BS: A nation founded on injustice?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:33 PM

E.g., Abigail Adams.

"John Adams frequently sought the advice of his wife on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics."

And she wasn't the only one, by any means.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 04:36 PM

""Can England really be said to have been "founded"? If so, when did that happen?""

Don't know the answer to that Carol, and I doubt if any of our ancient ancestors were even aware that it had been "losted".

I can't help feeling that this thread should be taken very lightly.

One man's injustice is another man's law & order, and I don't believe there is a single country on earth that has nothing nasty in its past behaviour,...........except (possibly) Tonga, and even that is dubious.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:39 PM

Even Tonga perhaps...

"THE civilized world read with a shudder the news brought to it last week of the killing and eating by Tonga Island cannibals of two Presbyterian missionaries, the Rev. Horatio Hopkins and the Rev. Hector McPherson, both of whom were affiliated with the British Branch of the Presbyterian Foreign Mission Board."

From The New York Times, May 8th 1910.



"

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:47 PM

WELL, CHRIST on a BICYCLE!

You eat two missionaries, and all of a sudden your nation is founded on injustice.

And after the lovely presents Salote sent their queen.

Screw You Britain

Signed
Tongan Foreign Minister

P.S. They were tough as hell, and gave us the trots for a WEEK!

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:50 PM

LOL! That's telling them!

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 05:51 PM

I think it was in relation to this incident that Chesterton wrote "The Higher Unity" (chnaging the name out of a sense of discretion):

It was Isaiah Bunter
Who sailed to the world's end,
And spread religion in a way
That he did not intend.

He gave, if not the gospel-feast,
At least a ritual meal;
And in a highly painful sense
He was devoured with zeal...

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 06:48 PM

That's taking "feed the multitudes" to a whole new level.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 07:21 PM

Mick Ryan's Lament
From Two Journeys
(1999 by Robert Emmet Dunlap, Prodigal Salmon Music/ASCAP)

(n. b.: Melody is "Garryowen")

Well my name is Mick Ryan, I'm lyin still
In a lonely spot near where I was killed
By a red man defending his native land
In the place that they call Little Big Horn

And I swear I did not see the irony
When I rode with the Seventh Cavalry
I thought that we fought for the land of the free
When we rode from Fort Lincoln that morning

And the band they played the Garryowen
Brass was shining, flags a flowin
I swear if I had only known
I'd have wished that I'd died back at Vicksburg

For my brother and me, we had barely escaped
From the hell that was Ireland in forty eight
Two angry young lads who had learned how to hate
But we loved the idea of Amerikay

And we cursed our cousins who fought and bled
In their bloody coats of bloody red
The sun never sets on the bloody dead
Of those who have chosen an empire

But we'd find a better life somehow
In the land where no man has to bow
It seemed right then and it seems right now
That Paddy he died for the union

Ah, but Michael he somehow got turned around
He had stolen the dream that he thought he'd found
Now I never will see that holy ground
For I turned into something I hated

And I'm haunted by the Garryowen
Drums a beating, bugles blowin'
I swear if I had only known
I'd lie with my brother in Vicksburg

And the band they played that Garryowen
Brass was shin, flags a flowin'
I swear if I had only known, I'd lie with
my brother at Vicksburg

I think that about covers it.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: GUEST,Midchuck on new computer
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 07:49 PM

Sorry, that Guest was me. I haven't gotten around to signing back up since I got a new computer and connection.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: M.Ted
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 08:28 PM

It is time for our smarmy British Friends to face the truth in this issue, and that is that the excise tax was a much resented British institution, and the rebelling distillers were Scots--here is an excerpt from the History of Westmoreland country, linked in my post above:


The trouble was due to the method adopted, mainly by the National Government, of raising money by taxation. This tax was known in the popular language of that days as an excise tax, a term extremely opprobrious to the English speak-in- people of all ages.

These people were not opposed to paving tax, if levied, for example, on landed property, for then it was at least supposed to be based on the valuation of the land. Nor did they seriously object to a tariff, which is primarily a duty collected on all articles brought into this country from abroad. But an excise tax is one levied on home manufactures, and collected either when the material is produced, or when it is first offered for sale.

