How will CH cope with Brexit?

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loringa
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by loringa »

Back in the late 1990s I heard from a senior diplomat at the BHC in Accra that he had also been told by a senior Government minister how much better things would be in the British came back. It reminds me of the old adage that almost the worst thing ever to happen to Africa was the arrival of colonists; the only thing that was even worse was their departure. Not everyone would agree of course and there is no doubt that many backed the various independence movements. What is pretty much incontrovertible is that most of the citizens of the former colonies ended up far worse off in almost every respect after independence than they ever were before. We are encouraged nowadays to refer to the developing world rather than the third world but the tragedy is that most countries are no developing; they are regressing. In these countries, the rich are getting richer and richer whilst, in many cases, the poor, if not actually getting poorer, are certainly becoming poorer in relative terms compared with the elites. Interestingly, many of these elites are democratically elected but once in power they steal and steal and the people who suffer are their own citizens. Most refugees arriving on our shores are not fleeing persecution, although many are, they are simply trying to escape the horrors that their homelands have become.

It is also worth reminding ourselves that if Europeans hadn't colonised places like the Gold Coast then it would simply have been another African nation. Look at South Africa; where is the indigenous population from 300 years ago; murdered almost to a man (woman and child) by Africans from further north: Zulu and Xhosa? It certainly was, and occasionally still is, the way of the world: powerful nations subjugate weaker nations. Disagree as much as you like about 'Pax Britannica' but it was the best there was until the UN and even the UN is helpless against Russian expansionism in Ukraine and Chinese dominance over the South China seas.

I am not an apologist for the Empire; I think it was the least worst option for much of the world despite various Amritsars and other atrocities for which the British were by no means the worse offenders and, often, better than most. Of course, this is not a very 'proper' view to hold today but I believe it to be true.
rockfreak
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by rockfreak »

Firstly, no big country goes into another for any length of time for the good of the indigenous population. There is always something they want. Oil, gold, minerals or to keep a trade route open. This is the raison d'etre behind Afghanistan and Iraq. You talk about refugees flowing hither and thither. A couple of years ago a British defence analyst had a letter in the Guardian in which he recalled that he'd been in America a few days after 9/11. He got an invitation to a secretive meeting of Forbes 500 companies (ie very rich companies, many involved in the so-called military industrial complex). They were addressed by Gen Wesley Clark, then a big cheese at the Pentagon.
Clark told them that plans were already afoot to invade those two countries and that, especially in the case of Iraq, to leave them in a state of chaos so that the West could dominate the oil supply and have a forward operating military base. Unfortunately this has rebounded so that Iran and the Shia are now more dominant in the area than before - a classic and historic case of our foreign policy in the Middle East giving us more trouble than we had before.
Now some might pipe up here that there's no oil in Afghanistan. Quite right. But there is in the Caspian and that is the reason that all the big powers (including Osama bin Laden) have taken so much interest in this part of the world. We and the Americans originally funded and supported the Taliban to get the Russians out, and after the Russians were out the American oil company Unacol quietly invited the Taliban leaders over to Sweetwater Texas to discuss the possibility of getting at this oil and running pipelines across Afghanistan and into friendly India or Pakistan. The Taliban seemed keen on the idea but the women's movement were not and duly showed up to protest. You can see footage of this incident in Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11".
So the Americans have achieved their precious chaos and it goes on. Isis wasn't even invented before all this started. And the refugees keep a' coming. I remember watching the bombing of Baghdad on the TV news and it was quite obvious that there was no attempt to just hit strategic targets. The place was lit up like a Christmas tree. It was, as the Americans said, "shock and awe" (ie blitzkrieg). Just a couple of years afterwards Amnesty International were estimating the casualties (mostly civilian) at 100,000 and mounting. So please don't try telling me that colonialism doesn't go on. It does. Only with more powerful weapons.
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by alterblau »

