Keeping the Empire Running: Britain’s Global Military Footprint
Binoy Kampmark
A few nostalgic types still believe that the Union Jack continues to flutter to sighs and reverence over outposts of the world, from the tropics to the desert. They would be right, if only to a point. Britain, it turns out, has a rather expansive global reach when it comes to bases, military installations and testing sites. While not having the obese heft and lumbering brawn of the United States, it makes a good go of it. Globally, the UK military has a presence in 145 sites in 42 countries.
Such figures tally with Ian Cobain’s prickly observation in The History Thieves: that the British were the only people “perpetually at war.”
Phil Miller’s rich overview of Britain’s military footprint for Declassified UK shows it to be heavy.
The size of the global military presence is far larger than previously thought and is likely to mean that the UK has the second largest military network in the world, after the United States.”
The UK military, for instance, has a presence in five countries in the Asia-Pacific: naval facilities in Singapore; garrisons in Brunei, drone testing facilities in Australia; three facilities in Nepal; a quick reaction force in Afghanistan. Cyprus remains a favourite with 17 military installations. In Africa, British personnel can be found in Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Mali. Then come the ever dubious ties to Arab monarchies.
The nature of having such bases is to be kind to your host, despite him being theocratic, barking mad, or an old fashioned despot with fetishes. Despite the often silly pronouncements by British policymakers that they take issue with authoritarians, exceptions numerous in number abound.
The UK has never had a problem with authoritarians it can work with or despots it can coddle. A closer look at such relations usually reveal the same ingredients: capital, commerce, perceptions of military necessity. The approach to Oman, a state marked by absolute rule, is a case in point.
Since 1798, Britain has had a hand in ensuring the success, and the survivability, of the House of Al Said. On September 12, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced that a further £23.8 million would go to enhancing the British Joint Logistics Support Base at Duqm port, thereby tripling “the size of the existing UK base and help facilitate Royal Navy deployments to the Indian Ocean”. The Ministry of Defence also went so far as to describe a “renewal” of a “hugely valuable relationship,” despite the signing of a new Joint Defence Agreement in February 2019.
The agreement had been one of the swan song acts of the ailing Sultan Qaboos bin Said, whose passing this year was genuinely mourned in British political circles. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called him “an exceptionally wise and respected leader who will be missed enormously.” Papers of record wrote in praise of a reformer and a developer. “The longest serving Arab ruler,” observed a sycophantic column in The Guardian, “Qaboos was an absolute monarch, albeit a relatively benevolent and popular one.”
The same Sultan, it should be said, had little fondness for freedom of expression, assembly and association, encouraged the arrests and harassment of government critics and condoned sex discrimination. But he was of the “one of us” labels: trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, an unwavering Anglophile, installed on the throne by Britain in the 1970 palace coup during the all but forgotten Dhofar Rebellion.
“Strategically,” Cobain reminds us, “the Dhofar war was one of the most important conflicts of the 20th century, as the victors could expect to control the Strait of Hormuz and the flow of oil.” The British made sure their man won.
Public mention of greater British military involvement in foreign theatres can be found, though they rarely make front page acts. The business of projecting such power, especially in the Britannic model, should be careful, considered, even gnomic. Britain, for instance, is rallying to the US-led call to contain the Yellow Peril in the Asia Pacific, a nice reminder to Beijing that old imperial misdeeds should never be a bar to repetition.
The head of the British Army, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, spoke in September about there being “a market for a more persistent presence from the British Army (in Asia). It’s an area that saw a much more consistent Army presence in the Eighties, but with 9/11 we naturally receded from it.” The time had come “to redress that imbalance”.
The UK Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, prefers to be more enigmatic about the “future of Global Britain.” To deal with an “ever more complex and dynamic strategic context,” he suggests the “Integrated Operating Concept”. Britain had to:
compete below the threshold of war in order to deter war, and to prevent one’s adversaries from achieving their objectives in fait accompli strategies.”
Gone are the old thuggeries of imperial snatch and grab; evident are matters of flexibility in terms of competition. “Competing involves a campaign posture that includes continuous operating on our terms and in places of our choosing.”
This entails a thought process involving “several dimensions to escalate and deescalate up and down multiple ladders – as if it were a spider’s web.” The general attempts to illustrate this gibberish with the following example:
One might actively constrain in the cyber domain to protect critical national infrastructure in the maritime Domain.”
In 2017, there were already more than just murmurings from Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, that a greater British presence in the Asia-Pacific was warranted. Fallon was keen to stress the reasons for deeper involvement, listing them to a group of Australian journalists.
The tensions have been rising in the region, not just from the tests by North Korea but also escalating tension in the South China Sea with the building program that’s gone there on the islands and the need to keep those routes open.”
With such chatter about the China threat you could be forgiven for believing that British presence in the Asia-Pacific was minimal. But that would ignore, for instance, the naval logistics base at Singapore’s Sembawang Wharf, permanently staffed by eight British military personnel with an eye on the busy Malacca Strait. A more substantial presence can also be found in the Sultanate of Brunei, comprising an infantry battalion of Gurkhas and an Army Air Corps Flight of Bell 212 helicopters.
The MOD is particularly keen on the surroundings, as they offer “tropical climate and terrain … well suited to jungle training”.
Over the next four years, the UK military can expect to get an extra £16.5 billion – a 10% increase in funding and a fond salute to militarists. “I have decided that the era of cutting our defence budget must end, and ends now,” declared Johnson. “Our plans will safeguard hundreds of thousands of jobs in the defence industry, protecting livelihoods across the UK and keeping the British people safe.”
The prime minister was hoping to make that announcement accompanied by the “Integrated Defence and Security Review” long championed by his now-departed chief special adviser, Dominic Cummings. Cummings might have been ejected from the gladiatorial arena of Downing Street politics, but the ideas in the Review are unlikely to buck old imperial trends. At the very least, there will be a promise of more military bases to reflect a posture General Carter describes rather obscurely as “engaged and forward deployed”.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
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No better than Rent-a-Scumbag.
May you bare all the cost and none of the fruits. May all your endeavours fail.
Britain describes something that is not England or anything I have ever experienced. It’s the City of London. The Crown of the Inner, or Outer Temple, things I am not privy to, corporate distinctions I can not have any knowledge of because they are not publicly disclosed. In fact i am sick and tired of the whole charade.
Mmmmm. But enough English (and they were by and large English) voters voted in the tories and their scumbag policies.
Also, ‘Britain’ does not describe ‘England’ because ‘England’ is one country in the (currently organised) political set-up of the UK. ‘Britain’ is actually an island politically divided into ‘England’, ‘Wales’ and ‘Scotland’. The ‘Great’ part is to distinguish it from ‘lesser’ Britain – i.e. Brittany, in France.
The ‘City of London’ is a very rich, very capitalist, very Neo-liberal enclave in ‘England’. Hope that clears up the confusion.
Physically in England but not politically. The empire was run by and for “the crown” a corporation which employs the Queen. Known as The Firm by the royal family.
Britain’s nuclear industry was involved in a top secret international operation to steal dead babies for up to three decades, according to newly declassified documents.
The shocking revelation comes in the wake of the controversy over the organ retention scandal at some of this country’s leading hospitals.
The papers, released by the American Department of Energy, show that scientists from the UK Atomic Energy Authority removed children’s bones and bodies to ship to the United States for classified nuclear experiments.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jun/03/highereducation.research
Yeah. I’m surprised that you seem shocked, as the US is a country which routinely napalmed Vietnamese infants and babies, among others. Plus lots more . . .
The only empire the UK is keeping running is the US one. That’s why they had to stop Corbyn winning a year ago.
