Are we sleep-walking out of Europe ?

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

Too bad. Much too bad, President [Herr?] Obama.

George 

I guess this was censored, and said "Herr Obama" before; this is not exactly right since he's a Marxist.

Comrade Obama.

Dear Hook,

The attitude of the USA to Britain has always been equivocal. When Britain could be useful to the USA, then the special relationship is rolled out as the reason why Britain should do exactly what the US administration decides is fit. Otherwise Britain is left out in the cold. 

Watch the first film linked to realise that on the very day of the defeat of the Japanese in 1945 the US decided to shut the door on Britain. And Britain spent the next sixty years paying back. At the same time the US commenced building up other nations who were nominally the enemy of the USA before peace was restored. 

Though as you will see from the second film - equally factual - the interests of globalised US based business that the enemies of Britain were ripe cash cows for US shareholders. 

These are not selectively chosen facts, but the plain truth about the integrity of our so called closest ally. 

To forget such details - where IBM allows the Nazis to card index the Jews, with IBM machines, and the transport that allowed the Blitzkrieg to succeed so astonishingly could not have happened without the investment and profit of Fords and GM - would be idle.

Bad things happened, and perhaps it is well to forgive, but certainly not better to forget. We must learn the lessons from this, and Obama showed us with his threat for non-compliance once again - it has not gone away - then we must remember that special relationship between the USA and the UK is to all intents and purposes a “one-way street” that should be examined for what it is. Britain need no more be the Poodle of the USA, than it needs to subsume its sovereignty to Brussels. 

To do either merely makes us merely a pawn in the international hypocrisy that is globalised trade, backed by its chief proponent, the governing elite of the USA.

ATB from George

SNAIC,

I edited it. No moderation, except self moderation, involved.

ATB from George

Obama? A Marxist? What utter twaddle is that? Next you"ll be telling us he's a Muslim.

Sorry to see you go Hook, this topic sorely needs your ever-sensible input. So lttle sense posted by the Brexit crowd.

tonym posted:

Sorry to see you go Hook, this topic sorely needs your ever-sensible input.

   ...........  

tonym posted:

Obama? A Marxist? What utter twaddle is that? Next you"ll be telling us he's a Muslim.

Sorry to see you go Hook, this topic sorely needs your ever-sensible input. So lttle sense posted by the Brexit crowd.

Who here has suggested that Obama is a Marxist?

He is demonstrably naive, but his sense of left-leaning or right-leaning politics seems to be not so obvious, except Obama-care. 

However he certainly is a bully, internationally speaking ...

ATB from George

Mike-B posted:

tonym posted:

Sorry to see you go Hook, this topic sorely needs your ever-sensible input.

   ...........  

+1.  

I also find the growing anti-American feeling in some contributions here rather depressing and unjustified.

I'm so used to being hated as an American...I'm prone to say its probably justified for some reason or other.

Harping on about Nazi Germany and what the Americans did in the war is totally irrelevant and so unhelpful. This is 2016, not 1945. We need to look ahead and not back. 

Like Hook, I regret posting on this thread, but some of the twaddle on here is so ridiculous that I respond, and then regret it again. 

The term 'closet racists and swivel eyed loons' was used to describe UKIP, and seems more and more applicable to the whole of the Brexit camp the more one hears from them.  It's the politics of isolationism and xenophobia.

SNAIC in the Grass posted:

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

Too bad. Much too bad, President [Herr?] Obama.

George 

I guess this was censored, and said "Herr Obama" before; this is not exactly right since he's a Marxist.

Comrade Obama.

This one George. Words fail me...

Bully boys exist in every system, Tony, and Obama is merely one more.

However I am happy with my redacted version. 

ATB from George

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

tonym posted:

Obama? A Marxist? What utter twaddle is that? Next you"ll be telling us he's a Muslim.

Sorry to see you go Hook, this topic sorely needs your ever-sensible input. So lttle sense posted by the Brexit crowd.

Who here has suggested that Obama is a Marxist?

He is demonstrably naive, but his sense of left-leaning or right-leaning politics seems to be not so obvious, except Obama-care. 

However he certainly is a bully, internationally speaking ...