If fairly collected, its very nature demands that the government imposing and collecting it shall take charge, to a very great extent, of the labor and the raw material which produces the commodity to be taxed. Because of this necessary supervision on the part of the government, the excise tax had for ages been obnoxious in Great Britain.

In Scotland the inherent hatred, of excise duties had become proverbial before the days of Robert Burns, for in his age, among the peasantry, the killing of an excise tax-collector was considered almost, if not entirely a virtue.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Alice
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 08:49 PM

Nice lyrics add, thanks, Peter.


Alice

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 10:08 PM

Paul Burke: Thank you for correcting my misinformed and unresearched assertion about the Magna Carta.


CarolC: I think a lot of American Loyalists did leave the nascent United States in fear of their lives. Parts of the conflict were fought with great ferocity between opposing militias. I remember visiting a part of Connecticut where supposedly a family still in residence is remembered by their neighbors for bearing information to the British about them.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 10:49 PM

You are correct, robomatic. Many loyalists fled north in fear of their lives at the conclusion of the American War of Independence. Many more people on both sides were killed in tit for tat reprisals between the loyalists and the revolutionaries during the war years...and many others had their homes and possessions destroyed in those reprisals.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 31 Aug 09 - 11:33 PM

Italy was definitely "founded" - in many ways, more so than the US. Google "Garibaldi".

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Stu
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 03:43 AM

A nation founded on injustice? You bet, but not the petty squabbles of white imperialists, but on wholesale occupation of land and repression of an entire people, one which continues to this very day:

""Our children are brainwashed," said Gilbert, the tribe's land commissioner. "The children are attracted by the promise of money and the American way of life. They turn their backs on where they come from. They're so brainwashed to believe in the principles of the United States they don't challenge it. They're deeply ingrained to be a colonised person and to behave just like the good old American citizen."

Gilbert is as angry at his own people as he is with the US government and white Americans. He wants Native Americans to fight for their language, their culture and ultimately to try to overturn what he calls the colonisation: "We are prisoners living in occupied America. I really find it fascinating that you don't have real violent resistance here in the States that you do elsewhere off of colonised people. Indigenous peoples are the only ones that have this legitimate struggle to be violent against the United States because of this system of tyranny by the government against indigenous peoples, because by the laws of this land you are forced to behave in this manner."

Taken from this article.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 05:11 AM

Did't he invent biscuits?

Sugarfoot Jack, you have put your finger on something that I had been groping towards in the context of widespread US-based opposition to what it termed colonisation in Ireland (and Afghanistan and Iraq).

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 07:36 AM

One of the things that I find curious, is how so many Americans appear to get angry at Mexicans for entering the US. My thought was that as Mexicans are ethnically more 'American' (mainly a mixture of European and Native American) so to speak than the colonists, this seems wrong some how.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 11:01 AM

It's really a class prejudice as much as anything else. Mexicans are seen to be poorer...therefore lower class and presumably a threat in some way. A richer group of people always fear and resent an influx of poorer people. This has been the case not just in the USA, but in any society I can think of all through human history.

The Mexicans are resented and feared now just like the Irish immigrants were resented and feared by the general American public in the mid-1800's.

As for the oppressed situation of Native Americans in the USA, it sounds to me a lot like the oppressed situation of Tibetans under the heavy hand of China ever since Tibet was occupied shortly after the end of WWII...only that's a more recent conquest.

Injustice is not limited to the USA. Not by any means. It's found all over the place. (And I think we all know that.)

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 11:28 AM

""It is time for our smarmy British Friends to face the truth in this issue, and that is that the excise tax was a much resented British institution,""

Charming turn of phrase, even if it prefaced something of moment, and accuracy.

However, my ill informed friend, if you were to take the trouble to do your homework, you would find excise taxes being levied at least as far back as Ancient Persia, Rome (including Roman Britain), Carthage, and continuing through mediaeval China, Norman Britain, France, and Italy, and on to present day America.

So this British institution spread backwards in time?

And your revolution doesn't seem to have stopped it

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 11:31 AM

There are 2 things no one has been able to stop, Don. Death and taxes. ;-)

Come to think of it, no one's been able to stop Dachshunds from barking either.

