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America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

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    سيف الله's Avatar Full Member
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    America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

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    Salaam

    Some in Britain have had a rather naive view that they have a 'special relationship' with the USA. Glad to see somebody actually understands how the world really works.

    America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    Now will we grasp that the United States is not our friend, but a foreign country whose interests are often different from ours?

    President Obama’s blatant intervention in our internal affairs is not a sudden breach of a soppy ‘special relationship’. The USA’s only real special relationship is with Saudi Arabia, a 70-year-old hard pact of oil, money and power, welded together with such cynicism it ought to make us gasp.

    Barack Obama’s open desire for us to stay inside the EU is by no means the first or worst example of White House meddling here in these islands. Bill Clinton forced us to cave in to the Provisional IRA in 1998 and his successor, George W. Bush, continued the policy by making us do Sinn Fein’s bidding afterwards.

    Washington came close to scuppering our recapture of the F
    alklands in 1982. And with the current state of our Armed Forces, which can nowadays do nothing without American support, I often wonder how the White House and the Pentagon would behave if Argentina once again seized Port Stanley.

    If anyone thinks Hillary Clinton is a great friend of Britain, they’re in for a big surprise.

    But surely the Americans fought with us shoulder to shoulder against the Kaiser and Hitler? Not exactly. The USA (quite rightly) fought for its own interest in both great wars, not for us.

    When we ran out of money after the First World War, Washington seized the chance to force us to limit our Navy, and so began to overtake us as the world’s major naval power. We had feared Germany would do this. It is one of the great ironies of history that it was the USA that ended British sea power.

    In the blackest months of the Second World War, just after the fall of France, the US Congress demanded almost every penny we owned before it would authorise the famous Lend- Lease programme.

    Secret convoys of Royal Navy warships carried our reserves of gold bullion (estimated to have been worth £26 billion in today’s values) across the Atlantic – mostly never to return. Billions in negotiable securities went the same way, and British assets in the USA were sold off at absurdly low prices.

    I don’t blame the Americans for this. In 1934, Britain had defaulted on her giant First World War debt to the USA. This is now worth up to £225 billion in today’s money, depending on how you calculate inflation.

    We still haven’t paid it off, and never will, though it’s not considered polite to discuss it and it’s one of those facts so grotesque that most people refuse to believe it when first told of it.

    During the Hitler war, the USA gave us enough aid to stay in the fight, but not enough to recover our former economic strength. The eventual peace was made on American terms, and Soviet terms, with us as onlookers. And after the war, Marshall Aid came with strings – open up the British Empire to outside trade, and then begin to dismantle it.

    Not wanting to get embroiled in any more European wars, the USA also put a lot of effort into creating a permanently united Europe. Documents came to light in the 1990s, probably by accident, showing detailed CIA involvement in the European Movement.

    I regard America’s behaviour as perfectly reasonable. It’s the sort of thing we used to do when we were top nation, and had more sense than to squander our wealth on idealistic foreign wars.

    I like America and Americans, lived there happily for two fascinating years, and wish them well. But I never forget that the USA is another country, not a friend or even a cousin. Nor should you.

    http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/page/6/
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    سيف الله's Avatar Full Member
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    Salaam

    Another update

    The US has a long history of wiping its feet all over us. So why are we still desperate to be Donald's doormat?


    Why does the Prime Minister think it does her good to be seen with that global embarrassment, Donald Trump? Why do politicians and media commentators in Britain prattle about how the ‘Special Relationship’ between Britain and the USA is still flourishing?

    This is dangerous fantasy. The United States is not, and never has been, our special friend. Sometimes it has been our ally. Sometimes it has been very close to being our enemy, especially in Ireland (almost all the time) and during the Suez Crisis in 1956, when the US Navy’s chiefs discussed opening fire on the Royal Navy.

    I don’t complain about this. The USA does what we should do. It looks after itself first. It is a separate country with different interests from ours. It is not a Big England. We owe them a lot of money. We defaulted on our enormous First World War debts to the US (£866 million at the time, worth about £225 billion at today’s values) back in 1934. Contrary to popular belief, we have never paid this back. We only very recently paid our Second World War debts to America.

    For the best explanation of the relations between the two countries, read what President Woodrow Wilson said at a banquet at Buckingham Palace on December 27, 1918, soon after our joint victory over Germany six weeks before.

    ‘You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither. Neither must you think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the US. Nor must too much importance in this connection be attached to the fact that English is our common language… no, there are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and interests.’

    I do wish that everyone in British politics, journalism and diplomacy would read and remember these words. Wilson was a fairly nasty piece of work who made a terrible mess of Europe and pretty much caused the Second World War. But he spoke the truth.

    And it seems to me that France’s Charles de Gaulle, who was always prickly and unhelpful to the USA, and who was disliked by them in return, did a far better job for his country than our post-war leaders did for ours.
    Our endless sucking up to Washington gets us very little worth having. If we told Donald Trump we were in fact not very keen to host a visit by him, he would give us more than if we abased ourselves before him. Doormat diplomacy, such as we now engage in with the USA, will always end with them wiping their feet on us.

    http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    Salaam

    Related. The prophet of doom speaks, pessimistic as ever but interesting what he has to say and the lessons to be learned.