sejintenej wrote,
Now we come to the quality question. A girl my daughter went to school with has Spanish parents and from birth spoke only Spanish at home and also when she was teaching in school. Unfortunately British examiners didn't think much of her spanish when it came to A levels!
The British are not the only ones to do this for native speakers of a foreign language. A friend had a similar experience in France. She had a good BA in English from an excellent British university and chose to live in France, wanting to teach English there. To be able to do so then one had to have a degree from a French university. So she signed up and did a MA in English, with a later intention of getting a French PhD. She failed the MA first time, apparently solely because of coming a cropper in the oral. This included reading a passage (chosen from the American magazine Time) and then answering relevant questions. She maintains her failure was due to not understanding one word, “Freshette.” But there's a happy ending, for she finally achieved her ambition.
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by michael scuffil »

It is interesting that the United Kingdom was not a signatory to the Versailles Treaty. Lloyd George signed in the name of The British Empire, which, in 1918, was seen as a unit. However, this was not pursued to its logical and honest conclusion. The Romans, in the end, gave citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire, not just of Rome (as originally) or of Italy (as later). The British Empire could have been run likewise, with a common citizenship and common voting rights. In that way, the Empire would have become economically balanced rather than economically exploited by the centre. While it is true that Britain provided parts of the Empire with stable government, they didn't do it for the good of the natives, but rather to provide a stable captive market and a captive source of raw materials. And above all: no competition. Britain did make up, to a certain extent, by allowing unlimited immigration from the Empire, but as soon as this became a practical proposition for most of its inhabitants, it clamped down.

It is ironic that while Britain never tried to build up the economies of the territories it ruled, the Chinese are now doing this in a big way but without much noise.
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by postwarblue »

Rockers might choose to reflect that some places like Aden, Singapore (pirate infested swamp) and Hong Kong (tiny fishing village) grew to what they became ENTIRELY because of British rule, which attracted trade and delivered the rule of law and with those things the opportunity for individual prosperity. Hong Kong was also the desired refuge of literally millions fleeing murder, torture, famine and misery in (self-governing!) Communist China. The Victorian traveller Isabella Bird in 'The Golden Chersonese' reported how the British-governed 'Straits Settlements' (Penang and a small piece of the opposite mainland) was growing in population at the expense of the adjacent Sultanate (Perak I think from memory). As part of the British Empire, Southern Rhodesia was the bread-basket of Africa and look at it now after decades of misrule by that one-time darling of the British Left, Robert Mugabe. In India one benefit we brought was that the individual Princes were prevented from laying waste the land via wars against their neighbours. Oh and we got rid of the murder by burning of widows (Suttee) and the ritual religious murder of travellers (Thugee). I could go on and on.
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loringa
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by loringa »

rockfreak wrote: Wed Feb 20, 2019 8:43 pm Firstly, no big country goes into another for any length of time for the good of the indigenous population. There is always something they want. Oil, gold, minerals or to keep a trade route open. This is the raison d'etre behind Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rubbish - the Americans led the invasion of Afghanistan in revenge for the bombings of 9/11. Sensibly they should have then left having overthrown the Taliban and left the country to their own resources and their remaining there cost them, and us, dearly in blood and treasure. There were no economic benefits for either the US nor the UK (or indeed any other nation involved except Macedonia which was paid by the UK to provide force protection at HQ ISAF in Kabul so we didn't have to)!

It was the hubris of George W Bush, Tony Blair and latterly Gordon Brown (and John Hutton as Defence Secretary) that left us mired in Afghanistan but there was never going to be anything in it for either the US or the UK except the benefits that a stable Afghanistan would have brought to the international community. The Afghanistan campaign (or the fourth and fifth Afghan wars as some are now calling them) was a failure but the only thing the West wanted was to defeat Al Qaeda and to stabilise the country so they wouldn't come back - laudable if unachievable aims.

As for Iraq - another example of the hubris of George W Bush and Tony Blair undoubtedly but it was not about the oil. If we had wanted Iraqi oil we could have just got the sanctions lifted and bought it from Saddam. I was personally totally against the invasion despite finding myself out there in July 2003 but it was never about the oil however much it was portrayed as such in some areas of the media.

