Posted on 03/18/2007 10:01:20 PM PDT by sociotard
Here's a weird little organization for you to laugh at:
International Coalition for British Reparations
My only hope is that this is in some way a joke. Basically, they want Great Britain to pay the world for its imperialist history, to the tune of 31 Trillion Pounds.
Oh, wait, that's not all. They're also blaming Britain for the Industrial Revolution (it was bad for the environment) and for inventing Machine guns.
Well, maybe they need to be machine-gunned, on the "hair of the dog" principle.
Blair needs to admit that "mistakes were made", fire some underlings, invite his accusers to dinner, and pour trillions of taxpayer pounds to their causes.
Oh, wait a minute. I was thinking of Bush.
No reparations demanded from France or Spain?
...looks like a good bandwagon for Americans to hop on to, unless the Brits want to drop their campaign to impoverish the USA with canards about "global warming" being caused by us.
An American, Hiram Maxim, did. Britain merely bought them from him.
L
Well, I have to admit that I do agree with their central point: "Having spent the better half of the millennium turning the world into their personal litter box, where do the English get off blaming everything on America?"
This is a joke. They list bad hygiene and the Black Plague as grievances. They also say they plan to present their petition to the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
Good luck with all that.
This Hiram Maxim had a son named Hiram Percy Maxim. I think he was the first Ham radio operator in America. His call sign was W1AW, the same call sign used by the ARRL station in Newington, CT.
Hiram Maxim was American Born but was a British subject when he invented the Maxim Gun which was developed by a British financed company (Vickers) and first used by the British Army.
Not exactly a large American component there...
The British should claim reparations from the Danes (Vikings) for the rape and pillage and extortion of Dane Geld (with interest), also from the Italians for the Roman invasion in 55BC and from the French (Normans) for the invasion in 1066.
Don't you think the British should at least get some credit for inventing the French Fry (God bless them)?
Other than the fact he was born here and didn't emigrate to the UK until he was well into his fourties anyway.
Whatever. The Brits can have Mr. Maxim. We had John Moses Browning.
L
The irony is ever juicier now that the Britons themselves claim that London has retaken the position of the world's capital in capital raising, etc. London itself claims as being the most cosmopolitan city in the world with all the unimaginable riches. Hey, they should have enough money to pay these reparations!
"No reparations demanded from France or Spain?"
Or Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland? Not to mention dear mother Ruska? China? Japan?
Bloody imperialists all!!
So I guess the British came up with the idea of sacrificing hundreds of people per day to Huitzilopochtli. Oh, wait, that was the Aztecs. When do the Mexicans get hit up for reparations?
Well the British have to pay for the African Slave Trade, except that the Atlantic Slave Trade would never have worked without African middlemen who actually acquired the slaves and traded them to the British. We'll just leave out the inconvienent fact that the creators of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade were the Portuguese. Portugal must be made to pay.
And let's not forget 700 years of "illegal occupation" of Spain by the Berber Muslims. Morocco needs to get their checkbook out so they can repatriate Spain. Reparations is such an asinine concept.
What a joke! The British should be charging them for semi-civilizing their sorry asses.
The website and the 'campaign' was set up by a self-publicising Advertising Executive called Steven Grasse who runs the following company:
http://www.gyroworldwide.com/contact.htm
He set it all up to publicise his 'book' about the same topic.
He is French. Enough said! :D
"The British should claim reparations from the Danes (Vikings) for the rape and pillage and extortion of Dane Geld "
Wasn't Eric the Bone Crusher involved in that one?
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