    Blurb

    Our interview with the author and journalist Peter Hitchens. In our exclusive interview, Peter discusses his views on Trump, leaving the European Union and its apparent impact on young people, his Marxist roots and how doomed a society the UK truly is.

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    Peacefully's Avatar
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    im american, i view you as my brother.
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    Aslaam o alikum. all right.It is the same as Allah Purity 45 years ago in quran that the Jews and Christians can not be your friends.
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    27y9utc 1 - America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future
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    سيف الله's Avatar Full Member
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    Salaam

    format_quote Originally Posted by Peacefully View Post
    im american, i view you as my brother.
    I think you misunderstand what Peter Hitchens is saying. He referring more to state to state, elite to elite relations.
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    Salaam

    This is gloomy.

    PETER HITCHENS: 'I fear a British Trump who'll crush our civilisation'

    I fear a British Donald Trump. I fear such a person will steal the slogans of the Right and the merciless, dishonest propaganda methods of the Left – as the US President has done. I fear that the rise of such a figure is the likely outcome of the catastrophe caused by David Cameron’s folly in calling a referendum, and everyone else’s folly – of walking into such an obvious trap. It barely matters now how the whole thing ends. The sense of disappointment and betrayal now abroad is here to stay. A lot of people are not going to be forgiven for their part in the EU referendum fiasco.

    Can anyone really have thought that this great greasy, congealed granny knot, tied and retied and tightened for nearly 50 years, could be undone by a single clean stroke? Did they think it could be undone without any effort on their part to change the British political, legal, cultural and media elites which had for 40 years supported our membership of the EU? They might as well have expected all the nation’s rivers to reverse their courses, or stood around waiting for figs to grow on thorns.

    Can they really have thought, in a controversy so profound and passionate, that a vote of 51.89 per cent to 48.11 per cent was a shining, decisive mandate in which the winner could hope to take all and the loser should be left to grind his teeth in perpetuity?

    Well, if they did, it was a bad mistake, and the resulting divided country – in which one half will barely speak to the other, or acknowledge membership of the same nation – is the last and most bitter fruit of half a century of self-delusion, from which we have all now been roughly roused by real life.

    Of course, the sensible response to that awakening would be to take a long, hard, cool, reasonable look at our country and work out what might be a wise and affordable compromise, and where we went wrong.

    But I fear we will not do that. I fear we will have one last fantasy instead, a Great Leader cheered by adoring loyal crowds as he promises to punish other people on their behalf.

    AND worst of all, I fear that such a person, and his supporters, will bring our long age of free civilisation to an end. Since 1945, democracy has been about voters trying to improve their own lives by choosing the parties which seem to promise them most. That is gone. We will soon look back on it with nostalgia.

    From now on, democracy will be about a sullen, cheated, resentful majority wishing to make sure that everyone else now suffers as much as it has been suffering. We are moving from the politics of self-improvement to the politics of vengeance and spite, conspiracy theories, scapegoats and calls for the jailing and humiliation of the defeated.

    Armoured by resentment and a desire to pay back years of humiliation, such a leader – who like Trump will come from the world of TV or from nowhere, which is roughly the same thing – will have far more power than any US leader. The President’s freedom of action is greatly limited by the US Constitution’s separation of powers and by the Supreme Court. We have nothing of the kind.

    This will be the price we pay for the complete failure of our parliamentary system to reflect the fears and wishes of the British people over the past few years, culminating in the tragi-comedy of Theresa May’s premiership.

    For the absurd Westminster manoeuvres of the past few weeks, and of the weeks to come, are not an isolated event. They are the end of a far longer process of decline and decay.

    I do not think Parliament as it now is, or our political system, will survive for very long after this. We are no longer adult or wise enough to cope with either, or to use them properly.

    Each one of the repeated failures of democracy comes at a high cost. But the accumulated bill is now so great that it cannot be paid except in anger and disillusion.

    Since the 1960s, when advertising men moved into politics, and our national leaders were sold to us like foreign holidays, we have been repeatedly let down and disappointed. And there has been no redress.

    Harold Wilson’s technological shiny New Britain, promised in 1964, never materialised. Instead, we had devaluation, strikes and the catastrophic destruction of one of the best state education systems in the world.

    Ted Heath’s supposed gritty realism, promised in 1970, ended in the Common Market, plus wild inflation and the three-day week.

    Margaret Thatcher’s vaunted revolution, promised in 1979, with its flashy wrappings and bold slogans at home and abroad, devastated our manufacturing industry and did nothing to halt or slow the great Left-wing moral and cultural revolution which now has us in its grip.

    As for the Blair-Brown-Cameron era, which began in 1997 and still drags on, people are only just beginning to realise the scale of its foolishness and its crazy revolutionary radicalism.

