Now that's just cheeky...
 

Y'know....we like to play like theres a 'special relationship' between America and Britain. And culturally, that may be the case. But politically? Politically I think we may be using a slightly different meaning of special.

From the BBC news website:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8098341.stm



Seriously? That's just taking the Right Royal. *laughs* @ the Merkins: I really think we may be your ....special friend :P



[eta]
Like I said. Special. lol

You know, Ameriky, your other butt-boy is going to get all jealous and sulky if you keep running around with those pommie gits.

It was dead easy for the British gummint to criticize the place with the harshest possible diplomatic language, back in 2006.

Being friends doesn't mean never criticising. We've always criticised each other. Sometimes in the strongest terms.

This wasn't criticism. This was a denial of sovereignty. That it was done in order to 'protect' us from China's potential strong arm tactics, is what makes the othe use of the word 'special' more valid.

Now that's just cheeky...
 

We're confident that you're special enough to turn the other cheek.

DanaC: Toad, you're immensely fat, do you know that? It's disgusting. Most sensible people would have addressed that.
UT: I know. I have a problem. Please help me, I know your son has a big freezer, can he just take all the food out of my freezer?
DanaC: What? Hell no, then *he* might get fat!

So what UT is saying is, he thinks the Guantanamo detainees should be put into a garbage disposal.

Except a more accurate analogy might run with something like this:

UT: "Yeah...so I know your mom told you not to put anything in that freezer without her express permission, but here, kid, take the lot and fill the freezer up and I won't tell your mom."

DanaC: "So...wtf, UT? You goin behind my back and doing deals about shit and not even telling me?"

UT: "Well...yeah...but hey, I did to protect you."




Most of the British government's anger has been directed at Bermuda; who had no constitutional right to make deals of this nature. This was not a normal and ordinary day-to-day matter of immigration. This was a matter of delicate international relations. They have overstepped their mandated authority. Where the USA acted improperly, in my view, was in doing this with intentional secrecy. They deliberately did not inform Britain of a delicate matter involving one of her overseas territories, until the deal had been struck and the men put onto the plane. However you put it, it is a serious slap in the face. It is an outright denial of British sovereignty and the fact it was done 'to protect' us does not change that fact.

Imperialism: Can't live with it. Can't live without it!

lol. yes.

There is of course the other question to answer: what the hell right have we to maintain sovereignty over bermuda? :P

Well they might prefer it that way there. We still have the queen of england as our sovereign, but the actual meaning bears little resemblance to that which it should. I doubt we'll remain part of the commonwealth for too many more generations though, and I'll bet we'll do it without going to war. ;)

Slightly different for Bermuda. They have limited executive powers. Australia justhas Lizzie as their nominal sovereign. The British Government actually has executive power over Bermuda, and some matters are mandated to be dealt with locally.

Yeah, I know there's a difference, but i'm sure if Bermuda wanted out there'd be a peaceful way to sort it out, hence my suggestion that they probably like things the way they are.

Oh I daresay yo're right. Heck look at how hard the Falklanders have fought to stay British.

Dana, it's because the right has people all up in a stir about releasing them HERE. And now democrats are also being stupid. Which I find hysterical. WE don't want to take any of them, but we expect others to. We don't even want to try them here and put them in prison here, because, you know, we don't have any prisons capable of holding them. It's absurd. But they have to go somewhere. And there are people here (mostly on the right) who are trying to block the closing of Guantanamo. So he is trying to get the ones out who have been cleared of any crimes.

I never ceases to amaze me, how we just expect others to clean up our mess.

Did you see the pictures of the releasees? They looked so happy, swimming and stuff. :)

Completely UNTRUE! Cite or retract. Have you read about all the conversations and negotiations that went on since 2004 about trying to secure the release of any of these people?

C'mon - you gotta stop spewing this crap. opinion is one thing, but to just make false claims without cites is and purport them as facts makes you no better than ...:mad2:

I watched the hearings the other day where they were trying to do it. They didn't get enough votes. If you want to see, go to CSPAN.

Oh Sugar, I'm happy that those men have been taken in by Bermuda. I really am. I'd have been all in favour of that *smiles* I'd have been in favour of them coming here if necessary. Like I say...it's the slap in the face of British sovereignty by America that's the cheeky bit :P

And please stop accusing me of posting stuff that isn't true. YOU are the one jumping the gun here. Just because you didn't hear about it doesn't mean it didn't happen classic.

Obama is doing quite a few things that I'm not happy with. I understand why he did it though, considering the insanity and irrationality he's dealing with here at home about detainees being released.