Thom: Read this: >
Excerpted from: Commonwealth of Nations
“The Commonwealth of Nations, generally known simply as the Commonwealth,[3] is a political association of 54 member states, nearly all former territories of the British Empire.[4] The chief institutions of the organisation are the Commonwealth Secretariat, which focuses on intergovernmental aspects, and the Commonwealth Foundation, which focuses on non-governmental relations between member states.[5]”
“The countries of the Commonwealth cover more than 29,958,050 km2 (11,566,870 sq mi), equivalent to 20 per cent of the world’s land area. The total population is estimated to be 2,418,964,000 as of 2016, equivalent to nearly a third of the global population, making it the second largest intergovernmental organisation by population behind the United Nations.”
Complete text: Commonwealth of Nations – Wikipedia
Great to know these organizational minions are working so hard to insure our freedoms…
Government secretly deployed British troops to defend Saudi Arabian oil fields
British forces sent in during court-ordered ban on arms sales to autocracy
https://worldchangebrief.webnode.com Germany: PCR Covid Test False/
General On Trump Win.CIA Frankfurt Battle/ Firey Paris Protests.AZ Callup/
Facebook AI Kills Businesses.Zuck Funds Dem Races/
Firing Squads.Hanging Returns/
Ex-CIA Brennan: Pro Iran, Anti US/
EU Migrant Pact Changes Little
It is psychological warfare. We need to withdraw our consent its simples:
http://www.frombehindenemylines.org.uk/2020/11/prohibition-and-covid-19-part-two-the-great-reset-is-socialism/#comment-2133
https://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf
From Behind Enemy Lines – 10 / 10 analysis of the UK population’s predicament. With proposals as to what to do!
Britain’s Global Footprint!!!!??? You’re ‘aving a larf!
https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1127686304365199360
The PM meets the boss…
Very obviously, these defense jobs with its arms production will be deemed ‘essential business’ during the scamdemic. A scamdemic which was supposed to be just a few weeks long in order to ‘flatten the curve’. It would take me one minute to flatten the curve if i was locked in a room with these science charlatans.
Should this totalitarian gov’t get its wish, arms manufacturers will be the only businesses left open and thriving, whilst every other business gets trashed and their owners forced into poverty. Lots of newly poor and starving people will be good for recruitment.
Perhaps citizens will be lining up for their gov’t bitcoin instead of the usual shilling?
Jobs galore – contact tracers (stalkers), jabbers, police, biotech people, robot manufacturers, operators and repairers, data miners, amazon sales and delivery, privatization experts, quarantine camp managers/staff, mask-checkers, surveillance industry, fake food industry, propaganda consultants, ….. etc. etc.
Are you bemoaning the fact that people are getting jobs? If so, why? Any good left-winger would be keen on getting jobs, as long as they are not in the so-called ‘defence’ industry.
This “industry” of offence is a fantastic money making enterprise for the wealthy deranged psychopaths who through their political proxies would have us all believing that Chinese or Russian hordes will destroy our societies so we need to be kept “safe” (same strategy as the Covid19 “threat”). It’s a never ending game which could end with catastrophic consequences. Reading stuff such as “competing below the threshold of war in order to prevent war” (military branch of SAGE ?), is the green light for the continuation of this psychotic behaviour.
Unfortunately, we will have a frail and weak minded old man in charge who plans, once again, on dismantling our defenses. It will be interesting to see how much more money gets diverted to his family via no bid government contracts. Will Biden be President of the United States or the Biden Family and friends. Billions of skimmable dollars will be made available for the taking from the defunded military. A familiar theme. No one will notice because it’s already been budgeted and approved for “something”. It is funny because this is an experience a family member of mine had with a local association board who had unspent money leftover from a project. It was fair game to what they wanted with the cash because it was already approved for expenditure on “something”. It was not a matter of what but how much.
Don’t worry, Wayne, we are holding bake sales & can and bottle drives to ensure the Pentagon isn’t completely “defunded and dismantled”..
With the impending depression due to the lock downs, that may be the best we can do. Just like WWII. Better brush up on your mandarin. They are coming.
Again, don’t worry, Wayne, they are not coming..
I live at Yunnan Province.. People are calm, healthy, happy, hard-working..
Life is good; problems won’t be created where none exist..
Btw, it takes 3 years to learn Mandarin.. Cantonese? I don’t know..
Far better being swindled, than spent on unneeded bombs and other weapons of mass destruction.
You must be Chinese.
So then you must be a racist fascist.
There is not much difference as to whether the decisions he approves – or does not block – benefit his family. In most cases, it is a lot safer if plutocrats retain his share until he steps down.
Whether for war or any other excuse, the aim is appropriating more of the torrent of public wealth. War itself has almost necome routine, with no call to the public for a “war effort”, or special taxes.
In the double-think of capitalism, and its religious propaganda so beloved to the sheep, to be rich is glorious and wealth equals virtue.
No, “we” don’t. “You” have. “We” have an arse-headed petulant infant who had a grossly over-privileged and pampered education and upbringing.
Your “frail and weak minded old man” is not any different from any of the other cretins who have been President since, oh, Richard Nixon. But control will still be in the same Neo-fascist hands.
The crux of the problem: “One might actively constrain in the cyber domain to protect critical national infrastructure in the maritime Domain.”
See the emanate gold fringe on the flags in US court jurisdictions??? It signifies the court is operating under Maritime Rule and Admiralty Law. When you enter your “legal” name within these courts, you have surrendered your personal rights under Common Law. It is much the same in all British “courts”. I wonder why our “educators” and media fail to disclose these details???
The UK increased military spending at the same time as the USA did, under trump, it is almost like the UK is administered by same Pentagon, which of course it is, just like Israel.
So why we are we to regard the UK’s military as an arm of British interests, deo we have any interests anymore? because it is clearly not. We mostly fight American wars and act as an arm of US interests. This has been observed on many occasions.
I remember the Atlanticist MEP, Daniel Hannan being asked in an RT interview ‘when had British interests ever deviated from those of the USA in the past 40 years?’
his response was comic gold as he staggered and stumbled to find an answer.
We just need to wait and watch for the total absorption of the UK under US control next year, following the completion of Brexit. Then the harmonisation of the British economy na British military to open control will become very obvious.
Both the UK and Israel are vassal states of the US, controlled by the same people in Washington. That’s why the Tories have spent four years pushing a form of Brexit that the British people don’t want and is economically unworkable – yep, it’s another regime change dreamt up by people who have never left the US.
Controlled by….. Washington, which is separate from the States. Like The City in but not of London and the Vatican, they are sovereign domains. The Admiralty courts mentioned by Paul V. above are licensed by the Temple BAR (Bank Accredited Representatives*) of the inner City . It’s all corporations with their commercial contracts. Our governments serve corporations they are contracted to, not us and the torturous trail ends at the Bank. It’s quite logical – who pays the Piper calls the tune. * I’m not certain what the R is.
A bit of a rosy picture. It’s well known that the US army had often to rescue the British Army in Iraq and Afghanistan
Red alert! Red alert! The eagle has landed! Red alert!
It’s only fake-believe: how to deal with a conspiracy theorist
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/29/how-to-deal-with-a-conspiracy-theorist-5g-covid-plandemic-qanon
It is typical how they didn’t want to discuss the real facts the ‘conspiracy theorists’ are coming up with. They have just banned challenging questions like the PM has. All articles in the Guardian are CIA approved now there is not doubt in my mind about that. And all comments are written by GCHQ. It is a Putemkin facade of liberal journalism.
It is typical that they didn’t want to discuss the real facts the ‘conspiracy theorists’ are coming up with. They have just banned challenging questions like the PM has.
All articles in the Guardian are CIA approved now there is not doubt in my mind about that. And all comments are written by GCHQ. It is a Putemkin facade of liberal journalism.
Cute bit of gas-lighting to put “hunting the invisible dragon” as their No.1….
A bit like your “virus” then?
The thing is, if you bother to read it, it tells us virtually nothing about how to spot ‘fake’ news. The author is just plugging his book.
It’s a very complex topic. The more nationalistic the Third World leaders – rabidly dismantling the old British colonial school system, for instance – the more likely they are to send their own kids to Eaton. Or at least an international school in Singapore.
