AMERICAN HISTORICAL PERCEPTIONS

I belong to a number of historical journals and associations, amongst them a number American (USA) publications. The American ones are concerned with general history and seem to limit themselves to WW2, and forget Vietnam and other American excursions in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asian. The genocide of the Native Americans and Slavery are hardly ever analysed in depth. The real reason for seeking independence from Great Britain is simply not mentioned except when Hollywood decides to have a triumphant go at the conquest of the West portraying natives as cruel subhumans, a striking parallel with the portrayal by the American Military and Media of the Vietnamese population, they forgot that the Vietnamese had been fighting foreign invaders for two thousand years, this is equally applicable to Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and so forth, History can be a great teacher if you only pay due attention.

It is not clear at all, why most of the Independence leaders, who were all slave owners and British, did not relinquish their human property once they had achieved their goal. This was rather strange if you consider their much vaunted views on freedom and liberty etc etc. Even stranger is the fact that African Americans are still fighting for freedom and equality in the supposed Land of the Free, please note that during WW2, the American Military still operated an apartheid system, ironic indeed since these black soldiers were put in harm’s way in order to defend democracy just like the their fellow soldiers from the Raj and other British colonies. Thee must be something awfully wrong with a society that needs the slogan “Black Lives Matter”.

Perhaps we should return to this subject in depth and dig out the real objective of the exercise.

Another aspect of this sorry business is that when Americans put on their anti-imperialistic gown they conveniently forget their invasion and occupation of the west and their virtual annihilation of Native Americans. Apartheid and concentration camps (Reservations) was what survivors could look forward to.

Texas, New Mexico, California etc., were other territories that the freedom loving ex-colonists had there eyes on and eventually occupied and kept for themselves. Unfortunately for them they could not keep the whole of Cuba and the Philippines, though they tried their damnedest, however they got away with Hawaii, Puerto Rico and bits of Panama including the Canal after engineering a split from from Colombia.

This really looks like a country following in the footsteps of it’s mother country, with one important proviso, the mother country did not hide its imperialistic nature and wherever possible acted in a fair way, according to their lights. Not so America (USA).

I cannot understand why America claims that she wants to see democracy flourish in distant lands when it is still unattainable for millions of citizens at home. Why are overseas authoritarian regimes backed by the freedom loving US government? Surely charity begins at home, as the saying goes. Unless there is something untoward in this stance, selling arms to a guaranteed clientele and thus making them dependent on your arms manufacturers, perhaps? In this scenario the more wars you can start the better for the economy back home, especially certain sectors such as banks and other financial institutions and with full employment to boot.

Not since Roman times have soldiers been feted so much and thrust into the center of government and politics, it is to be noted that twelve american generals has become presidents of the nation during its short history.

I have a suspicion about who really govern the U S A, it is not the politicians, General/President Eisenhower could, indeed did, tell us a few things.

Manifest Destiny I suppose.

The above may seem rather like anti-Americanism but, even in today’s world, facts are facts……………..

It’s ironic………….

It’s ironic to listen to the news about Myanmar, we’ve suddenly forgotten the Rohingya!

It’s a sort of Divine Justice for the Noble Laureate who forgot the sufferings of her fellow countrymen and women in exchange for power (she thought).

Europeos???

TAKE HEED…………

by: Christopher Marlowe
(1564-1593)

ACCURS’D
be he that first invented war!

They knew not, ah, they knew not, simple men,

How those were hit by pelting cannon-shot

Stand staggering like a quivering aspen-leaf

Fearing the force of Boreas’ boisterous blasts!

In what a lamentable case where I,

If nature had not given me wisdom’s lore!

For kings are clouts that every man shoots at,

Our crown the pin that thousands seek to cleave:

Therefore in policy I think it good

So shall not I be known; or if I be,

To hide it close; a goodly stratagem,

And far from any man that is a fool:

They cannot take away my crown from me.

Here will I hide it in this simple hole.

And Again…………..

 

 

 

My partners post
All right, Spain. You’ve asked for this.

You’ve issued one of your five-yearly threats to seize, impound, disrupt, tax or otherwise penalise Gibraltar and its residents on the grounds that this small bit of rock is attached to the bigger bit of rock you call home.

For some, this provides irrefutable proof that Gibraltar is Spanish. Presumably in the same way that China is Russian and Denmark belongs to Germany.