ATB from George

So Mr Obama's desire to try, against massive resistance from the American Healthcare industry, to instigate what every other civilised country has in place, is construed by you to show "Left-leaning" tendencies?  Heavens George, you really do take the biscuit for posting twaddle.

tonym posted:

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

tonym posted:

Obama? A Marxist? What utter twaddle is that? Next you"ll be telling us he's a Muslim.

Sorry to see you go Hook, this topic sorely needs your ever-sensible input. So lttle sense posted by the Brexit crowd.

Who here has suggested that Obama is a Marxist?

He is demonstrably naive, but his sense of left-leaning or right-leaning politics seems to be not so obvious, except Obama-care. 

However he certainly is a bully, internationally speaking ...

ATB from George

So Mr Obama's desire to try, against massive resistance from the American Healthcare industry, to instigate what every other civilised country has in place, is construed by you to show "Left-leaning" tendencies?  Heavens George, you really do take the biscuit for posting twaddle.

No! Tony, I think Obama has Obama-care right, just as Attlee had the NHS right in the late 1940s.

Do NOT try to twist my meaning. 

George

MDS posted:

Mike-B posted:

tonym posted:

Sorry to see you go Hook, this topic sorely needs your ever-sensible input.

   ...........  

+1.  

I also find the growing anti-American feeling in some contributions here rather depressing and unjustified.

Agree completely 

Quad 33 posted:

Chris Dolan posted:

MDS posted:

Mike-B posted:

tonym posted:

Sorry to see you go Hook, this topic sorely needs your ever-sensible input.

   ...........  

+1.  

I also find the growing anti-American feeling in some contributions here rather depressing and unjustified.

Agree completely

Also agree, this thread is getting distasteful and ugly.

Quad 33 posted:

Also agree, this thread is getting distasteful and ugly.

Getting?

There's about 10 pages of moderate comment and a couple of pages of increasingly vitriolic mud-slinging.

I said on the first page, it would be nice if we could discus this issue in a more mature way than a typical House of Commons debate. It would be nice if we could at least try..................

Don Atkinson posted:

There's about 10 pages of moderate comment and a couple of pages of increasingly vitriolic mud-slinging.

I said on the first page, it would be nice if we could discus this issue in a more mature way than a typical House of Commons debate. It would be nice if we could at least try..................

Seconded. I like to think that the debates we have on here are above the playground antics of Prime Minister's Questions. 

Well well.

I point out a few undisputed facts and that is called mud-slinging. I suppose that people would prefer me to express opinions and call those facts, like most posts on the Forum!

Oh dear oh dear, people do need to inform themselves better, so that my posts do not shock so much.

Best wishes from George

George, you seem a fine fellow but to suggest that whatever you espouse is indisputable fact whilst anything to the contrary is "opinion" seems likely to get up peoples' noses.

BTW I have not as yet settled on my own view/opinion so have no particular axe to grind.

I think people prefer not to be confronted with facts! It is unfortunate that the truth does have a habit to being offensive, though none the less important to state for all that.

There are people who would ignore all sorts and and parts of history to suits their ideas!

The facts about the USA I have pointed out are not going to cease to be facts however uncomfortable they may make us feel on either side of the Atlantic.

ATB from George

Facts yes, complete and utter bollocks, no. 

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

Well well.

I point out a few undisputed facts and that is called mud-slinging. I suppose that people would prefer me to express opinions and call those facts, like most posts on the Forum!

Oh dear oh dear, people do need to inform themselves better, so that my posts do not shock so much.

Best wishes from George

George, my comments weren't specifically directed at your good self.

Dear Don,

I did not really think they were, but thanks for clarifying.

Best wishes from George

My daughter is on Erasmus year in Germany and on Skype tonight we talked about her UK student colleagues views on the referendum. 

Interestingly she said the views of some seemed to think the British empire had never disappated and somehow Britain was still a world power. Now in the centenary of the last successful push for Irish sovereignty, we will be quite sensitive to these sentiments, but I would much prefer Britain inside the EU working to reform it, than outside and powerless. 

I'm reminded of Denis Healy's comment that there was a huge change in politics in the UK once the politicians who had fought in WW2 had left the stage. I'm reminded of the Yeat's poem

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

The UK turning isolationist is not what 2016 needs.

Go visit Verdun and see why an imperfect Union is preferable to rampant nationalism.

Please don't leave the stage and become a nation of shopkeepers.

SJB