I don't understand why he did it. There is no reason that isn't profoundly insulting and/or patronising. It was deliberately kept secret from the British government until the very end. To suggest that this was to protect us from China's strongarm tactics is basically to suggest that we are not a nation on our own feet able to make decisions about our own sovereign territories.

It was kept secret from the government? How in the hell did he accomplish that?

yea, I would be deeply insulted as well. Just because he is being reamed here at home is no reason to treat our allies that way. I apologize. I was wrong to sympathize with his actions. :)

He needs to start pushing back hard against the assholes who refuse to cooperate with him on anything he is trying to do. Republican, the new party of NO. Funny how they never said no when it was their own party in power. That is one thing I really have against them. At least when they're in power democrats work with them on some things. They aren 't willing to give in on anything. Well, except for the 2 senators from Maine, and the one who switched parties and is now a democrat.

Thankyou. I am glad someone at least sees why that might be a problem lol.

It was not Obama's fault nor his responsibility to tell the Brits - That lied solely upon Bermuda. Bermuda, IN FACT, did notify the Brits, just not as soon as they would have liked. That was reported last week in an interview with Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown.

What Brown is doing, is facesaving...because he needs to...because this was a slap in the face. Brown is a Prime Minister embattled. He has lost the respect and regard of his own party let alone the opposition. He looks impotent. So...of course he is trying to make it look like he was in on it. And...frankly its easier to show displeasure at Bermuda than the States.

Britain was informed, after the negotiations and decision had been taken. Literally just before the men boarded the plane. It was a fait accomplis.

There is no way of looking at this that isnt insulting.

It was still Bermuda's responsibility, not the US's.

Of course. But it is still an insult that the US deliberately didnt inform the British government that they were negotiating with Bermuda. Deliberately...chose to not to involve the British Government in negotiations with one of her territories. That was thought out and decided. Not just not considered because they assumed bermuda would tell ... deliberately decided not to.

How can that be anything but insulting?

Because it wasn't a campaign promise by Obama? I dunno I got nothin' else.

lol

There is a certain ....etiquette which has been seriously breached here. Thats all I'm saying.

I agree Dana. I am very worried about some of the things he is doing. Not worried, but concerned.

I suspect Obama had less to do with this than the diplomatic corps.

So, Sugarpop -- Classicman can just whistle for that cite? Seems to me the burden of proof is on you and you alone. Step up.

I see it as less a thing of right or left than of practicality: an offshore prison camp for what are in effect if perhaps not under Geneva's conventions prisoners of war remains a better solution to the cage-the-baddies problem than any other idea floated.

The Dems are just too stupid. They publicly abandon the best idea and are now casting about for the second or third best idea. Morons. Nitwits who can't bring themselves to fight a war with people wholly dedicated to fighting a war with us.

Now you know why I don't vote Democrat. They are not merely unsmart, but doubleplus-unsmart.

You think that's insulting? Just wait till we make Bermuda a state. :p

I did cite. I said I saw it on CSPAN, during a hearing. It was actually during a legislative hearing. When they voted on that particular issue (trying to stop Obama from releasing ANY prisoners, and trying to keep Guantanamo open), it was an ammendment that republicans were trying to tack onto the last war supplemental bill.

And since when it is STUPID to follow the law? We are illegally keeping people in prison, not to mention all the torture that went on, there and other places.

I don't know why we just don't ship them to Hardin, Montana. The folks there want them, and knowing the craziness of many Montanans, if any of the "detainees" (:eyebrow:) tried to escape, they'd be dead in a New York minute.

I don't see a downside.

Cuba or Hardin, they'd still be illegally detained.

No need to worry. Obama promised to close Gitmo by Dec. He still has 5 months to do what he promised.

Not if they are charged and awaiting trial, or convicted of a crime.

:D:p;)

Did he say which December?

Illegally? No argument I've ever heard holds up.

POWs, darling. Nobody except North Vietnam tries charging POWs with crimes, and we all know this was evidence of how bad North Vietnam sucked. These people practiced war against us, and were captured. End of story, really. Nothing illegal about caging prisoners of war, and it doesn't need to be Congressionally declared to be a perfectly satisfactory war from the lawbook point of view.

Seriously, the notion of criminalizing "practicing foreign policy while Republican" blends stupidity with insanity, frosted with a large dose of totalitarian-sympathizing, which is the abiding characteristic of the moronic. The smart people want the Taliban and other Islamofascists extinct and sterile. And they don't think we'd ever compromise our national virtue getting 'em that way.

Except there's a good chance some of them weren't practising war against you. There's a good chance some of them were just ordinary blokes (and indeed at least one child) who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when war broke out.