    For most people the thing is just too big to understand. In a few short years, Britain became somewhere else. Criminal justice collapsed. The police became paramilitary social workers uninterested in the problems of the public and obsessed with sex and the internet.

    Schools failed to teach the most basic knowledge yet preached the gospel of Stonewall. The word ‘husband’ disappeared from government documents, Christianity was officially dethroned as the national religion, the beliefs of a small coven of Marxist revolutionaries became the official family policy of a great and ancient state, terrorism was bounteously rewarded with amnesties, territorial surrender and power, and its gory dead-eyed practitioners invited to white-tie dinners at Windsor Castle.

    But a nation that gave up defending itself against its real enemies in Belfast suddenly became furiously keen on overthrowing selected tyrants in the Middle East, squandering lives and money on adventures that had no conceivable benefit for us, and which would in the end bring great woes to our doorstep.

    Absurdly posing as the foe of terror, even as it gave power and concessions to the terrorist godfather Martin McGuinness, it smashed up the ancient liberties of its own constitution, and engaged in disgraceful state-sponsored kidnaps overseas, which are only just coming to light.

    And, rather than opposing all these dreadful ideas at home and abroad, the Conservative Party enthusiastically adopted and copied them, until it was impossible to tell it apart from the Blairites. The price of these adventures is still being reckoned.

    But the most evident of them was the great spasm of mass migration from the devastated Middle East and across the Mediterranean, both direct and traceable results of our interventions in Iraq, Syria and Libya. The current insoluble migration crisis of Europe, convulsing almost every continental country, was also the great unmentioned reason for much of the rage against the EU in 2016.

    Immigration inevitably affects the poorer parts of the country, and it was Britain’s gloomier, more depressed areas which had already had their noses well and truly ‘rubbed in diversity’ (as New Labour’s insiders smugly described it), by the largest episode of immigration since the Norman Conquest.

    The idea that the great columns of migrants advancing across the continent from Greece, or from Libya, might now end up in Boston or Birmingham or Slough was too much for Labour voters to bear.

    Labour voters? Yes. It is the most astonishing fact of our past few decades that traditional Labour voters (such as Gillian Duffy, dismissed as a ‘bigoted woman’ by Gordon Brown) secured the majority for Leave.

    Released for the first time from tribal allegiance, they took revenge on a party which had taken them for granted all through its long march of liberal intellectual policies.

    They had put up with the withdrawal of police from the streets, with the treatment of criminals as sick people to be pitied rather than bad people in need of punishment. They had endured the closing of the gates of good schools to all but the rich, and the state’s weird obsession with sexual revolution. They had seen manufacturing industry, steelworks, coal mines, shipyards, car factories and council housing disappear.

    Now, just for once, they could roll those resentments up into one missile, and hurl it back at the heads of the London pseudo-intellectuals who had taken over their party.

    What a pity it had never happened before. But the sad truth is that both the big parties long ago turned their backs on their supporters.

    At election times, they were advised by PR men to make vague promises: ‘More bobbies on the beat’, ‘Education, education, education’, ‘We will rescue the NHS’, or ‘The NHS is safe in our hands’. But these were either things they had no intention of doing, or they were things they could not afford.

    And so we came to the end. We had a Tory Party that openly despised its supporters as fruitcakes, and a Labour Party that openly despised its supporters as bigots.

    We had a series of governments that could not afford to pay for their promises and so had borrowed dangerously. It could never be enough, so nothing worked properly. We had a population which could not get used to the fact that it now took two wages to pay for the family life that had once needed only a single income. And even then, although there was officially no inflation, everything seemed to get more costly every week. So they borrowed too.

    And then the effects of 50 years of bad schools began to work right through into the whole of society, with a million young people more or less unemployable, their jobs done by Poles and Romanians and Bulgarians.

    I can just remember another country, a place of austere self-control, of unwrecked countryside and sober cities, serious schools, heavy coins, visible, authoritative policemen, flourishing industry. You could not take any long journey without seeing the forges and furnaces and shipyards which made almost everything we used.

    If I’d known how soon it would vanish I would have treasured it more. Instead, I can do no more than try to find out why and how we threw it all away.

    https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co....html#comments
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    One imperialistic empire complaining about another imperialistic empire.

    PETER HITCHENS: 'I fear a British Trump who'll crush our civilisation'


    ​You already had Churchill.
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    Crowley's son churchill - beast of the great beast.
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    Altaqwa's Avatar Limited Member
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    The USA since Day #1 has been a Military Corporation, not a genuine Democratic country. It's no wonder that war is all America (and their allies) care about, peace is an empty word to them.

    - - - Updated - - -

    format_quote Originally Posted by Abz2000 View Post
    Crowley's son churchill - beast of the great beast.
    Well, interesting 'coincidences' here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBezmQUz22k
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    سيف الله's Avatar Full Member
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    Re: America isn't our special friend. It ruined our Navy, Empire and future

    Edit - I shifted it to a more appropriate thread.
    Last edited by سيف الله; 12-22-2019 at 02:11 AM.
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