Okay, 3 things then.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: GUEST,Red Settler
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 04:27 PM

Some of the comments above are founded in a misperception of how nations are commonly settled and founded. The Native Americans constantly fought over other tribes' land and property. Killing an enemy was a mark of respect, adulthood, and tribal loyalty. This is true of most aboriginal peoples today. Europeans were tribal, once, too. In fact, all humans. Native Americans were technologically outclassed as far as weapons go. What really tipped the scales were epdemics that may have been brought to the New World by Europeans, but were certainly more survival by Europeans due to prior exposure.
As for Native American culture, if some people like Gilbert want to study and make native languages available to people, that's great. If his notion is to reintroduce it as the main language of his people he is barking up the wrong tree.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 05:27 PM

History is used ferociously to defend positions in our culture war, race issues, imperialism and economic injustice.

What I notice however is that 90% of the time the idiosts quoting history are either wrong about the history and the people or 180 degree wrong about their historic example. Yesterday Texas secessionists on the capitol steps were saying Sam Houston was the biggest and most courageous supporter of Confederate sessesion. ?!

The biggest donut hole in our educational system is history.
Of this I am certain.





I am currently trying to see if my supposition that the US has never won a foreign civil war has any validity, be it Viet Nam or Iraq Wars but I need a history expert to review this idea before I can state it as fact.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 06:01 PM

One of the interesting phenomena is outside beliefs of American perceptions of immigrants, legal or otherwise. We certainly have our fair share of bigots, but we are also a multi-ethnic society and a very large number of Americans (in the absence of a valid poll, I won't say most) welcome others and celebrate the diversity of our nation.   Not every op-ed writer decrying the influx of undocumented Mexicans is necessarily a WASP - for example, Reuben Navarette. In San Antonio, where my daughter lives, there has been a large influx in the past few years of wealthy Mexicans and people there (many of whom are of Spanish heritage) are no more happy about them than the poor ones.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Sep 09 - 06:23 PM

Killing an enemy as a mark of espect, adulthood, and tribal loyalty (in the form of warring between European nation-states) certainly continued on that continent long after society was no longer structured along tribal lines. It didn't end until after WWII. It didn't end on the North American continent after the native tribal structure was mostly eliminated, either. It continues to this very day, although we've decided to take the wars to other countries rather than fight them here. The only real difference is the size of the conflicts and the numbers of people killed.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:24 AM

To expand this thread to cover a wider interpretation of the question it posits than simply the OP's Whiskey Tax:

I (an Englishman) love America and Americans. I am in constant e-contact with a dear sister-in-law married for 50 years to a Chicago-an; and with a first-cousin in Virginia; and with the closest-possible friends in Santa Monica. I have visited the US many times, Coast-to-coast, and always been hospitably received and felt greatly at home. But someone [a fellow-Brit] once said to me, "The trouble is, the Land Of The Free was founded jointly on genocide and slavery; and not just in the South — notoriously Thomas Jefferson, one of the revered Founding Fathers and author of their Dec of Ind, owned slaves".

I endeavoured to frame a riposte; but couldn't think of one. Is there one?

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:32 AM

Nope. That pretty much sums it up.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:34 AM

(Although Virginia, Thomas Jefferson's home state, is considered to be a part of the South. However, the industrial states in the North benefited as much from slavery as the South.)

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Melissa
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:47 AM

MtheGM,
I'd say "..guess that's where the "home of the brave" part comes in"

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 07:16 AM

But it shouldn't be forgotten that slavery was introduced into the American Colonies while they were under British rule, and the Atlantic slave trade was very much a British enterprise, with the profits coming back to this country to build country houses and finance industrial development.

Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers were essentially British landowners living overseas. Much the same, for good and for ill, as their predecessors in the English Revolution a century earlier.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 08:12 AM

As morally reprehensible as it was (and is), slavery or some other form of coerced labor was necessary for the plantation-style agribusiness practiced in the American South...as well as the British (and French) West Indies. Cotton, sugar and tobacco were labor-intensive products which were profitable only when produced on a large scale and with very low labor costs.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 09:56 AM

""As morally reprehensible as it was (and is), slavery or some other form of coerced labor was necessary for the plantation-style agribusiness practiced in the American South...as well as the British (and French) West Indies. Cotton, sugar and tobacco were labor-intensive products which were profitable only when produced on a large scale and with very low labor costs.""