BTW - I was in Afghanistan in 2008 and it was clearly a disaster even then but I have an affection for the Macedonians - one of the few nations in HQ ISAF with more privates than colonels!
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by michael scuffil »

postwarblue wrote: Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:20 am Rockers might choose to reflect that some places like Aden, Singapore (pirate infested swamp) and Hong Kong (tiny fishing village) grew to what they became ENTIRELY because of British rule, which attracted trade and delivered the rule of law and with those things the opportunity for individual prosperity. Hong Kong was also the desired refuge of literally millions fleeing murder, torture, famine and misery in (self-governing!) Communist China. The Victorian traveller Isabella Bird in 'The Golden Chersonese' reported how the British-governed 'Straits Settlements' (Penang and a small piece of the opposite mainland) was growing in population at the expense of the adjacent Sultanate (Perak I think from memory). As part of the British Empire, Southern Rhodesia was the bread-basket of Africa and look at it now after decades of misrule by that one-time darling of the British Left, Robert Mugabe. In India one benefit we brought was that the individual Princes were prevented from laying waste the land via wars against their neighbours. Oh and we got rid of the murder by burning of widows (Suttee) and the ritual religious murder of travellers (Thugee). I could go on and on.
Sounds like you would have approved of the Germans unifying Europe in either of the two world wars, especially the first, when as far as continental Europe was concerned, they were largely a progressive force.
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Avon
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by Avon »

rockfreak wrote: Wed Feb 20, 2019 8:43 pm Firstly, no big country goes into another for any length of time for the good of the indigenous population. There is always something they want. Oil, gold, minerals or to keep a trade route open. This is the raison d'etre behind Afghanistan and Iraq. You talk about refugees flowing hither and thither. A couple of years ago a British defence analyst had a letter in the Guardian in which he recalled that he'd been in America a few days after 9/11. He got an invitation to a secretive meeting of Forbes 500 companies (ie very rich companies, many involved in the so-called military industrial complex). They were addressed by Gen Wesley Clark, then a big cheese at the Pentagon.
Clark told them that plans were already afoot to invade those two countries and that, especially in the case of Iraq, to leave them in a state of chaos so that the West could dominate the oil supply and have a forward operating military base. Unfortunately this has rebounded so that Iran and the Shia are now more dominant in the area than before - a classic and historic case of our foreign policy in the Middle East giving us more trouble than we had before.
Now some might pipe up here that there's no oil in Afghanistan. Quite right. But there is in the Caspian and that is the reason that all the big powers (including Osama bin Laden) have taken so much interest in this part of the world. We and the Americans originally funded and supported the Taliban to get the Russians out, and after the Russians were out the American oil company Unacol quietly invited the Taliban leaders over to Sweetwater Texas to discuss the possibility of getting at this oil and running pipelines across Afghanistan and into friendly India or Pakistan. The Taliban seemed keen on the idea but the women's movement were not and duly showed up to protest. You can see footage of this incident in Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11".
So the Americans have achieved their precious chaos and it goes on. Isis wasn't even invented before all this started. And the refugees keep a' coming. I remember watching the bombing of Baghdad on the TV news and it was quite obvious that there was no attempt to just hit strategic targets. The place was lit up like a Christmas tree. It was, as the Americans said, "shock and awe" (ie blitzkrieg). Just a couple of years afterwards Amnesty International were estimating the casualties (mostly civilian) at 100,000 and mounting. So please don't try telling me that colonialism doesn't go on. It does. Only with more powerful weapons.
With the exception of the small bit about the Taliban, everything about that post is arrant b0llocks.
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by rockfreak »

