Yes. But if there's a civil war in The UK in 60 fucking years it won't be Jack Straws fault now will it.
Sglad: 60s really. American GUs uses Pattaya for r & r.
Yes. But if there's a civil war in The UK in 60 fucking years it won't be Jack Straws fault now will it.
Sglad: 60s really. American GUs uses Pattaya for r & r.
No doubt that's true. As we get older most of us probably suffer from the rosy tinted spectacle syndrome. But that's almost always related to ones own life experience and not that of a century or more ago! I have learned far more about the present and the past since I moved to Asia - and not just re Asia. And I realized quite early on that what we were taught in terms of history and brought up to believe was often a load of one-sided bullshit!Originally Posted by sglad
Definitely not. Collective responsibility and all that. It'll be seen to be another of Tony Blair's litany of faults.
As for Pattaya, it was the GI's R&R that turned the place into sin city! I&I more like it - intoxication and intercourse!
The English-speaking world has enjoyed remaining complacent about the effects of imperialism, colonialism and slavery. History may have been one of the subjects that got me into Oxford but it was not until I lived and worked in Brixton -the centre of early West Indian immigration- that I took a serious interest in Black History and Afro-American and West Indian literature. And it took a number of stays in Jamaica to turn interest into knowledge.
And yes, I knew about the Nakba but it was not until I started visiting Palestine each year, experienced the horrors of military occupation personally and was traumatised in 2004 by certain events I witnessed, that I began to understand it.
There's a line in To Kill a Mockingbird about not understanding someone until you've lived in their shoes. Too many of my generation have lived their lives not wishing, and not being brave enough, to take that risk.
fountainhall (January 30th, 2017), monsoon (February 2nd, 2017)
And as bad as it was on ocassions, had the British Empire not existed perhaps the whole of Asia would have fallen under Japanese control for decades. And that would have been immeasurably worse.
Having typed my earlier reply in a taxi, there wasn't time to develop my reply in enough detail. Frankly I don't agree. As Oliver has made clear in his post, one's view of history is rarely static. It evolves as you experience life and many of the amazing places and cultures on our planet. I was taught - and believed for years - that the Crusades were a holy Christian enterprise to rescue the heart of Christianity from the infidel Muslims. It was only after the first of my two visits to Istanbul that I began to take an interest in the history of that part of the world and to try and find out what actually happened during those Crusades.
What I discovered totally completely changed my view. Steven Runiciman's three volume History is a good place as any to start despite having been written in the 1950s. But for further balance Amin Maalouf's The Crusades Through Arab Eyes is essential reading. What one discovers is the depth of the animosity between a power-hungry Pope and a weakened Emperor of Byzantium, a motley army of farmers, criminals and vagabonds who raped, ravaged and ransacked their through Europe, the Balkans and the Byzantine Empire on their way to the Holy Land, and who had joined only because the Pope had promised each and every one forgiveness of sins and the keys to heaven. For many a far better bargain than execution or imprisonment The nobles were mostly second or third sons and so unable to inherit their fathers' estates back home. But there was land aplenty to be grabbed in the Holy Land!
The rivers of Muslim and Jewish blood spilled by the Christian invaders when they reached Jerusalem in 1099 was in stark contrast to the peaceful annexation by the Muslim forces some centuries earlier. Move forward to the disaster of the 4th Crusade when Roman Catholic Christians rerouted to Constantinople and pitted themselves against the Byzantine Christians, thereby opening up the Great Schism in the Church that Popes today are still trying to heal.
Or try standing in the square at the centre of Cusco in Peru, the capital city of the Inca Empire. Imagine what it must have been like when Pizarro, an illegitimate adventurer with no education and no inheritance, with a force of less than 180 Spaniards tricked the Inca Emperor Atahualpa, murdered him with the connivance of the Catholic Church and proceeded to massacre the entire population of up to 10 million, aided by the diseases brought from Europe. All for gold.
Use your life to experience, visit and learn about the world sglad. These are the years that shape your thinking, not what you are taught.
christianpfc (February 1st, 2017), Oliver (January 30th, 2017), Tintin (January 31st, 2017)
Quite the opposite, I'm sorry say!
Had it not been for the British Empire, the Japanese might have remained a far more docile nation than an aggressive warmonger! Fact is that after the Meiji Restoration Japan decided to develop along the lines of western powers. It saw itself as similar in so many ways to the British - an island nation with an ancient and stable monarchy and much larger mainland rivals. Britain having the world's largest Empire was a further incentive for it to expand in similar fashion.
Incidentally, after World War I Britain was the leader in naval aviation. Japan, an ally of Britain, tried unsuccessfully ten times to gain information about Britain's new aircraft carrier designs. But Britain permitted a Scottish Peer to lead a delegation to Japan in 1921 as advisors. Lord Sempell, who had access to naval design secrets, quickly developed a love of Japan. Soon he was passing this information to his Japanese friends. Churchill covered up Sempill's exploits to avoid a scandal - "Clear him out" he told his aides.
From 1922 another British spy Frederick Rutland started passing secret information and taught the Japanese about carrier landing techniques. Several sources suggest that the Japanese could not have mounted the Pearl Harbour attack as early as December 1941 without this information. Rutland also turned up as a Japanese spy in Honolulu where he provided Japan with information about the disposition of the American fleet.
In a touch of supreme irony, a British MI5 officer is quoted as saying there was no doubt Rutland was a "paid agent of the Japanese." The officer was none other than Anthony Blunt, himself a notorious British spy - but for the Soviets.
And other British spies passed crucial information over to the Japanese. A British colonial serviceman in Malaya named Roberts gave them the plans of the British base in Singapore. With that the Japanese realised a land-based offensive could succeed, something Churchill and his colleagues were convinced was impossible.
But note: I am not saying Britain caused the rise of a militaristic Japan. But it provided the template, and thanks to its spies some of the vital technical information essential to its initial successes.
Fountainhall - you (and Arsenal) are both educating me in this debate, but how come you designate the traitor Lord Sempill as Scottish yet Frederick Rutland (who appears to have been English through and through) is designated as British
Oh dear! Big mistake!Frederick Rutland, naval officer and spy, was born in Weymouth, ENGLAND in 1886. Disgraced, he committed suicide in 1949
Fountainhall: Your answers are becoming less and less about engaging and more about writing mini lectures. Japan produced the finest army ever assembled and swept through Asia taking Singapore with 80000 Empire troops in a week with less than half that number. So without the British as well as Aus, NZ, Canada etc troops they would have conquered almost unlimited territory and Nanking would have been repeated again and again. So not wrong. And you must know how hated the Japanese are throughout Asia as well as other countries because of their behaviour in WW II.
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