Reported COVID-19 Deaths ‘Almost Exactly Equal To’ Total Decrease In Deaths By All Other Causes — Johns Hopkins University reports an inconvenient truth.
“It’s no longer about using the right sources — it’s whether we think the right thing. Even if you quote the CDC or JHU, you must come to the politically correct conclusion or you’ll be censored.”
— Ryan Cristián
Even JHU will be censored: A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19, by Yanni Gu – The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, Nov 22, 2020 (archived version only).
Analysis and further sources at The Last American Vagabond.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/y0L4wVmmGDmj/
Every other cause of death falls, simultaneously, at the same time as deaths from COVID-19 are rising.
If there’s a raging pandemic, shouldn’t it tend to increase deaths by all causes, especially the leading causes of death like heart disease?
And her conclusion?
A trusted source… commits thought crime?
Of course, it’s been proven that deaths with Covid has been counted as death from Covid. But this is a report from within Johns Hopkins University, co-organizers of Event 201… based on the CDC’s own data. A trusted source using date from a second trusted source. Precisely the people you are told to follow… until you draw the wrong conclusion… and then even Johns Hopkins gets censored.
interestingly, when I try to go to the jhunewsletter site as opposed to the archive, the entire site is now flagged as unsafe by my firefox browser, saying the clock is off-kilter, invalidating the security and it may be compromised.
Weaponising a changing climate & a seasonal respiratory disease.
Comparing Cyclical planet temperature rise and Natural seasonal ‘flu’ and why global warming and Covid do not need to be real.
1. GW: Climate has always changed.
C19: Respiratory virus happen every year.
2. GW: Label all destructive weather events as being caused by GW.
C19: Label overloaded hospitals, a regular seasonal event, as unusual & caused by C19.
3. GW: Attribute cause solely to man made carbon emissions.
C19: Attribute hospitalisations solely to unknown/new virus.
4. GW: Despite historic precedent, pretend temperature growth can only go exponentially up, deny cycles, deny increased plant growth and deny any positive effects of a warming climate.
C19: Unscientifically pretend growth continues, deny herd immunity, deny seasonality, ignore natural immunity.
5. GW: Only fund research supporting carbon emissions narrative.
C19: Give financial incentives to falsely attribute deaths to Covid.
6. GW: Ridicule, marginalise, defund, dissenting scientist.
C19: Threaten & discredit doctors and medical staff with dismissal if they challenge official narrative.
7. GW: Attribute scientific decent to fossil fuel funded lobbyists. Discredit scepticism.
C19: Call all opposing voices far-right. Do not allow fact based dissent a platform.
8. GW: Employ ‘ugly’ bad faith actors to deny global warming is man made. Donald trump.
C19: Employ bad faith actors to discredit fact based opposition to Covid. David Icke.
9. GW: Treat as infallible faulty temperature measurements.
C19: In bad faith treat as infallible incorrect virus test results from inaccurate test.
10. GW: Call deniers murderers.
C19: Call deniers murderers.
11. GW: Feed ‘unsafe’ data into predictive models to ensure environmental catastrophe narrative and to justify extreme political measures.
C19: Feed ‘unsafe’ data into predictive models to predict medical catastrophe, to justify extreme measures.
12. GW: Use selective data, unsound predictions to propagate fear
C19: Use selective date (cases) & unsound predictions to propagate fear.
13. GW: Use ‘captured’ scientist & institutions to exaggerate dangers.
C19: Use ‘captured’ scientist & institutions to exaggerate dangers.
14. GW: Claim science is dictating social, economic and political policy.
C19: Claim science is dictating social, economic and political policy.
15. GW: Provide bad faith politicians with scientific cover for extreme economic and political policies.
C19: Provide bad faith politicians with scientific cover for extreme economic and political polices.
16. GW: Suppress alternative science results and views.
C19: Suppress alternative science results and views.
17. GW: The response involves transferring vast amounts of state wealth to Corporations.
C19: The response involved transferring vast amounts of state wealth to Corporations.
18. GW: Environmental projects like carbon capture and regulation will add burdens and inefficiencies on small businesses
C19: The lockdowns add uneconomic burdens and inefficiencies on small business.
19. GW: Use media to create only one narrative.
C19: Use media to create only one narrative.
20. GW: Censor opposing views and opposing science.
C19: Censor opposing views and opposing statistics.
21. GW: Use environmental regulations to reengineer economy to profit large Corporations.
C19: Use ‘lockdown’ to reengineer economy to favour large Corporations.
22. GW: Promise the left a ‘Green New Deal’ and an economy reengineered to socialist values. Whilst rolling out neoliberal agenda.
C19: Promise the left larger class sizes, universal wage. economy in tune to socialist values. Whilst rolling out neoliberal agenda.
23. GW: Attribute carbon regulatory burden & costs to the left.
C19: Attribute lockdowns to the left, even under right wing administrations.
24. GW: Scare conservatives with socialist ‘green new deal’, as socialism via the back door.
C19: Scare conservatives with ‘great reset’ as socialism via the back door.
25. GW: Position the left as anti-working class through closure of working class industries.
C19: Position the left as anti-working class through destruction of low paid service sector jobs.
26. GW: Ration freedom to travel overseas, except for the rich.
C19: Make freedom to travel overseas rare, expensive and difficult.
27. GW: Ration travel, make remote working over US tech platforms the norm.
C19: Restrict interpersonal contact, make remote working over US tech platforms the norm.
28. GW: Use the USA’s exemption from GW restrictions and regulations to gain economic competitive advantage over those burdened with costly environmental policies.
C19: Use lockdown to advantage Amazon, google, Facebook zoom, Google university, Air BNB, Uber eats, etc… overseas and force US corporations onto world economies.
29. GW: Through increased environmental regulations & increased costs strip wealth and opportunities and freedoms from the working population.
C19: Use poverty to further depress wages, cut healthcare, and social programmes in the name of the ‘crisis’.
30. GW: Through environmental regulation destroy small/medium size business at home and overseas to give large Corporations MORE economic advantage.
C19: through lockdowns destroy small/medium size business at home and overseas to give large Corporations MORE economic advantage.
31. GW: Use social peer pressure to force compliance to cult of the ‘environment’.
C19: Use social peer pressure to force compliance to cult of medical danger.
32. GW: ‘fighting for the planet’ is more important than everything else. Ignore unemployment & damage to the economy, as secondary.
C19: Only Covid deaths matter, they are more important than everything else. Ignore cancer deaths, unemployment, & damage to the economy.
33. GW: The response to global warming will cause more social political and economic damage, than increasing temperature ever could.
C19: The response HAS caused more social political and economic damage than the virus ever could.
34. GW: Can lead to a carbon passport to restrict freedoms.
C19: Can lead to medical passport to restrict freedoms.
Failure of GW: Too slow in delivering, too much opposition, failure to project enough panic, growing disbelief. Not enough fear.
Failure of C19: Caused too rapid change, has caused suspicion, has lead to exposure of hidden agendas. Will require Plan B, the exposure of the Covid fraud, likely next step to discredit what remains of our democratic institutions.
Yes, by Jingo!
We’ll soon show Johnny Chinaman and Johnny Iranian what’s what!
They’d better take note.
We’ve got our 65,000 ton aircraft carriers now (even if we haven’t got any planes to put on them.)
They’d better watch out. We’ve got 32 serviceable tanks.
All we need now to really put the fear of God into them is to put Generalissimo Gavin Williamson back at the helm.
Jolly well said, old bean! Old Johnny Ruskie will also be quaking in his boots when the Generalissimo deploys all the skills he learned as a fireplace salesman against him!
Yes! It’ll be “Empire II” all over again, again. Or are we on III now?
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people that the British Empire had come to an end. I mean, why would people who’d ruled the world suddenly decide to give up that power? It makes no sense at all.
And it’s interesting that the quoted Army bod should use the words which are attributed to him, because The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire is the title of an illuminating documentary which came out in 2017.