I'm always a bit wary of putting too black and white a picture on these colonial events because I suspect so much happens below the public and news radar. For instance, the affair of the UN's Dag Hammarskjold's plane being shot down over half a century ago has recently come to light as a result of a pilot having a deathbed pang of conscience, and it appears that these events, which surrounded the newly independent Congo (I think, if I remember rightly) have alleged the key players to have been the CIA, MI6, and agents from then apartheid South Africa acting for South African mining interests. A few years ago I read a review of a book by an American Admiral who'd been sailing the world for the best part of half a century. He said that while he was on service he'd been under the impression that he'd been making the world safe for democracy, but by the end of it he'd come to the dismal conclusion that he'd actually been making it safe for American corporations.
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by J.R. »

I do love good conspiracy theories.
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rockfreak
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by rockfreak »

J.R. wrote: Sat Feb 23, 2019 5:30 pm I do love good conspiracy theories.
How do you know it's a conspiracy theory?
rockfreak
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

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Without bothering to engage with it point by point, Avon says that my post is arrant bollocks. I suppose that this is the kind of chortling response that ex-public schoolboys and Bullingdon boys like Boris Johnson would say about something they disagreed with but were too lazy to engage with. Like "F*ck Business", for instance. Ho ho ho! How we fell about! What a wag! It's at times like this that I'm glad I didn't even think about sending my three daughters to the religious, royal, ancient, and ultimately crap foundation. They might have turned into idiots.
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by Avon »

rockfreak wrote: Sat Feb 23, 2019 8:43 pm Without bothering to engage with it point by point, Avon says that my post is arrant bollocks. I suppose that this is the kind of chortling response that ex-public schoolboys and Bullingdon boys like Boris Johnson would say about something they disagreed with but were too lazy to engage with. Like "F*ck Business", for instance. Ho ho ho! How we fell about! What a wag! It's at times like this that I'm glad I didn't even think about sending my three daughters to the religious, royal, ancient, and ultimately crap foundation. They might have turned into idiots.
How can you on the one hand decry people for attending the public school system and ascribe traits to them, when you have those same traits yourself, and attended the selfsame school?

I have a feeling that you are more to be pitied than pilloried, and a borderline headcase, but that doesn’t mean you’ll go unchallenged when you post sh1t.
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by loringa »

rockfreak wrote: Wed Feb 20, 2019 8:43 pm There is always something they want. Oil, gold, minerals or to keep a trade route open. This is the raison d'etre behind Afghanistan and Iraq. You talk about refugees flowing hither and thither. A couple of years ago a British defence analyst had a letter in the Guardian in which he recalled that he'd been in America a few days after 9/11. He got an invitation to a secretive meeting of Forbes 500 companies (ie very rich companies, many involved in the so-called military industrial complex). They were addressed by Gen Wesley Clark, then a big cheese at the Pentagon. Clark told them that plans were already afoot to invade those two countries and that, especially in the case of Iraq, to leave them in a state of chaos so that the West could dominate the oil supply and have a forward operating military base.
Clark is not my favourite General by any means but this does sound like the 'arrant' nonsense to which Avon refers. It simply does not ring with any hint of truth at any level. Why would you think American interests would be served by chaos in Afghanistan; it was this sort of chaos that led to 9/11 in the first place? Similarly Iraq. The ignorant and ill-informed love to claim that the invasion of Iraq was all about oil but that simply does not make sense. There are are much better ways of getting hold of oil; countries that produce the most oil tend to produce little else: the Gulf States, Nigeria, Venezuela - take your pick. If you want oil; it's easy you buy it on the open market. This is not the 1970's and Sheikh Yamani.

I think that between them Avon and JR have hit the nail on the head here.
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Re: How will CH cope with Brexit?

Post by rockfreak »

If Wesley Clark is not to your personal liking then who is? Let's have a "name your favourite general" competition. By the way, another big American name at the time was Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve at the time of Bush Jr. There's that news clip where Greenspan had just finished talking to a clutch of journalists about the Iraq invasion and thought that the cameras and mics were switched off and laughingly asided to the media pack: "What do you think this is about if not oil?"
Last edited by rockfreak on Sun Feb 24, 2019 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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