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Subject: American: Britain must pay £31 trillion for past crimes
AdamB    3/2/2007 1:47:13 PM
According to a new book - "The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined The World" (the author obviously not knowing the difference between "England" and "Great Britain") - Britain is an evil nation responsible for many of the world's woes. Written by Amercian Steven Grasse, Britain must pay £31 trillion ($60 trillion) in damages (to put that into persective, the US economy, the world's largest, is $13 trillion). Grasse even has an organisation to do with all this - The International Coalition for British Reparations - of which there are many members, ---------------------------------------------------- Cruel Britannia By CHARLES LAURENCE 2nd March 2007 Are we to blame for all the planet's problems? Britain is apparently to blame for just about all of the planet's problems. In its days of might and glory, our Sceptred Isle was in fact an Evil Empire that enslaved the world, and is today responsible for everything from African genocides to the Iraq War and the conflict between Palestine and Israel. We are also to blame for global warming - because Britain launched the Industrial Revolution which produced the smoke that polluted the sky that heated the world. And as if that was not bad enough, we also burned Joan of Arc at the stake, made cocaine 'look cool' and pandered to Hitler, before dragging the whole world into global conflict. These are just some of the accusations against Britain in an outrageous new 'history' book, The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined The World, that looks set to blow a giant raspberry at the much-vaunted 'special relationship' between Britain and America. It has been written by Steven Grasse, a selfstyled 'amateur historian' from Philadelphia, who believes that Britain has never been held to account for its role in some of the darkest chapters in global history. After a successful career running a marketing agency, Grasse is now pouring his resources into launching his alternative view of Britain's national story - complete with websites, publicity stunts, video films and documentaries - because he wants to persuade the world that Britain is to blame for most global ills. His aim is to grab the attention of a generation which no longer reads books and which is ignorant of history, but which, nonetheless, believes that America is the true Evil Empire. 'I'm not claiming that America is innocent of everything,' writes Grasse, 'but England is supposed to be our ally and our friend, and all we hear these days is how awful Americans are and what awful things America is doing. It is time people heard the other side of the story.' So, in Grasse's eyes, Britain is to blame for world poverty and starvation, for The Great Plague, for the ravages of Nazis and Communists, and for Islamic terrorism today. Apparently, we are even to blame for the Vietnam War which humiliated America 35 years ago. 'There would have been no Vietnam War if there had been no French colony in Vietnam, and there would have been no French colony if England had not started with its colonies, which meant that everyone else had to have colonies too,' explains Grasse. This is the sort of twisted logic that has inspired him to start the International Coalition for British Reparations, a new campaign launched with a full-page newspaper advertisement in America, which is demanding that Britain pay £31 trillion in damages to be distributed to every man, woman and child in the world as recompense for the damage the UK has inflicted around the globe. 'Look at World War I - you started that!' says Grasse. It was an unnecessary war, started by Britain because Germany wanted an Empire, which Britain, France and Russia had. 'You then dragged America into it. The whole bloody history of the 20th century, including the Nazi genocide, starts from that point. The average person does not know any of this.' And here is Grasse on the Anglo-Chinese Opium War of 1840, when Britain sent a task force to protect its trading outposts. In a chapter headed 'They Hooked the Chinese on Opium', he writes: 'What could be worse than looking out your window and seeing a drug dealer, peddling his narcotics to every passer-by? 'How about a drug dealer who sets up camp on your doorstep and pummels your walls with musket fire and cannon balls until you allow him to sell drugs from inside your very home? 'Grisly stuff, I know, but it's exactly what Britain did to China during the 19th-century opium wars.' (Never mind that opium was not, in fact, illegal at the time - or that this anti-protectionist measure gave rise to the global free market from which America has prospered so greatly). But it is when Grasse turns his eye to more recent problems that his accusations become as hysterical as they are inaccurate. For he believes that many of the global problems we think of as being recent developments can be traced back to Britain's doorstep. He blames the
 
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Herc the Merc    Why AdamB any excuse for free money...   3/2/2007 1:50:29 PM
Since I am not British its ok for the Brits to pass $31 trillion my way. I agree. I have been forced to learn English and watch Benny Hill. Lets make it $32 trillion and we are even. I'll buy the entire country a nite out at their favorite pub.
 
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AdamB       3/3/2007 6:16:32 AM
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I feel sorry for poor old Steven Grasse, nursing his nation's grievances down there in Philadelphia, muttering away about our preoccupation with queens and lords, and the shocking mess we made of our past.

He, like many of his fellow Americans, hankers in vain for some fragment of imperial glory. They find this tragically elusive, and it hurts.

The Empire Strikes Back

by MAX HASTINGS
2nd March 2007

Call us the Evil Empire? The fact is we were rather good at ruling the globe - unlike the Americans

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/03_01/ladybritDM02030_400x505.jpg" border=0>


Steven Grasse is the sort of salesman who could make John Prescott seem to possess a brain, or Basra appear a fashionable holiday destination.

While possessing no discernible gifts as a writer or historian, after a lifetime in marketing Mr Grasse is storming America with a work entitled The Evil Empire: 101 Ways In Which England Has Ruined The World.