Not letting logic get in his way, your foreign minister has declared ‘the party’s over’ and threatened 100 euro fines for people crossing the border, banning flights from Spanish air space and generally started behaving like Franco in a particularly belligerent mood.

Very well. Let’s look at the facts, shall we?

1. Gibraltar is about as Spanish as pie and chips. The first recorded occupants were Lebanese traders , followed by Germans, Romans, and the Islamic empire. The first castle was built by a Berber sultan and it wasn’t captured by the Spanish until 1462.

2. Twelve years later you sold it.

3. You spent 200 years or so invading much of the world, killing millions of Amerindians with smallpox , and burning and torturing those that survived because they didn’t think eating a thin bit of flour and water was the same thing as eating the body of a man they’d never met .

4. You tried to do the same here, first by marriage and then by invasion . Not the best way to make friends.

5. You did nothing very much with Gib for two centuries and then lost it in a fight with us and the Dutch. The fight was about whether a French prince could succeed to the Spanish crown and thus rule half of Europe. Most of Europe didn’t like the idea, and you were invaded by pretty much everyone up to and including the Holy Roman Empire.

6. Unsurprisingly, you lost. We all signed the Treaty of Utrecht in which the French prince was allowed to have Spain so long as he promised to be nice and sign away a few things. Article X states: “The Catholic King does hereby, for himself, his heirs and successors, yield to the Crown of Great Britain the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar, together with the port, fortifications and forts hereunto belonging; and he gives up the said propriety to be held and enjoyed absolutely with all manner of right for ever, without any exception or impediment whatsoever.”

7. There’s not a lot of wriggle-room in that. Lawyers, eh?

8. What you gave us in 1714 was a 300-year-old Moorish castle, a medieval town and a fishing port. In the years since we have turned it into a naval base, a financial centre, tourist destination and online gaming base which turns over £650million a year and provides employment for 10,000 of your citizens. You’re welcome.

9. The last person who seriously laid claim to it is the fascist dictator you’d rather forget, and there were referendums in 1967 and 2002 which found 99% of the population wanted to remain British.

10. In 500 years of warring you’ve lost far more often than you’ve won and you have, most noticeably, consistently failed to win against us. You tried to seize Gibraltar by force twice in the 18th century and failed miserably on each attempt, since we smashed your Armada in 1588 it’s never been the same since. Today you’ve got 21,000 sailors and 54 ships, and we’ve got 53,000 with reserves, 97 ships, 61 Royal Marine craft and 170 vessels in the Fleet Air Arm.

Considering all this, it is entirely understandable that with your economy on its arse , suicides endemic following eviction and a government not so much beleaguered as halfway to hell and still digging you might feel the need to hark back to the days of empire and rattle the old sabre a bit.

You are though on rather shaky ground, not just because you signed a contract and the 30,000 Gibraltarians want you in charge of them about as much as they want to contract the ebola virus.

Firstly you claim ownership of a number of bits of rock that are not attached to your main bit of rock – the Balearics, the Canaries, two cities in north Africa and a number of islets which, to an unbiased eye, look very Moroccan .

Secondly your suggestion of border taxes would mainly penalise the 10,000 Spaniards who work in Gibraltar and, er, vote for you. It’s very unlikely to happen, as is your idea of banning planes from your airspace.

Plane companies can get around this very easily and you would soon find that Spanish airports were avoided by British tourist planes and losing millions in revenue.

Seeing as you’re broke, this just isn’t going to happen.

Gibraltar is a place you barely bothered to occupy, sold for cash, lost in wars, and now are trying to grab purely because it’s the only financially successful thing within a 50-mile radius of your border.

Its people are ethnically a mix of Genoese, Portugese, Maltese and Spanish descent and legally they are citizens of the United Kingdom with their own MEP in the European Parliament.

Our economy’s not brilliant but it’s still doing better than yours, as is what is left of our overseas empire which despite its rotten parts also exported the Magna Carta, democracy and the ability to make a decent cuppa.

You exported the Inquisition and the Molotov cocktail . Thanks for those.

But let’s not be antagonistic – we’ve had centuries of Anglo-Spanish fighting and we should be past that now.

You’ve also given us sangria, sherry, tapas and marzipan, and you do amazing things with ham. We holiday with you, and you need our money.

So just be honest, and admit that this has all come about because you wanted to divert attention from problems at home and your traditionally-antsy fishermen have got upset about an artificial reef built to stop them raiding Gibraltarian waters .