Oh, and the second-greatest trick Old Nick ever pulled was (is) convincing people that the flu is somehow a grave and unusual threat to humanity at large.
(Although that lie is now jostling for the No.1 spot).
Of course those in power wouldn’t voluntarily give it up, and yet over the last century or so, we have seen Britain make decision after decision which has eroded its status. Not merely with hindsight, but quite foreseeably.
I don’t think this means that it was an illusion that the British empire came to an end. I think the illusion is that the empire was ever really British. The empire rolls on but has either shed its British skin, or found a more suitable host, whichever image you prefer.
The question of whether it was ever really British is a good one. Britain was where the parasite initially found its host, certainly. And the City of London’s been running things ever since, with its agents and henchmen (including the USA) spread far and wide across the planet.
And that’s quite apart from the question of the Britishness (or otherwise) of the ruling families, of course.
The United Nations
The Anglo-American imperium has it root justification in the Four Freedoms of 1941.
“Freedom from Fear”…. how’s that working out?
I’d say it’s working out about as well as “Freedom from Want” and “Freedom of Speech”
You Forgot to mention the Chagos , the Malvinas, virgin islands, Gibraltar , cayman islands , Bermuda, Naru, and many more illegal british colonies now kept as tax heavens for the rich and famous.
Matter of fact you seam to have left out from your article all british tax heavens as if there would be free from british military and police bases.
Ho, and what about Ireland?
And Scotland?
”One of us.” Bleurgh. Pinochet (Thatcher’s friend) was in the same category.
Ghouls, all of them.
Money always wins. When China controls it all we really will be in deep trouble!
Not if you take out Chinese citizenship.
Anything to keep its undeserving permanent seat at the UN Security council: the show must go on.
Kevin Sharkey speaking at the protest in Dublin was utterly powerful and fired up and so eloquent in his speech. It’s this type of mindset and passion
Must watch
https://youtu.be/Jzv0mV5aK_k
This was great, arsebiscuits. I’ve never heard Kevin Sharkey.
Interesting point about the children in “care homes” that were vaccinated. And now all records demolished.
Thanks!
Yes the government here decided to suppress the files of the babies and mother’s homes for 75 years just recently under the radar, thankfully the public didn’t let it go and is in the public forum debate now
The contradictory side of it is that Glaxosmithkliene was the pharmaceutical company who was let into these homes by the government and the church and did all sorts of experiments on them
Yet the government spinned it to get the public to hate on the church here instead of the fact that it was pharmaceutical companies who were doing the experiments on the children!
How wilfully blind can you be?!
And they can’t even join the dots that the same companies are going to do a world wide experiments now with untested dodgy Vaccines
Not the right type of outrage I suppose.
Pharmaceutical companies are SAINTLY now and wouldn’t do such a thing now would they?!
Really stupid people.
And not a mask in sight – Hooray!
You forgot to add “cough, cough!”
Great video! Thanks.
Eight bods sat on a wharf in Singapore hardly constitutes the British Empire reborn does it.
Eight or eighty thousand, it don’t make much difference!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Singapore
It’s not the past you need to moan about it’s the future. Britain’s empire is over, Chinas is on the rise. And that is not a pleasant prospect at all.
If the world has superpowers it is far better that they be democracies however imperfect than authoritarian dictatorships who are happy to murder their own citizens and harvest their organs.
The reason the UK is pivoting towards the East is nothing to do with echoes of Empire and everything to do with recent Chinese actions.
You can argue the UK should not get involved in world affairs and leave China to bully it’s Asian neighbours. Maybe we should abdicate any responsibility to protect sea trade routes and enforcement of right of navigation. Hopefully someone else will do these things or if not we can all pay a trade tax to China and look the other way when they sterilize some muslims or torture some Tibetans.
But harping on about the British Empire…come on change the record.
A lamentably poor effort. 0/10. Must troll harder.
[A lamentably poor effort. 0/10. Must troll harder.]
A lamentably poor effort to engage with the points made by the commenter. 0/10. You must denigrate harder.
Meh.
What points? ‘Peascooter’ is just bemoaning the fact that he/she is not one of the ‘chosen people’ any more.
“If the world has superpowers it is far better that they be democracies”.
You mean the kinds of “democracies” that when the plebs come up with the ‘wrong’ result the PTB spend years undermining it with a view to its imminent reversal? Not that, as the US election shows, the plebs will be allowed to come up with the ‘wrong’ result for much longer….
As for trying to frighten us with phantoms of our own creating like China, forget it.
Yeah. As someone once said: “If voting actually changed anything, they wouldn’t let you do it”
Yes, even as we speak, there are 100 million Uighurs being turned into soap and lamp shades. Just ask Luke Harding if you don’t believe me.
The freedom-loving intelligence agencies cooperate to transport a select few Uighurs to Turkey for Uncle Erdogan’s terrorism training, complete with field trips to Syria and Captagon pills for that extra brutality.
“Memoirs of a Contracter: Passport to Captagonia”
No mystery, no UFO’s, just the Brutality of War and Substance Abuse.
“not a pleasant prospect at all.” – well it is if you’re Chinese, just as it was in the 19th C if you were British.
“What kind of public health system bemoans the fact that 40 percent of the population is so unhealthy that they are at higher risk of developing complications from the coronavirus and then shutters workout facilities and even boardwalks, parks, etc.? A coercive state that truly cared about its people would have forced them to exercise instead of shuttering gyms, walking paths, and bike trails!”
— Robert Wright, The American Institute
In this significant respect, the present regime is worse than Nazism and communism.
You might object that I’m ignoring those regime’s failings and picking on something less significant – health and public exercise. But isn’t a modern state’s first obligation the health of the nation?
Instead we are being lectured that our health is doomed — and likely to remain so, vaccine or no vaccine. This is not government. This is some evil perversion.
https://www.aier.org/article/fragile-and-unsustainable-lies/
Similarly, last night the BBC was reporting gleefully on the recent publicity about the benefits of Vitamin D in keeping us healthy (ignoring the fact that this has been stressed by alt-media sites for the past eight months) and how important it is to take supplements during the gloomy winter days. Not a peep or indication of regret about their continual exhortation for stringent lockdowns keeping us incarcerated in our homes all spring and summer.
For decades the BBC has warned people to avoid Vitamin D. Many BBC weather reports came with strictures against the dangers of UV and a ninny-nanny voice warbling: “Don’t be out in the sun for more than 20 minutes” — in Britain, the land of grey skies and two-week summers.
The BBC is truly the enemy of the people.
Don’t give them and money.
Alex Belfield and his issues and vox pop channel are full on Anti-BBC,
as any moderately sane person would position. be positioned.
Arrogant overpaid cunts that cannot even keep a straight face while lying
and scheming on public broadcast.
https://youtu.be/s34mhlypWIQ
Bullshit Baffles Citizens
I think the BBC’s virulence goes far beyond that trivial instance.
Easy enough to answer – one run by a Freemasonic system that habitually deploys the Hegelian Dialectic (polite term for Ordo ab Chao) to gaslight the population into ever deeper cognitive dissonance.
Your recognition of the (US and UK’s) regime’s failure is correct, but your analysis is superficial.
Yes, I was reading somewhere that one of the biggest comorbidities is obesity, which explains why the fatter, richer countries have come off worst.
“A Base at Singapore’s Sembawang Wharf, staffed by 8 British military personnel, keeping an eye on the busy Malacca Strait”.. (this is a joke, isn’t it?)
This being 2020, rather than 1985, the “China threat” must include the 14 other countries who recently signed the RCEP agreement, including occupied Australia, Japan, and South Korea..
Britain will need a new “base”, with at least 10 military experts, to keep an eye on these threatening nations, and their economic co-operation..
[This being 2020, rather than 1985, the “China threat” must include the 14 other countries who recently signed the RCEP agreement…]
Since the issue is UK military deployments for military reasons, for your argument to work, surely RCEP needs to be a military agreement.