To me, that sounds like the kind of rationalisation one might expect from a fat cat plantation owner, or a well bribed politician.

I suspect that labour as cheap, or cheaper, COULD have been acquired from various regions of South America, but THEY would have been free workers, able to come and go at will.

The whole point of slavery, it seems to me, was to have the workers under complete control, to get the crops planted and harvested, and meanwhile to breed more workers who would then become a commodity to sell for even more profit.

Given enough time, you don't even have to import more, you have enough for a sustainable breeding program.

There is NO conceivable rationalisation that could begin to excuse treating human beings worse than cattle.

However, as I tried to point out earlier in this unfortunate slanging match, THERE ISN'T A NATION ON EARTH FOUNDED ENTIRELY ON JUSTICE, TRUTH, AND FAIR SHARES FOR ALL!

So please tell me what is the sense in all this point scoring nonsense. None are innocent. None are exceptionally guilty, except possibly the fortunately defunct Third Reich.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 10:19 AM

Even on economic grounds, slavery is a very suspect way of organising things. The great advantage of "free labour", from the point of view of the owners, is that when times are bad, you can just lay the workers off and let them fend for themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: pdq
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 10:36 AM

"...the Atlantic slave trade was very much a British enterprise..."

Oh, crap. About 70% of the Blacks brought to the Americas were bought and sold by the Portugese, who felt entitled to do so by their recent history. They had been enslaved by the Moors from about 711-1492.

Nearly 800 years of Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula changed the appearance of their people greatly. I'm not sure the percent of Arab v. African Black in the mix of Moors, but some were surely Black.

The majority of future slaves went to Brasil, an area that the Portugese thought would propel them into one of the rich and powerful countries of the world.

Spain also had a hand in things. The claimed the area (essentially) east of New Orleans all the way through Florida to the Atlantic. Spain was the second largest trader in the Modern Slave Trade era.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 10:52 AM

"During the eighteenth century, when the slave trade accounted for the transport of a staggering 6 million Africans, Britain was the worst transgressor - responsible for almost 2.5 million. This is a fact often forgotten by those who regularly cite Britain's prime role in the abolition of the slave trade." From this site.

No doubt there are uncertainties about those kind of statistics. There always are. But the major role played by British based slave-traders is beyond question.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: pdq
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:09 AM

...from your article:


"As a result of the slave trade, five times as many Africans arrived in the Americas than Europeans. Slaves were needed on plantations and for mines and the majority was shipped to Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Spanish Empire. Less than 5% traveled to the Northern American States formally held by the British.


If that means that 5% of the total went directly to the US, that is the same approximation I have heard. The remainder came to the US from other slave counrties, mostly Carribean. Half the Blacks living in the US have absolutely no ancestor, not even one, who was ever a slave in this country.

The site is one I have read before. Even though most of what is said is accurate, they exaggerated British responsilbility as part of their agenda. I believe the Brits were a distant fourth behind Portugal, Spain and France. The Dutch had some involvement too.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Stu
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:24 AM

" None are exceptionally guilty, except possibly the fortunately defunct Third Reich."

Tell that to the Tibetans and the Native Americans, at least two peoples who will never get their countries back. Like you said, this point scoring is a waste of time but also suggesting only Hitler shares some responsibility and should carry the burden of guilt for the mass destruction of people and cultures is very wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:21 PM

Yes, there are a number of past regimes that were exceptionally guilty...while all of them were guilty to some extent. It's become fashionable to drag out the Nazis as an exclusive example of extraordinary evil whenever the subject of organized evil comes up, but they were certainly not alone in that respect.

Nor were they alone in the fact that the majority of their own population at the time had no idea they were helping to support evil causes, but went forth with much the same sense of idealism and sense of moral rightness in their minds as people in other places did. They were very badly led.

