for people here during that time was around 30-50 years, that's between three to six generations.
And then they traded us, like some form of commodity, to the English in 1824. One of the London Treaties. Let me break it down for you. They gave everything north of the straits to the English, and everything south of it to the Dutch.
And then, from 1824 to 1957, we were dominated by the English. With some time under Japan and a horrific, bloody time under the fucking Communists.
Gold, Gospel, Glory and all that shit. Asia for Asians and all that bullshit. We didn't have that much gold, so they found other shit to take. People in this region were back then either pagans, Hindus, Muslims or mostly an amalgamation of everything. They came in and brought Christianity.
For that, I thank them. Cause now we have Christmas as one of our holidays.
Glory. Glory, glory, glory. I guess old Rodney needed a manor of his own, eh? Cause back home, he'd be shovelling coal in Newcastle.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not preaching hate. I'm not preaching pain. Lots of people preach pain. I'm in the corner, with doubt as my product. Doubt, and Devil May Care.
I mean, these things happened many, many years ago. By people long dead. If we suffered, as a nation, as a race, those were our forefathers, not us. If some fucker raped someone's mother, that was centuries ago, by other people.
My mother was not raped by any Portuguese man of war, so I'm cool with Jose Mourinho. I hate Cristiano Ronaldo, cause he dives better than Jacques Cousteau, but Ronaldo has never raped anyone here... yet. Not as far as I know.
The invaders also came here and fucked up India, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and whatever else. Countries that have always survived were Japan(until the Second World War), Thailand and... I guess that was it?
Anyway, after 450 years of being grind under the heels of the motherfuckers, we have developed some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, when it comes to those fuckers.
Some things, are admittedly good. Google's good. Windows Vista is good. Oops. Sorry. Windows Vista is perhaps one of the greatest crimes against humanity known to man. As well as Bryan Adams and Celine Dion. But the Canadian government has reportedly apologised for Bryan Adams on several separate occassions. Nothing yet on Celine Dion.
But fuck 'em. Fuck all of them. The only thing I learned from all this shit is that no matter what, we still had stuff other people want. I am not sure what that is. Not gold, for we never really had gold. Not that much. And spice is just a lame excuse. We're not Arrakis.
I believe that they were looking for people. Cause people, are the greatest resource you can find. So much so, that even Pak Lah rose from his lumbering, slumbering leadership and put human capital as the main thrust of his administration. Or so he said.
People, are everything. I'm in the newspaper business, and we report about what people do. If people don't do anything, there are no stories. So much of everything depends on people.
While it is impossible to please everyone all the time, the only thing we can do for the country is to create an environment for people to thrive in. We take care of information, and information, is magic.
Alan Moore thinks so.
"Spells are basically how you spell things. Grimoire - book of magic - is just French (earlier, Latin) for grammar," said Moore, more or less.
Gold, gospel and glory. Without the mind of the buyer, gold has no value. No use spreading the words of God, if there are no human ears to listen to them. Glory is recognised by other people.
Now, I don't really like people. I'm ego-centric. Self-centered. But I do recognise the importance of people.
In Avatar, the humans disregarded the people and faced lots of problems. Our invaders, for 500 years, manipulated us as they would cattle. It might take another 500 years, but Asia will rise and perhaps spread forth in search of gold, gospel and glory.
Times change, people don't.
I just hope that we are smart enough to learn from our own past not to repeat our or other people's mistakes.