Out there in Little Rock and Grand Falls, it seems, they are lapping up this catalogue of British crimes and follies, from the Industrial Revolution (which caused pollution and global warming) to the Opium Wars (giving rise to drug addiction).

World War I was our fault because Germany wanted an Empire like ours; so was the rise of Nazism, thanks to British prewar appeasers sucking up to Hitler.

In Mr Grasse's book, poor old Britain is to blame for world poverty, Islamic terrorism (we created Saddam), even the Vietnam War - because we set the world trend for colonial expansion and the war would never have happened had the country not been a French colony.

Now, before readers of the Daily Mail overbook planes to the U.S. to punch this Steven Grasse, let me explain that his book is quite funny - maybe even intentionally so.

It reads as if every bar bore in Philadelphia, where the author hails from, got together one night and wrote down every half-assed insult they could remember about Britain, somewhat handicapped by the fact that none did high school history past sixth grade.

It sounds exactly like the lads at the Dog & Duck in Epping holding forth on a Saturday night about how Americans never join wars until the hard bit is over and play a brand of football that looks like giant turtles mating.

Steven Grasse is no more worth getting angry about than Mel Gibson's risibly anti-English version of the Battle of Stirling in Braveheart, or Steven Spielberg's film Saving Private Ryan, a portrait of D-Day without any Brits.

All nations cherish clichès about each other. We think the French chronically duplicitous, though maybe better at sex than we are. The French think that history is a chronicle of English stitch-ups, of which the triumph of our language is the most painful.

The Germans want to be admired as the nation of Goethe, Thomas Mann and BMW, but are stuck with the fact that everybody else envisages them in terms of barked orders, jackboots and leaders with moustaches and - well, you know.

The Belgians, who make rotten soldiers (failed GCSE in every conflict of modern times), must make do with being deeply respected as chocolate-makers.

Yet there is a serious point about Steven Grasse's silly little book and its U.S. success.

Americans are sick to death of being the world's whipping-boys. They hate seeing their own young generation voice its shame about Iraq, environmental destruction, George Bush, McDonald's, Microsoft's monopolism and all the other global atrocities laid at America's door.

They want to see their own people walk tall again, and they are groping around for ways to achieve this. The most obvious is to find somebody else to chuck mud at. The British are as handy as you can get. We are the ones who ran the world before America tried.

We are snooty enough to think that we made a better job of it. Nowadays, in the eyes of Grasse and his fans, we simply sit in the dress circle and crow every time the U.S. screws something up.

Underlying his book's cheap jokes, there is a real grievance and a taunt: were the British ever any good?

The sh
 
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DropBear       3/3/2007 6:43:54 AM
Since I am not British its ok for the Brits to pass $31 trillion my way. I agree. I have been forced to learn English and watch Benny Hill. Lets make it $32 trillion and we are even. I'll buy the entire country a nite out at their favorite pub.
 

As opposed to a night out, I guess?
 
So much for learning English, eh Herc?
 
 
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french stratege       3/3/2007 7:09:28 AM
How much France can have in this £31 trillion ($60 trillion) in damages ?
We are interested.
More seriously, an other book to enforce white culpability and feed leftist groups which will destroy western civilization if they succeed.
 
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EssexBoy    France's share   3/3/2007 7:57:51 AM
 
How much compensation are we owed for the Norman conquest? :-)
 
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flamingknives       3/3/2007 9:02:22 AM
Or, perhaps, the annexation by the French of England's rightful property in Northern France?

Why does AdamB persist in posting these non-stories from a paper that I wouldn't use to wipe my arse?
 
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PlatypusMaximus       3/3/2007 9:27:27 AM
You people should have to pay me for reading through this.
 
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Roman       3/3/2007 12:43:32 PM

More seriously, an other book to enforce white culpability and feed leftist groups which will destroy western civilization if they succeed.

I think the book was probably intended as a joke.
That said, I do agree with the increasing prevalence of anti-white racism in leftist works. Many countries, nations and peoples conducted unspeakable cruelties against many other countries, nations and peoples, yet it is beginning to seem to me that the left thinks the West (and I think they don't just mean the West, but I believe they actually mean whites) is responsible for all evil that has ever existed in the world and especially so today. They completely forget that in the past eras, it was considered completely normal for a stronger country to conquer a weaker one - it happened all the time. Our problem is not just that we (well, Slovaks were not, but Europe in general was) were rather efficient at doing so during the last few hundred years, but also from the fact that we were the last to do so on a large scale. Frankly, I think it is pure racism on the part of the left. If it is not a case of leftist racism and extreme double standards, than I want $60 trillion from Mongolia (and China [the Yuan dynasty])... plus interest!
 
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Panther       3/3/2007 5:31:44 PM
If it's a joke, than it's the mother of all idoitic jokes. Reparations... what a bunch of delusional poppycock!  
 
 
 
 
 
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Herc the Merc    What if u have lived in 2 countries affected by British colonialism??   3/3/2007 5:36:08 PM
Would u awrad me twice the damages??LOL--I agree with this damages thing--class action lawsuit, where do I sign up!!!
Hope for a speedy trial here.
 
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