USS Cortez? Really?

[Nerys Myk]

T'Girl wrote:

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Don't forget the medical ship USS Joseph Megale.

As I recall from school, Cortez wiped out the Aztec not with Spanish guns, but by rallying the indigenous people who had been killed, enslaved and raped by the Aztecs for centuries. You can cry "european mass murder" all day, but in the same breath please admit the Aztecs as a group were far worst than Cortez.

Most indigenous people in america who died after the arrival of the europeans died from the spread of diseases that the europeans had, at least partual, immunity to. Europeans at that time had no real knowledge how disease was transmitted. In the 14th century the Black Death killed 450 million europeans, about half of everyone then alive. It started in asia, traveled to the Crimea, to the near east, then to europe by way of merchant ships.

Modern eurpeans do not blame modern people from the near east for the deaths of their ancestors.


T

There are a few long standing feuds in Europe. Ask the Greeks about the Turks.

[USS_Triumphant]

Sci wrote:

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I am more than happy to proclaim that both were bad, and that neither should have Federation starships named after them.

Especially when you consider all of the people from all the worlds of the Federation who are famous for good things and not known for anything beyond relatively mundane bad things - inventors, philosophers, artists, or medical professionals like Surak, Einstein, Da Vinci, or Florence Nightingale. And all of the positive attributes and concepts - Charity, Logic, Enterprise, Courageous, etc - that can be ship names several times by using them in each member language. And all of the positive and/or memorial names of places and names of events that can be ship names - Bozeman, Seleya, Therin Park, Treaty of Cheron, Liberation of Betazed, Time of Awakening, Spirit of St. Louis, etc. Seems like you could provide goodly names to a pretty darned large fleet without having to resort to naming ships after Hernan Cortez or the like.

[Myasishchev]

Spirit of St. Louis? We want to associate Starfleet with an America Firster?

[USS_Triumphant]

Myasishchev wrote:

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Spirit of St. Louis? We want to associate Starfleet with an America Firster?

No, with the plane that made a historic first in human flight. I didn't say U.S.S. Charles Lindbergh.

[Myasishchev]

I'm just funning. How about a USS Hindenberg? That's a bad name on at least two levels.

[UssGlenn]

Yeah, Hindenburg is just bad. What about the USS Graf Zeppelin? Anybody object to that?

[Temis the Vorta]

For my money, I don't buy that the Federation would ever name anything after a murdering imperialist like Hernán Cortés.

We're talking 23rd C. By then, the maurading behavior of Cortez will be about as relevant to evolved human sensibilities as the Peloponnisean Wars are to us. Who would balk at a USS Achilles or a USS Ajax, yet both those guys would certainly have been considered jerks by the opposing side in the little fracases they got up to. History is long and memories are short.

[Sci]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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We're talking 23rd C. By then, the maurading behavior of Cortez will be about as relevant to evolved human sensibilities as the Peloponnisean Wars are to us. Who would balk at a USS Achilles or a USS Ajax,

I would. Have you ever read or seen a performance of Trojan Women? It's haunting, hearing the fictionalized Trojan women talk about the future they face as sex slaves to the Greeks after the destruction of their culture -- and thinking about the fact that Trojan Women was written by Euripides as an allegory for the genocide against the inhabitants of Melos by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War.

[T'Girl]

Nerys Myk wrote:

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There are a few long standing feuds in Europe. Ask the Greeks about the Turks.

Still pissed off about the whole "Battle of Thermopylae" thing?


T

[Sci]

T'Girl wrote:

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Still pissed off about the whole "Battle of Thermopylae" thing?

I dated a Greek-American earlier this year. Hearing her mother make random insults against Turks for no particular reason was just bizarre. It was kinda like listening to an English-Canadian and a French-Canadian bitch at each other about the Fields of Abramham; at some point, you just want to shout at them, "NO ONE ELSE CARES!"

[The Borgified Corpse]

Myasishchev wrote:

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I'm just funning. How about a USS Hindenberg? That's a bad name on at least two levels.

Yeah, it didn't fare any better than it's sister ship, the USS Titanic.

At the very least, for safety's sake, I don't think the USS Cortez should be sent on any first contact missions.

The Columbus should be a shuttlecraft assigned to the USS Ohio, next to the Cleveland.

As for Pol Pot & Mao, considering the Federation is a communist utopia, I'm surprised we don't see more ships named after communist leaders, like Lenin & Marx. Heck, we know that, sometime between now & Star Trek IV, St. Petersburg is re-renamed Leningrad.

But to get back to a much earlier post in the thread, where do I sign up to serve on the USS Whore of Babylon?

[newtype_alpha]

How about a Galaxy class "USS Sink The" teamed up with a Defiant class "USS Bismark"

[USS Bones]

USS Reap the Whirlwind?

[captcalhoun]

USS Genghis Khan

USS Radovan Karadzic

USS Ratko Mladic

USS Saddam Hussein

USS Nick Griffin

[Sycho Nosk]

Cortez eh.... el dorado.... hey tht ships got treasure!!!!! shoot boys get out your gunny sacks and strap on ya pillagin pants! today we be robbin pirates for space booty! ...............and get the treasure aswell!!

[StarryEyed]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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Never mind all this political stuff, I want the USS Jeter, USS Posada, USS Pettitte, USS Rivera...

Great names for ships the Federation purchased from the Ferengi at way above retail.

[T'Girl]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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How about a Galaxy class "USS Sink The" teamed up with a Defiant class "USS Bismark"

Cruising between them could be a Irony class "USS The".

[Nerys Myk]

T'Girl wrote:

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Still pissed off about the whole "Battle of Thermopylae" thing?

Nah, that beef was with the Persians.

The Turks doen't show up till later. Seems the Greeks objected to being part of the Ottoman Empire.

[Myasishchev]

Sci wrote:

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I dated a Greek-American earlier this year. Hearing her mother make random insults against Turks for no particular reason was just bizarre. It was kinda like listening to an English-Canadian and a French-Canadian bitch at each other about the Fields of Abramham; at some point, you just want to shout at them, "NO ONE ELSE CARES!"

Ha! I know this Turkish chick, who, within twenty minutes of having met here, started talking about how she hated the Kurds. I assume she also does not like Greeks.

She is also on record as denying the Armenian genocide. Lovely girl. Future lawyer, incidentally.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

StarryEyed wrote:

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Great names for ships the Federation purchased from the Ferengi at way above retail.

Reminds me of some more great names: USS Sour Grapes, USS 27, USS Bucky Dent, USS Aaron Boone, and of course USS Bill Buckner.