Which just as surely it is not.
Well, I am far away with the budgies then, aren’t I ?
Now let’s get really far away, with the Covid Couch Commandos !
Sembawang Wharf sounds cute and conjures up images of a small quayside in some postwar film noiré ….last time i was in Sembawang we needed a taxi to get us out of the place it is so vast and a taxi to get us back to the ship i was on (that was probably more to do with the guinness foreign extra i had sampled more than owt else)
For sure, and because the Guinness had freed up the conversation, the taxi driver gathered some valuable information, which he relayed to Peter Lorre, who was lurking nearby.. Lorre hurried to a nearby private club, where he whispered the secret to Humphrey Bogart, nursing a whiskey at the bar..
Was the target Orson Welles, or Sydney Greenstreet?
and then, hurriedly not donning their ‘protective’ masks, they rushed to avoid going into their hotel where their notifications of appointments for Covid inoculations awaited them. Brandishing protective shoulder pads they lurched, coughing and sneezing, to Conspiracy International headquarters, where they were given the choice of close contact with an infected person or euthanasia. They all chose close contact, and there the story ends, with assisted suicide.
Sorry, can’t afford it.
The British are evil and have been for a looooooong time. I say Brits I mean the English and the wannabe Englishmen with Scottish accents and love of rangers and hearts of Midlothian!
But they had fun in WW2 alright
Rape took place during the British advance towards Germany.[82] During late 1944, with the army based across Belgium and the Netherlands, soldiers were billeted with local families or befriended them. In December 1944, it came to the attention of the authorities that there was a “rise of indecency with children” where abusers had exploited the “atmosphere of trust” that had been created with local families. While the army “attempted to investigate allegations, and some men were convicted, it was an issue that received little publicity.”[79] Rape also occurred once British forces had entered Germany.[82] Many rapes involved alcohol or post-traumatic stress, but there were also instances of premeditated attacks.[79] For example, on a single day in April 1945, three women in Neustadt am Rübenberge were raped.[82] In the village of Oyle, near Nienburg, two soldiers attempted to coerce two girls into a nearby wood. When they refused, one was grabbed and dragged into the woods. When she began to scream, in according to Longden, “one of the soldiers pulled a gun to silence her. Whether intentionally or in error the gun went off hitting her in the throat and killing her.”[79]
Sean Longden highlights that “Some officers failed to treat reports of rape with gravity.” He provides the example of a medic, who had a rape reported to him. In cooperation with the Royal Military Police, they were able to track down and apprehend the perpetrators who were then identified by the victim. When the two culprits “were taken before their CO. His response was alarming. He insisted since the men were going on leave no action could be taken and that his word was final.”[79]
[The British are evil and have been for a looooooong time.]
Quite so. However, in all fairness, it is a trait not even remotely unique to them.
So, while it is nice of you to remind us of all their bad behaviours and actions, which I condemn, it is not a complete and honest reflection of reality.
The special venom lies in the vicious cruelty of the british upper class,
which they first and foremost visit on their subordinates. IMO.
The USans and Russians were doing it on a big scale. Brits wanted their jollies too.
It was not a competition.
Yeah. Exactly. it was the usual expression of male insecurity, arrogance and entitlement, not confined to any particular nation (unless you are a US patriot, in which case only Russians and Chinese do it, although in past times the Japanese did too).
And why is this of importance ?…war is shit….get over it….this does nothing to change the fact that very very shortly huge swathes of the population are about to be vaccinated with something they neither need nor desire and the effects of which are unknown….how does knowing that rape was carried out by all the allied nations and which happened 75 years ago change the fact that i am expected to change my life completely for a virus neither proven to exist nor isolated ?
Please dont EVER ever again try and lay that guilt shit on me for events i had no control of and frankly couldn’t give a flying fuck about 75 years down the line
The whiteman’s burden has shifted to the sissy boy AntiFa clubmembers
that seek redemption by kneeling and confessing their shame and regret
at the feet of BLM LGBTiQ transformer conncrete jungle bunnies.
But it will never be enough, never good enough.
Seriously, see a psychiatrist.
I hope they jab you till your (alleged) brain swells up and explodes. But in the meantime, stay cool, man.
But the army’s going green. “Make War Not Carbon.”
Burning biomass scores as “green” even if you are logging wood forests.
Wait… army sets up camp… cuts down trees… builds huts, burns fires. That could be 1066.
Don’tcha love progress(ive)
What I want to know is when the SAS is going to take diversity seriously. We need at least 50% wimmin and suitable quotas for trannies.
And a special gay unit to take the enemy from the rear. This would enhance our military potential no end. Putin would certainly think twice before trying his luck and murdering us all in our beds.
And a strict regimen of steroid hormone injections to even the balance,
Lethal bloodthirsty super soldier powertrannies getting ultra violent rah rah.
SAS Transsexual Team Six, the 3rd Heavy Lesbians, the Queen’s Own Gay Fusiliers, the cutting edge, the tip of the spear.
I just hope with all my heart that the ethnic mix within the SAS Transsexual Team Six, 3rd Heavy Lesbians and Queen’s Own Gay Fusiliers is in line with expectations. Don’t want to upset BLM!
Ha! In your next life I hope you come back as a gay crocodile. 🙂
“the British were the only people perpetually at war.”
USA would object to this claim. From its founding in 1776 up to 2015 (239 years), it has been at war within or outside its borders during 222 years (93% of the time).
“quick reaction force in Afghanistan”
Presumably, the forces based at other sites react slowly.
I presumed that the other forces ask questions first, then shoot.
the US quick reaction force in Viet Nam…
after an old-school ass-stomping, they reacted quickly, screeching like banshees, running for their lives !
Yeah. The helicopter scene over the US embassy is a killer.
On the other hand you have photos such as the napalmed little girl, to get some reality back in.
“Such figures tally with Ian Cobain’s prickly observation in The History Thieves: that the British were the only people ‘perpetually at war.'”
There were perpetual wars across the globe, and guess who put a stop to most of those wars? Guess who then created nations with defined borders? Guess who instituted laws protecting the least of the Empire’s subjects? Who did away with Suttee? The Thugs? Who did away with slavery? Who stopped Aboriginal males from bashing their females heads in? Who brought international trade to Dark Africa? Who brought cash crops to its far flung colonies, increasing the wealth of those colonies that no longer engaged in (1) slavery; and (2) tribal wars?
Not to mention creating the Industrial Revolution and lifting millions around the world out of poverty. But so many “British” people have been brought up to despise their own country with one sided history lessons that any chance of balance seems unlikely.
The British did a lot of questionable and even some immoral things but certainly no worse than any other Empire and often far more benign. And the UK brought more to the world than any other country. But no to these people the UK is always the fountain of all evil.
The Industrial Revolution was financed by looting India, not forgetting of course the tens of millions who died from famine and starvation in India plus the millions that died in Ireland because of the British Empires policies. Let’s not forget this was happening in Bengal in 1943. It stole, looted and committed mass murder. In addition, whilst not stealing the indigenous peoples land they were trying to forcing the Indians to grow opium in order to supply the millions of Chinese addicts. Naturally, when the Chinese authorities tried to put a stop to this evil trade by confiscation, the British Empire declared war on a number of occasions to facilitate this evil trade . Not forgetting the tens of millions of Africans who died at the hands of the British Empire. Like all Empires it’s based on violence, murder, subjugation of peoples and theft of their natural resources. You only have to look at its legacy in the division of India, parts of Africa, parts of the Middle East, and Ireland to see what it brought to the world. Time people faced the truth about the true nature of the British Empire!!
[The Industrial Revolution was financed by looting India…]
That is a false absolute statement.
Now when you opened your comment with an absolute falsehood, I simply stopped reading.
I understand the non-critical thinkers will vote you up based on emotional reaction, and you might then glory in how profound you think you are.
But for some of us, truth matters.