Then perhaps you could tell them to stop nicking our fish in the first place, whether it’s off Gibraltar, in the English Channel, the North Sea or the Irish Sea, and make sure they pay the fines our courts have levied for breaking the rules .

After you’ve done that you can apologise properly for 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition, promise to think before you speak and personally I’d be glad if you could tell everyone there’s no need for peas in paella.

You don’t have to, of course. You could carry on acting like idiots and we’ll carry on ignoring you because you’ve got all the threat and military might of a field mouse squeaking at a cat.

Or you could be glad that the bit of rock next to yours is well-run, productive, and law-abiding and that the people who live on it have a right to determine their own futures which they would rather was not closely linked to yours.

That’s something you’ve not really achieved with your own bit of rock, so you’ll forgive us for thinking you shouldn’t be entrusted with any more.

And in case that’s still not clear: Naff off, Juan

Courtesy of my cousins husband Jonathan Cartwright.

THERE IS VERY LITTLE I CAN ADD TO THIS! HOWEVER……..

SPAIN GROW UP!

THINKING OUT LOUD…………

I cannot quite understand why the American (British) colonists declared independence from the mother country.

Was it, perhaps, because the anti-slavery movement was gaining ground in Britain and Western Europe and it would ultimately cross the pond???

Boston tea party indeed!

Time to call a spade by its real name (please forgive  the unintended pun).

Food for thought indeed…………

BRITISH VALUES…………

After the abolition of slavery, newly freed men and women refused to work for the low wages on offer on the sugar farms in British colonies in the West Indies. Indentured labour was a system of bonded labour that was instituted following the abolition of slavery. Indentured labour were recruited to work on sugar, cotton and tea plantations, and rail construction projects in British colonies in West Indies, Africa and South East Asia.  From 1834 to the end of the WWI, Britain had transported about 2 million Indian indentured workers to 19 colonies including Fiji, Mauritius, Ceylon, Trinidad, Guyana, Malaysia, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa.

The Indian indenture system was finally banned in 1917.^[25] According to The Economist, “When the Indian Legislative Council finally ended indenture…it did so because of pressure from Indian nationalists and declining profitability, rather than from humanitarian concerns.

I have been  paying attention to the British media about immigration, cultural identities etc and in particular to the abolition of slavery within the then British Empire and I am astonished not to hear about Indentured Labour, which in effect was Slavery by another name.

The hypocrisy of the British media knows no bounds, especially when referring to themselves and their values, that is to say their  supposed moral superiority, whilst forgetting their atrocities and double dealing fron the Indian sub-continent through to the Middle East (PALESTINE, BUT NOT ONLY), to Cyprus, North and East Africa, I could carry on but I am sure the reader will catch the drift.

What astounds me is that not in one single instance has anybody questioned this British invention and it  remains largely unknown or ignored world-wide.

Perhaps some tribunal should look into this, I doubt it.

A triumph of British Values!!!

Food for thought.

WINDRUSH (BRIT..ISH VALUES)

NO COLOURED, IRISH OR DOGS.

I saw the above in newsagents ads for rooms to let in London in 1958.

At the time I did not understand what this meant, I am rather older and wiser now.

So, hardly anything has changed, except for dogs and Irishmen. It would be interesting to know,  how  many immigrants from the white Commonwealth, illegal or not, have been harassed to the same extent  as the Windrush lot.

These poor souls , were invited by  THEIR   British Government (they thought) to a hostile and cold (in every sense) land,   which they naively thought was there motherlend,  in need of reconstruction after the War, which Mr. Churchill, proclaimed was for the defence of Democracy and Freedom. Obviously this was meant for others since the Empire should not be affected! And furthermore NO SENSIBLE  ENGLISHMAN WOULD DO THIS SORT OF WORK AND MOST CERTAINLY NOT FOR  THE WAGES  OFFERED.

It  now transpires that  this fiasco  was planned  by Labour, aided, abetted  and executed by Tories and Liberals in their infamous  cosy coalition. In other words, by the whole bloody lot of corrupt and rascist politicians, who now want to blame the Civil Service for this shocking  and disgusting  policy.

I wonder about Sailsbury and Syria………………………………………….?

Iraq, Lybia ………………………………………….etc etc?

BRITISH VALUES!!

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AMERICA,AMERICA

The best TV reality show on any network.

Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.

Perhaps old Harvey W. is also producing this show. I would not put it past him.