When an organized evil is made "normal" in a society (usually for financial purposes or imperial ambitions), most people there at the time take it as normal and they don't question it. They accept it. They would be quite upset by someone who questioned it. That sort of thing has been going on ever since civilization came into existence. It's only with the clarity of hindsight following a great social change that a population comes to realize that a great wrong has been committed by what was previously seen as "normal".

In Rome, for example, anyone with a reasonable amount of money owned slaves. And that was seen as perfectly normal. It wasn't normal by our standards, but it was normal by the standards of Rome and most nations around Rome at that time in history. They would have been rather annoyed with someone who came and lectured them about it, I imagine...because to them it was just a normal practice.

There are always a few radicals in any society, though, people of exceptional vision and independence of mind, who question such normalities and suggest that they are immoral and wrong. Such radical thinkers are considered "troublemakers" by the vast majority of people around them. ;-) Sometimes they are compelled to shut up in various ways, in fact, because they disturb the steady flow of "business as usual" and people don't like that. Socrates was made to drink poison. Martin Luther was excommunicated. The examples of that sort of thing are endless.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: GUEST,Sugarfoot Jack frying onions
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 01:04 PM

Excellent post LH.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: artbrooks
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 06:45 PM

I suspect that labour as cheap, or cheaper, COULD have been acquired from various regions of South America, but THEY would have been free workers, able to come and go at will. The whole point of slavery, it seems to me, was to have the workers under complete control, to get the crops planted and harvested, and meanwhile to breed more workers who would then become a commodity to sell for even more profit.

That is, regrettably, a 21st century perspective on a 18th century issue. Yes, plantation owners in the American South and the West Indies could have obtained workers in Central and South America - except that there was already a labor shortage there, caused at least in part because much of the indigenous population population had been enslaved by the Spanish and died. Whether they would have been, if imported as workers further north, "free to come and go at will" is pure conjecture. Personally, I doubt it. The point of slavery, whether one is talking about Africans in Georgia or Jews in Rome, is to obtain affordable labor when workers are a scarce commodity. Human ownership is unnecessary for effective control of the labor force - just ask any black sharecropper in the South during the century after the Emancipation Proclamation or any Russian serf before 1917.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:21 PM

MGthes wrote:

To expand this thread to cover a wider interpretation of the question it posits than simply the OP's Whiskey Tax:

I (an Englishman) love America and Americans. I am in constant e-contact with a dear sister-in-law married for 50 years to a Chicago-an; and with a first-cousin in Virginia; and with the closest-possible friends in Santa Monica. I have visited the US many times, Coast-to-coast, and always been hospitably received and felt greatly at home. But someone [a fellow-Brit] once said to me, "The trouble is, the Land Of The Free was founded jointly on genocide and slavery; and not just in the South — notoriously Thomas Jefferson, one of the revered Founding Fathers and author of their Dec of Ind, owned slaves".

I endeavoured to frame a riposte; but couldn't think of one. Is there one?

Response 1, The Bland: "What's Your Point?"
Response 2, The Topper: "I've heard it said that the United States it the only land to go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilization."
Response 3, The Practical: "Put it on a T-Shirt and take it to Disneyworld."
Response 4, The Realistic: "I saw that episode of the Simpsons."
Response 5, American Street: "You should see the other guy."
Response 6, Historical: "At least Thomas Jefferson was man enough to feel BAD about it."
Response 7, Religious: "And some people say there's no such thing as Original Sin."
Response 8, School of Positive Thinking: "It made jazz possible!"
Response 9, New Jersey: "Oh, yeah? Well, up your hole with a mello roll!"

Anyone think I can't make it to double digits, place yer bets.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:35 PM

It's not a question of can or can't. It's a question of should or shouldn't.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 12:24 AM

The most accurate response would have been, "The problem is that the "land of the free" was founded by British subjects."

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 02:30 AM

Thanks for your suggestions, Robo. Nice try [tho this was long before time of The Simpsons]. I expect I could think of a few dozen responses for myself along those sorts of lines... But as for any that would genuinely have deconstructed the original point — still waiting.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: akenaton
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 03:04 AM

For a change, I agree with what Little Hawk said!