Hmm, did the Raj control most the Indian subcontinent. Answer yes they did. Did the Raj loot the Indian subcontinent. Answer yes the did. Did the Raj transfer vast amounts of wealth from the Indian subcontinent. Answer yes they did. Did the banks such as the merchant banks make vast amounts of money from the opium trade which was grown in India by enforcement from by the Raj. Answer yes they did. Did they make loans to upcoming industries. Answer yes they did. Did the Raj decimate the Indian cotton industry in order to build up the Rajs cotton industry in England. Answer yes they did. It appears you don’t know the British Empires sordid history. About time you did instead of believing fairy tales!
And how is this history lesson going to stop the totally unnecessary deaths that ARE happening and will continue to happen ? due to lockdown measures
Unless, you understand the real history of the past, you are doomed to repeat it again. Because of the falsification and suppression of the true events of history, the true manipulators, string pullers behind this scamdemic can continue to pull the wool over many peoples eyes.
The merchant banks, the East India Company etc. The City, a separate jurisdiction to Britain. We are IT’S colony.
Brianborou is correct. The textile industry in Britain, one of the first major industries in the early Industrial Revolution, benefited from the hobbling and then destruction of the textile industry in India. During the 1600s and then 1700s, the British government through the English and then the British East India Trading Company imposed more quotas on the output of Indian textile manufacturers (mostly organised as small cooperative-type, family and village-based guilds) and dictated the price at which these manufacturers could sell their products to it. Manufacturers could not even choose who they could sell their wares to, they were forced to sell to the British who thus had a virtual monopoly over what Indian manufacturers could supply, how much and at what price. Eventually the Indians were forced to use British yarn, which they had to buy at high prices themselves, to weave into their products. Being forced to buy raw materials at high prices and to sell their work to the British at low prices destroyed the livelihoods of Indian weavers.
A British parliamentary inquiry in 1840 begun at the urging of British free trade advocates found this:
Funny that your idea of truth is in fact a based on a mere assertion. Produce some facts or we will condsign you assertion to the dustbin of history.
That is partly true. The other half of that were the colonies that produced the cotton on stolen land with enslaved bodies woven in British factories. Many of those colonies, to become the USA, that also developed its own banking, its industry based on the same stolen land and enslaved bodies. The British had to destroy the indigenous cotton production in India to force them to buy cotton woven in Manchester. Incidentally, this is a textbook example of how the state creates markets, in this case the market for English textiles in India. There’s an excellent book on this process called Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
The workers in those British factories were also badly exploited. When Gandhi visited them to explain what he was doing in India and ask for their support, Churchill had no answer – only a snooty remark on the “naked fakir”.
Yes, what you say is correct but what stolen and looted from the Indian subcontinent was on a gargantuan scale approximately $45,000,000,000,000 between 1765-1940
The British drained India of $45 trillion between 1765 and 1940. In comparison, the US annual budget is $4 trillion.
https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/great-britain-looted-45-trillion-from-india-3abd4ab2a10a
PART I of II
“The Industrial Revolution was financed by looting India…”
The IR was financed by higher, market rate, interest rates replacing the interventionist low interest rates-based Mercantile economic system. Where the capital came from is irrelevant, and if England continued the Mercantile economic system, there would have been no IR to speak of:
When interest rates are interfered with, the ‘Productivity Cost of Capital’
(PCC) – an economic law discovered by this researcher – is jeopardized
to the degree that interest rates are debased.
The cost of capital isn’t based on cost – a tautology – it’s based on (1) the
quantity of capital loaned; and (2) the time it takes to pay back the capital
loaned. The cost of capital – interest – depends on the magnitude
borrowed (and time needed to pay back the loan). If one borrows a
capital outlay of X, the cost of X will be less than a capital outlay of
6X, but if a central bank maintains interest rates at the artificially
low X level, there can be no loans for capital outlays between X and 6X.
By implementing low cost interest rates, central banks have set in
motion ruinous price controls on capital, thereby preventing the
employment of capital.
For those who didn’t get the basic Algebra 1
example illustrating the productivity retarding affect of central bank
price controls on interest rates for loaned capital, the following
simplified version should do the trick…
A young boy is at the candy store and hands the retailer a candy bar costing $.95. The boy decides he wants to buy six candy bars instead, five candy bars more than one candy bar, so the price is $5.70. The boy tells the retailer he doesn’t have $5.70, but that he will have the money in three years and
then pay the retailer, with interest for the deferment of payment. The
retailer agrees to the transaction. When the boy returns in three years,
he pays the retailer only $.95! Why did the boy offer only $.95, when
he owed $5.70 plus interest? Because the boy told the retailer that his
father told him there’s no difference between $.95 and $5.70 with
interest!
Capital, an economic good like any other economic good,
isn’t an amorphous quantity that has an intrinsic ‘productivity cost’.
Capital has units – as do candy bars, cars, houses, plots of land, etc. –
hence the cost of 1 unit is less than the cost of >1 units. If the
price for a capital outlay – interest – is below the capital outlay’s
‘productivity cost’, then there can be no deployment of the capital.
PART II of II
Looting in India by the British? I don’t recall the British outlawing private property in British India? In fact, I do recall that British law was predominant in British India, where civil rights (such as habeas corpus) applied to even the Untouchables, a foreign concept to even the Untouchables themselves.
“not forgetting of course the tens of millions who died from famine and starvation in India plus the millions that died in Ireland because of the British Empires policies.”
British policy in India was not to destroy the People’s way of life on the land, which would have the British taking unproductive lands away from the People in order to assist in the industrialization of India. Such a policy would have resulted in a mass revolt by the mostly peace-loving Indian People against British rule, and the return of such lands when the revolt was put down. This revolt would have dwarfed the [Bengal] Mutiny of 1857, it’s cause the result of Marxists in England delivering pig fat-soaked ammunition cartridges to India. What is amazing about the 1857 Bengal Mutiny is the continued loyalty of two-thirds of Bengal’s sepoys, a testament to British rule even under the Honourable East India Company.
As for the Irish famine, when the Marxist Liberals took over the government from the Conservatives in 1846 under PM John Russell, the Conservative policy of government-funded assistance was replaced by the new Liberal government placing the burden of relief on the Anglo Irish Lords themselves, resulting in the expected mass starvation of the Irish; many Anglo-Irish Lords went under financially, several even dying themselves during the famine.
The British Raj controlled most of India. Fact.
The British Raj forced the Indians to grow opium. Fact.
The British Raj exported most of this opium to China. Fact.
Millions upon millions of Chinese became opium addicts. Fact.
The Chinese authorities tried to prevent this. Fact.
The British Empire responded attacking China in a series of Wars. Fact.
Jardine Mathesson, Sutherland and a number of other banks plus people like the Saasons made vast fortunes from the opium trade. Fact.
Industrial concerns borrowed money from the banks. Fact.
Private investors who had fortunes from the opium trade invested in industry. Fact.
The British Raj imposed restrictions on the cotton plus textiles industries of India to build up the British cotton industry. Fact.
Yes, I agree with all your points. I was trying to simplify a bit for our resident trolls.
Correction I agree with some of the points you made.
“The British Raj controlled most of India. Fact.”
Two-thirds of India, and so what?
“The British Raj forced the Indians to grow opium. Fact.”
Oh, with what law? I know of no such draconian law? The British Administration certainly encouraged that opium be grown, opium being a drought resistant crop.
“The British Raj exported most of this opium to China. Fact.”
So?
“Millions upon millions of Chinese became opium addicts. Fact.”
So?
“The Chinese authorities tried to prevent this. Fact.”
“The British Empire responded attacking China in a series of Wars. Fact.”
Restricting Free Trade and encouraging corruption in the Opium trade destroys the fabric and wealth of nations, therefore war is necessary.
“Jardine Mathesson, Sutherland and a number of other banks plus people like the Saasons made vast fortunes from the opium trade. Fact.”
So?
“Industrial concerns borrowed money from the banks. Fact.”
So?
