A big challenge for Western Democracy and the UN.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

I have heard people say that they are sometimes ashamed to be Americans, in the light of what Bush did, or even the fact that Bush got elected under the most questionable of circumstances.

I love my own country, it's traditions and its cultural achievements - even so, I loath what the British government has done in recent decades. Not neccessarily the Blair government, or the present Tory coalition government- it just seems that whoever was working 'in the national interest' at the time did a lousy job, and I'm ashamed of what they did to our nation's reputation abroad.

For the record, it is not just the BP oil spill. Many years ago, there was a demonstration outside the Libyan Embassy in London, and a machine gun, inside the building , was fired from the embassy into a crowd of dissedents demonstrating against Gadaffi and the Libyan Government outside.

That burst of gunfire also killed a female police officer, WPC Yvonne Fletcher. She was 23, as I recall. the killer walked away without charges being pressed. Diplomatic immunity.

And when a bomb exploded over Scotland , in a place called Lockerbie, it was a Libyan who was tried and sentenced in a court of law for this cowardly terroist attack.

So, it really sticks in my throat that BP, and other oil companies have used their influence over the years to get our Government to be nice to Gaddaffi, and then use these 'good diplomatic relations' to go to libya and make vast profits.

There was a great scene in a movie once, where Hugh Grant played a British Prime Minister, and said "ours is not a big country, but it is a great country". But that was just a movie.
Yes, we are a great country. We did not just give the world William Shakespeare, we gave it Winston Churchill and Tom Paine. We gave America many of its Founding Fathers. We gave Magna Carta and the example of free people who were prepared to go on strike and on marches- often in the face of brutal repression - in order to demand basic human rights like the right to vote and free assembly.

And a great country like ours deserves a great government. A government that is big enough to stand up to oil companies and other profiteers who stain the beaches of the America with slicks of oil and tyrants like Gaddaffii who stain the streets of London and many other cities with pools of blood.

it's time we in Britain had a government that was not driven simply by profits and share prices but ws prepared to regulate industries for the benefit of those who worked in them and those who live in the shadow of their operations, instead of just the business owners.

And it's time we reorganised the UN and made it possible to for international law to have some impact. if we don't , the multinational companies will run the world. seriously, I think they already have too much clout.

The UN should be freezing Gaddaffis assets. Mubarak, it is reported, has fled to Britain . funny how so many deposed dictators come here. i feel that if any democratically elected Government in egypt demands his return to put him on trial, that we have a duty to hand him over.

Britain , and the UN , have got to make a stand, or lose their standing in the world.
Gaddaffi, however he wants to spell and pronounce his name , has got an awful lot of blood on his hands, including the blood of his own people. he really has it coming to him , and I hope that whoever is in charge will see to it that he doesn't end up in a private villa somewhere in Sussex.

Comments

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

The past sucked big time, didn't it?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Mintogrubb loves to romanticize the British Empire, so I enjoy pointing out what the British Empire actually did. I did address his question about the UN, and there's no means to address it beyond creating a separate UN Military from all countries of the world in origin, beyond all in ideology and morality, able to strike with full military power and end wars of aggression.

The UN as a big talking grandstanding place is a place where the USA secures "international co-operation" to secure Kuwaiti Oil and fix our fuck-ups on the 38th Parallel and where Khrushchev bangs his shoe. That doesn't help anything except providing fodder for Jay Leno.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

As you say, history boy. Don't let anyone remain wrong on the Internetz.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'm not the one claiming Sir Winston farted sunshines and pixies and rainbows. He was better than Hitler and Stalin, but then so have been almost every other set of world leaders in the entirety of European history.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Someone imagined sunshines and pixies out of his ass? And who might that be?

Your thought process includes this:

Guy X: Here's a leader who did the right thing at the right time and saves N people from suffering.