Bringing his reasoning up to the present, it seems to me that our troops are as much "slaves" as the people who worked for the Romans.

They are dying daily in unwinnable wars promoted by our politicians, with our tacit approval. For this privilege, they are given as remunaration, slightly above the National Minimum Wage and over £6000 per annum less than a firefighter or police officer.

They are required to act as killing machines, forbidden to think or express their opinions on the actions they are involved in.

Who in their right mind, would encourage their children to join the military to save our brave "liberal democracy".

The problem our leaders have, is in reducing "soldiership" to "just another job" like policeman or firefighter, they would be required to listen to the voice of the rank and file, over pay, equipment, conditions and most importantly, the reasons why they are being forced to lay their lives and their limbs on the line.....Ake

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 04:45 AM

""They are required to act as killing machines, forbidden to think or express their opinions on the actions they are involved in.

Who in their right mind, would encourage their children to join the military to save our brave "liberal democracy".""

Unless things have changed in the last ten minutes, I believe the British Military Services are 100% volunteers.

I can't recall a single reference, anywhere, anytime, to people volunteering for slavery.

Our soldiers could indeed be better supported, but to call them slaves is to debase the service they render to all of those who stay at home and talk a good fight.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 05:40 AM

I enjoyed Mick Ryan's Lament about an Irish American 7th Cavalryman questioning the war he was fighting.
Is that one of those revisionist songs that put modern ideas into the mouths of the dead?
But US also took much territory from Mexico, and Irish American soldiers really did change sides and fought to defend Mexico against USA.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 06:28 AM

Don (W) T: "Our soldiers could indeed be better supported, but to call them slaves is to debase the service they render to all of those who stay at home and talk a good fight."


All well and good, Don...I mean it sounds good... but I would argue that our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are not rendering any real service whatsoever to those of us who stay at home in Canada, the USA, or the UK...and they're being used. Someone may imagine that they are rendering a service to us, but that's a delusion. The Afghan and Iraqi people and governments represent no threat whatsoever to the freedom, liberty, and lifestyle of Canadians, Americans, and Britons, and they never did. Not at any time. Afghanistan and Iraq never presented any real threat at all to Canada, America, or the UK. They are nations physically and technologically completely incapable of threatening us at the present time.

As for the 911 attacks, those were not planned or carried out by the governments and people of either Afghanistan or Iraq. They were planned and carried out by a very well hidden group of plotters, a quite small number of people who acted entirely in secret, and who did not do so on behalf of either Afghanistan or Iraq. They did it entirely on their own behalf...which is what criminals do. It was a criminal act, not an act of war between sovereign nations.

The soldiers we presently have fielded in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying to protect us or our way of life. They're dying to protect the financial interests of some big oil companies and other multinational corporations. In other words...from their own personal persepective...they're dying for nothing. Eventually I think most of them will figure that out, but too late to save the ones who don't come back...or who come back maimed for life.

We should support them by bringing them home ASAP. Same as in the Vietnam War.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 09:28 AM

Not that I disagree with you, overall, LH, but you said that Afghanistan and Iraq are physically and technologically incapable of threatening us at the present time. If 9-11 proved anything, it is that, with when you combine malice, imagination, and determination, you can do a lot with a little.

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 10:06 AM

But invading foreign countries, almost at random, does not do anything whatsoever to eliminate "malice, imagination, and determination".

Subject: RE: BS: A nation founded on injustice?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Sep 09 - 10:42 AM

Yes, M. Ted, you can do a lot with a little if you wish to, but the governments of Aghanistan and Iraq and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq did not plan, organize or commit the violent acts on 911. Those were criminal acts, not acts of war between nations. They should have been responded to with a full scale internationally organized criminal investigation and with covert intelligence action, not with 2 unjustified wars against small nations by a superpower (and its allies).

Invasion of foreign countries on completely flimsy pretences creates malice, imagination, and determination on the part of many individuals who wish to avenge the devastation wrought upon their own nations. It sows the seeds of many future sorrows, and when those seeds ripen almost ALL the people that get hurt will just be innocent bystanders, much like the 3,000 who died on 911.