“Private investors who had fortunes from the opium trade invested in industry. Fact.”
So?
“The British Raj imposed restrictions on the cotton plus textiles industries of India to build up the British cotton industry. Fact.”
Is that the best you can do?
“ …Th British administration certainly encouraged that opium be grown, being a drought resistant crop.”
Under the British Raj, an enormous amount of opium was being exported out of India until the 1920s.
Opium steadily accounted for about 17-20% of Indian revenues. If you think in those terms, [the fact that] one single commodity accounted for such an enormous part of your economy is unbelievable, extraordinary.
In fact the revenues don’t account for entire profits generated [out of opium trade] -there was shipping, there were so many ancillary industries around opium.
Before the British came, India was one of the world’s great economies. For 200 years India dwindled and dwindled into almost nothing.
All the empirical facts show you that British rule was a disaster for India. Before the British came 25% of the world trade originated in India. By the time they left it was less than 1%.
The result of the research is published in Dr Bauer’s new study of the trade, The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India. His conclusion: the opium business was hugely exploitative and ended up impoverishing Indian peasants. “Poppy was cultivated against a substantial loss. These peasants would have been much better without it,” Dr Bauer told me.
This is how the East Indian Company ran the trade. Some 2,500 clerks working in 100 offices of a powerful colonial institution called the Opium Agency monitored poppy farmers, enforced contracts and quality with police-like authority. Indians workers were given commissions on every seer – a traditional unit of mass and volume used in large parts of Asia – of opium delivered on their beat.
In the thriving, state-run global trade, exports increased from 4,000 chests per year at the beginning of the 19th Century to more than 60,000 chests by the 1880s. Opium, says Dr Bauer, was for the large part of the 19th Century, the second-most important source of revenue for the colonial state. It was only outmatched by land taxes. (India remains the world’s biggest producer of legal opium for the global pharmaceutical market.)
“The government’s opium industry was one of the largest enterprises on the subcontinent, producing a few thousand tons of the drug every year – a similar output to Afghanistan’s notorious opium industry today, which supplies the global market for heroin,” Dr Bauer says.
More importantly, the crop, he adds, had a “lasting negative impact on the lives of millions”.
Interest-free advance payments were offered to poppy farmers who could not access easy credit. By itself, this was not a bad thing for those producing for the global market.
What made it bad for them, according to Dr Bauer, was what they paid for rent, manure, irrigation and hired workers was higher than the income from the sale of raw opium.
In other words, the price peasants received for their opium did not even cover the cost of growing it. And they were soon trapped in a “web of contractual obligations from which it was difficult to escape”.
Stiff production targets fixed by the Opium Agency also meant farmers – the typical poppy cultivator was a small peasant – could not decide whether or not to produce opium. They were “forced to submit part of their land and labour to the colonial government’s export strategy”.
Local landowners forced their landless tenants to grow poppy; and peasants were also kidnapped, arrested and threatened with destruction of crops, criminal prosecution and jail if they refused to grow the crop. “It was a highly coercive system,” Dr Bauer says.
How Britain’s opium trade impoverished Indians
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49404024
It appears you know very little about how the British Raj devastated India, how vast fortunes were made also opium by the British East India Company plus the various banks associated with it which, as Dr Bauer points out did indeed finance their occupation of India plus the deposit of huge sums into the coffers of the Financiers of the industrial revolution.
However, your ignorance is compounded with the odious statement
“ Restricting Free Trade and corruption in the Opium trade destroys the fabric and wealth of nations, therefore war is necessary”
Chinese addiction to opium reached epidemic proportions because of the British Raj.Tens of millions of Chinese were opium addicts supplied by the biggest drug pusher in the world, The British Raj. From 1775 until 1880 opium consumption increased from 75 metric tons to 6,500 metric tons.
With your statement you put yourself beyond the Pale!!!!
Hmm, you fail to mention the enforced growing of opium. You fail to mention that the opium was exported to China . You fail to mention banks and made vast fortunes from this evil trade which lent large sums to industry.
Are you saying industry doesn’t borrow money from banks?
The Anglo Irish Lords were part and parcel of the British Empire. Over 4000 ships laden with produce were exported from Ireland during the famine. Let’s not forget the British invaded Ireland !!!!
Oh dear, you seem to forget that India was not one homogeneous mass and there was wars and revolts in various parts of the different states of the Indian subcontinent.
You also seem to forget that Raj controlled the Indian subcontinent by division, exploiting religious differences and bribery plus corruption. The rosy view of India under the Raj you’re trying to paint is selective to say the least.
The British drained India of $45 trillion between 1765 and 1940. In comparison, the US annual budget is $4 trillion.
https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/great-britain-looted-45-trillion-from-india-3abd4ab2a10a
How Britain’s opium trade impoverished Indians
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49404024
“Marxist” Liberals in 1846? The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital weren’t in circulation then. If you’re going to slander socialism and Karl Marx (and anything else associated, directly or indirectly, correctly or incorrectly, with Marx), you need to know the topic and its historical context very well.
Liberals in British politics of the 1840s were likely to be free trade advocates and to be believers in laissez-faire government with minimal regulation of economic activity and very little intervention in social welfare. Hardly what we’d call socialism.
“Marxist” Liberals! Well, I can safely disregard any further comments from you. “Marxist” Liberals! I haven’t laughed so much since my Budgie died.
Churchill. The man who oversaw the famine and starvation of the Bengal population. Churchill the cruel back-stabbing alcoholic warmongering
vicious evil cunt that ordered the firebombing of german citizens.
In 1943 he did but there were famines in the 19th Century.
Even the famines in India were a British-created phenomenon. Before the late 1700s, droughts or flooding associated with irregularities or anomalies in the annual monsoon (such as, coming too late or bringing too little rain or too much rain) and the food shortages those caused were dealt with by the Mughals and previous rulers by allowing affected areas tax relief (taxes might be reduced or waived altogether) and delivering food aid from their own stores set up for that purpose. After the mid-1700s, with much of the Indian subcontinent under British East India Company control, taxation of the Indian people via landlords became heavier. Because the subcontinent was now part of a larger trade and economic network spanning the globe, the British had no time or inclination to deal with problems caused by variations in the annual monsoon. If drought occurred in particular areas because the monsoon did not arrive in time, the people in those areas still had to pay tax. Food relief became a distant memory.
It is possible also that the use of land to grow export crops like jute, cotton and opium was one of several minor factors contributing to severe famines resulting in thousands of deaths in most years. The famines became a recurring phenomenon, in part because after a famine, with entire areas often decimated of people, and farmland often turning back into wilderness, the survivors were often compelled to make up for shortfalls in the taxes those areas were required to pay.
Yes, I concur. The British Empire exacerbated the failure of the potato crop, which didn’t exist in Eire before they invaded, by exporting food throughout the famine. In fact over 4000 ships left Eire laden with produce whilst millions died. So many died or had to leave the country that Eire has not over 175 years later regained the same population numbers.
Famines? If you read Dorothy Wordsworth, you’ll encounter plenty of English people dying of starvation in the lovely Lake District.
After WW2, until alternative industries came up in Japan, Germany, Italy, France, etc., most of the colonies had to make do with British products, even after their independence.
Didn’t the USA have the largest industrial base by far after WW2.
I was referring to British colonies.
Australia and Canada and all parts of the British Empire were exploited for their resources. The “subjects” of the empire were good cannon fodder for Britain’s wars.
Indeed they were, but Australia did not have 25% of the Worlds Wealth before the British East Indian Company arrived. The Indian subcontinent had $45,000,000,000,000 looted from it in terms of monetary assets the 16 American colonies, Canada or Australia does not equal that. But I would readily admit the destruction of the people, environment and wildlife far surpasses by a long long long way any monetary value.