You: Yeah but he was an asshole so it doesn't count.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Minto-Grubb, who has repeatedly indicated that the British Empire farted sunshines and pixies and rainbows until those damned Americans and Soviets made them give up Suez or summat like that.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not hyphenated, it's more sort of like "Minto Grubb", but the point is that the Roman Empire was only run for the benifit of the Romans, yet somehow managed to deliver an awful lot to those people who ran the Judean People's Front.

I am Tempted to parody one of the greatest movies ever made in history and say
"Ok, but apart from abolishing Suttee, creating the Indian civil service, abolishing Slavery in most places, enforcing the Pax Britannica and giving the world the maps that everyone uses today - what did the British Empire ever do for US"?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It was run for the benefit of the Romans with a skeletal bureaucracy. In fact, Romans not only left local cultures and leadership intact, but Jews even under the last of the Pagan emperors enjoyed true civil rights to a degree that they would never have again until Napoleon, about 1,600 years later. Too, the Roman Empire's last remnants were destroyed by WWI and the Turkish War of Independence, replacing another typical for its day empire with colonial territories like Iraq and Palestine and a run-of-the-mill military dictatorship.

They only abolished slavery when it was no longer profitable, and it speaks volumes that the slave trade disappeared after that point. Indicating the largest customer was in fact the British Empire. They also did not create an "Indian" civil service, the Raj was of, by, and for Britain. It was nothing but a clusterfuck for India and aborted one of the few potential industrial revolutions outside Europe since the fall of the Song. To replace that with what we now call India-Pakistan-Bangladesh. Three lovely testaments to British "progress." Particularly Pakistan.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Question. Do you like having words put in your mouth?

Oh, I have another one. Do you like people mocking you?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I put no words in his mouth, he made a gigantic post a while back that amounted to "The British Empire was the bestest ever" despite that arguably it was at most typical of the time.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I see. So he'll have no rest until the end of his days because of that post.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Everything is racist, sexist, homophobic or some such thing. Especially in the past. Haven't you heard?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Ol' Winston was very racist. You should try reading his actual memoirs and speeches sometime. He was also quite the Jew-hater......

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

And 99.9% of people were OK with slavery in 1000 BC. Ergo, they were all evil. Well, except for Jesus.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Most of those people did not deliberately induce famines that killed millions of people. Under Sir Winston's leadership the Raj did. Thus......

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I'm more scared by the disasters caused by unintentional stupidity and incompetence. The prospect of having someone rule me who doesn't know what the hell they're doing while pretending to know everything is terrifying.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Where in reality Lord Curzon and Sir Winston have killed between them alone 12,000,000 people. I suppose because there were hundreds of other Indians and they were all savage dotheads that makes it OK, eh? Seems to be his rationale whenever I bring up what the British Empire he romanticizes actually did (and no, you do not think on those lines. He, however, does).

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I feel we're talking over each other at this point. Not easy to stop and hear the other side once you've gained so much momentum, is it.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

We may be. I'm not fond of romanticizing any Empire, and I consider Manifest Destiny to be one of the worst things the USA did, despite that the USA of the present is unthinkable without it. Say what you will, I am consistent and apply this harsh standard rather universally.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Great men often come with great flaws.

Bait set, trap snapped shut:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, his racism leading him to tolerate starving 3 million Indians to death is a flaw.....

Re: Bait set, trap snapped shut:

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Does anyone ever make it through that hyperactive judgment of yours?

Re: Bait set, trap snapped shut:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Grant and Sherman, ironically (given Grant has been turned into a caricature analogous to the caricature of Marshal Zhukov and Sherman into Marshal von Manstein), have. For the simple reason that the two having been villainized as they have is one of the most interesting aspects of US history. So also with some of the other people like Bartolome de Las Casas, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and others during the past who pointed out the blatantly obvious, that past evils were in fact evils, to be condemned and halted.

Re: Bait set, trap snapped shut:

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

In other words, no one most people have ever heard of. That's kinda a theme with you.

Also, "Bait set, trap snapped shut"? Sounds like you're just baiting people so you can whip out the self-rightious stick.