Indians fought for the British in both World Wars, in the expectation (sadly unfulfilled) that they would be rewarded with a greater say in their own affairs and better treatment in their own country for their loyalty. Over 1 million Indian soldiers served in the British Army in World War I and at least 70,000 such soldiers are buried in cemeteries in Belgium, France, the Middle East and eastern Africa. In other words, Indians fought in all the major war fronts where the British Army sent soldiers.
Over 2 million Indian soldiers fought in the British Army during WWII. As India did not have conscription, all these fighters were volunteers.
And the Romans? Don’t forget the Koi San exterminated by the Bantu. Or the, or the……. It’s trendy.
India, a Crown Colony invaded and looted by the East India Company based in and financed by the City of London. Strictly private and ironically multicultural. The Crown is not the Queen or King, they are the CEOs of the Corporation. The people of Britain have been treated as badly by this monster as any others, if not worse. Facts are sacred, the hard part is finding them and then broadcasting them.
“But so many “British” people have been brought up to despise their own country”.
So much easier to roll them up in a global technocratic state that way!
If only Americans could be made to hate their country instead of self-righteously Karen-ing at everyone
That sounds bitter. If you are honestly appreciative of what the iron fist
hath wrought with all that subjugation and exploitation why are you not
cheerful and congratulatory?
You really ought to catch up on your reading comprehension, then you wouldn’t come up with such nonsense.
Actually it is debatable that the British “did away with” sati … sati was originally a custom confined to Hindus of kshatriya (warrior) caste groups. By focusing on it, the British publicised it throughout the Indian subcontinent, to the extent that, ironically, what originally had been confined to a particular social layer ended up being associated with a ritualised version of Hinduism as a whole. The result is that sati or some version or perversion of it now and again occurs in India among most social levels, from educated middle classes to the poorest levels of society.
Yes, those darkies should be jolly grateful that we went to all the trouble of colonising them in the first place and making them part of the great British Empire.
Before that, they were all running round the jungle with half a loincloth each, being chased by lions and swinging from the trees.
Some people are never satisfied, no matter how much you do for them.
[Before that, they were all running round the jungle with half a loincloth each, being chased by lions and swinging from the trees.]
Ha ha. Thanks for funny strawman of the day.
Obviously the commenter you responded to never inferred what you assert, but you handled your strawman with such wonderful, deprecating humour, hey.
[There were perpetual wars across the globe, and guess who put a stop to most of those wars?]
How dare you!?
Hoe dare you bring balanced fairness when so many are enjoying their orgy of one-side bashing?
Humans are tribal. Do not interrupt the tribe when it goes full groupthink tribal!
Humans are all the same: 2 arms, 2 legs, a fascist in the middle..
Nincompoop
Was it someone close to you, someone you really admire?
That is okay, it is just your romantic side guiding your sentiments.
Tempo doeloe, other times and other ways that rules men’s hearts in the past.
Any evidence?
Hmmmm. No, you’ve lost me there. Especially as you invent imaginary scenarios, such as ‘head-bashing’ as if it was a customary practice. But also, who ruined the Indian cotton industry by importing cheap Lancashire cotton, who invaded China and ‘bought’ Hong Kong at the point of a gun, who introduced opium to the Chinese masses to pay for tea imports, who burned the Imperial Chinese Palace, who invented gas bombing on defenceless Kurdish villages, who intruduced the Concentration Camp, who conducted the massacre at Peterloo, or at Amritsar, or in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion, or fomented the Highland Clearances, or shot so called ‘rebels’ during the Irish Independence movement, or even more up to date, conspired with the Ulster ‘loyalists’ to murder Patrick Finucane, or murdered defenceless Irish nationals in Gibralter?
It always amuses me when I read politiicans and pundits going on about “keeping trade routes open” in the South China Sea. They must think we’re really stupid (OK, we — the greater ‘we’ — probably are because we keep swallowing the stuff without question). My understanding of the geography of the area is that the vast bulk of trade in this area is going to and from China and yet, paradoxically, we feel we need to confront China militarily to keep such trade routes open. The Chinese might be forgiven for thinking that this militarization is more about being able to close these routes at will.
[The Chinese might be forgiven for thinking that this militarization is more about being able to close these routes at will.]
That is a good point. I appreciate your good intellectual argument.
So maybe reasonable people can hopefully assume there is possibly mistrust (and both good and bad intentions) on all sides (in the South China Sea situation), and continue an honest debate fairly reflecting the concerns of all sides (especially the other countries surrounding the sea).
Let me then also suggest one other consideration. What if China controlled the South China Sea, and (say) Vietnam had a political disagreement with China? What percentage of trade does China have with Vietnam, and what would then be the “economic loss” for China to restrict Vietnam’s movements in the South China Sea versus China’s political gain for displaying its political might (or saving “face”)?
The situation is not as simplistic as the “UK all bad” and “China all good” as some commenters would like to imply.
PS. FWIW, I am not a UK (or US) citizen.
So far, there is no hint of preventing any sea transport. China is trying to claim the resources of a vast sea area, and keep others out. The resources include petroleum, fish and nodules (on the seabed).
Nodules? Sounds worse than covid.
And what if the Chinese Navy showed up a bit off Vancouver Island and did runs along the coast to ensure ‘freedom of navigation’, or maybe far into the Gulf of Mexico, or Long Island Sound?
It’s all theatre. Who do you think financed the Chinese industrial rise? That said, it’s important to remember one of the immutable laws of finance – Kill the creditor. That’s what wars are about.
Just proves ‘they can always find money for a war’…
People really are stupid …
It is not [only] the war that politicians find the money for … The people’s money is always available for the businesses who contribute to the politicians campaign funds and keep them in power. So, in essence, they steal our money to give to their friends, all done under our noses – under the false pretext of providing protection for the fearful tax-paying mugs. If only we took a few minutes to think about it, we would realise that politicians are an integral part of the criminal network because it is the politicians who are installed to keep us busy while the true purpose is to keep us distracted by devising newer and/or more plausible ways of believing that they have rights given to them, by us, to become accustomed to the lifestyle that they have planned for themselves. While simultaneously depriving us of any hard-won labour-market workers-rights. Invariably, ‘we’ are all total nitwits for even discussing left/centrist or right-wing party-politics when it is all controlled by the same spin-meister theatrics.
It blows me away that friends and colleagues can’t see that politicians actually have the strongest union in any Western-Democracy … and these same ‘unionists’ are forever pointing at labour-market unions to complain about petty-corruption, while all the while being in control of the most openly corrupt union-of-politicians in their respective ‘democracies.’
There are so many of us and so few of ‘them’ and yet, ‘they’ still have the power …
People in general, really must be stupid.
Sadly you are correct, just look at the sheeple reaction to lockdowns!
“Western-Democracy”
“The fact that bullshit term is not even questioned just shows the extensiveness of the blatant dishonesty and hypocrisy rampant throughout the body politic.”
“As to politicians, they are nothing but unprincipled slimy paid/bribed hacks installed to give the illusion of choice, when in fact there is no choice. We do not have choices, we have owners.”
“Does it matter whether most people are either cowards or dolts. Things need to change fast or we are all dead.”
I shouldn’t be surprised at its persistence, but I am mildly amazed that the term “Free World” is still bandied about.
It was only ever a marketing slogan to sell the “brand” of post-WWII Western Democracy, and establish a contrast to those godless and backwards Eastern autocracies behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains.
But then, I live in a world where the tiresome suffix “-gate” has become a permanent, inescapable entry in the lexicon of Dumbed-Down Public Discourse.
You are absolutely correct (while ‘Davem’ below, is just an idiot).
“The surest way to end the ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR RACKET is to do away with THE ROYAL MAFIA CRIME FAMILY and the CORPORATE FASCIST OLIGARCH MOBSTER BANKSTER PSYCHOPATHS keeping it in place. That transnational terror and crime syndicate needs to go, ASAP. HUMANITY deserve nothing less.”
https://twitter.com/AVDCAreScum/status/1143627206868054016
Now for some Smedley
“To Hell with War and to Hell with Imperialism!”
“Now who would down vote peace?”
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