And there's really nothing much to be done about that if you, or anyone, are going to have war at all. There is no hope of making warfare into anything but the blunt instrument it is, which at the end of the day works only by smashing. A very famous 19th-century American general named Sherman had some concise things to say about what war is.

So, in times of war if a civilian gets swept up and held as an enemy combatant for upwards of half a decade that's just tough shit and shouldn't worry us in anyway?

Yeah, it is tough. But I'll tell ya, the people doing the complaining about Guantànamo incessantly protest at America's doing anything that is likely to defeat fascism and our enemies. This is of course blatant totalitarian-sympathizing, and it is either stupid or evil or both.

The proper attitude towards anything less than a democracy is to extinguish it. These complainers do not have the proper anti-tyrannical attitude and thus are suspect of being closet totalitarians themselves.

Their view of it is tainted.

The moral choice is to break oppression by any means, and those people are not capable of choosing the moral way.

That is why I oppose them. They are bad and they are stupid, and I am neither.

If they are guilty of a crime, then they should be charged and tried. Otherwise they need to be let go.

And ftr, I want the Taliban and al qaeda extinct and/or sterile too. I want to do it the right way though, and not make even MORE enemies while doing it. After 911, we had most of the world behind us. We fucked that up by attacking Iraq, which btw, took our eyes OFF of the Taliban and al qaeda, and allowed them to become even more strong, and now they are a bigger threat than ever. All because of our own stupidity (well, our leaders anyway).

And how is that not just another form of oppression and totalitarianism? It is just another form of tyranny to run around the globe and occupy countries and force our views of government on them.

That's worthy of the Hall of Fame.

That's got nothing to do with the condition of being captured in a war and made a POW. It's a much more humane sort of thing to do than some old-time alternative practices, viz., "taken to the rear, and piked." The Left refuses to understand this very simple thing, which in turn suggests their minds are too vestigial to understand anything rightly. With such imbeciles I have nothing to do, and recommend the same to you. The Left is always so fucking hostile to the idea that Democracy might win out over Tyranny.

Oh, do you really? Why don't you sound very much like me then? And what is "the right way?" Might it not be the very strategy we are pursuing at present, and which the Democrats, after years of footdragging, now own and have a responsibility to do well at, for the sake of both America and all of mankind? (If we win, the world will prosper. Not so if they do, as you can tell from their manifestoes, which they've been very public with.) Study up on the right way to fight an insurgency. The darn things always take quite a while to dry up, as they require causing a systemic shift in public opinion in the affected sector away from the insurgents. I've never heard of something like that happening overnight.

"Even more enemies?" I'd advise not worrying about that, for the simple reason that it won't make any visible difference to us how much more annoyed our enemies get at us -- just for being us, all dynamic, successful, rich, inventive and generally just plain happier. We've got such a good thing going we can spread it around. They profess to think that'll kill off their culture. They don't yet know that cultures are a lot tougher than that. The only big cultural sea-change I expect is that tribal-only consciousness will fade and national consciousness will take its place, as it had to with us.

There is also the point that our enemies are not growing more numerous. The well informed, those enjoying greater global connectivity than our active foes do, aren't getting killing mad at America for getting involved cleaning up some witches' brews in a couple parts of the Muslim world... which were giving trouble to other parts of the Muslim world.

Are they indeed "even more strong?" Watching the fight, I don't see that. I do see we are keeping them having to fight for their lives week in and week out -- and losing often enough. The practitioners of antiglobalism and anti-Americanism aren't getting a lot of traction. Oh, they'll give trouble. Then we kill them. That's the way it is, and I don't see them undeserving of such a fate, do you?

No one in opposition to the Bush Administration's campaign against the fascistic antiglobalist abusers of women EVER came up with the scintilla of a strategy of how to win the GWOT better than Bush could. Not one single word of strategy or effort, nothing whatsoever to extend democracy into places that lacked it and suffered perennially. Clearly, these people have zero interest in democracy and don't want ever to have any. I oppose them, as any person of humanity would. They are wannabe tyrants, brainless wisdomless monsters. They are the Left.

We certainly didn't take our eyes off the Taliban, though they did manage to find a hidey hole and regroup some. Are they any nearer to taking Afghanistan back than they were? I don't see them managing that, either. And continuing to kill al-Q men doesn't sound like ignoring them either, does it?

There are people who would like you to believe what you wrote, sugarpop -- that America and globalism may be defeated, and poverty and oppression both preserved and increased. These people are of the Left, and they are the most racist, unenlightened bastards you ever saw under their surface appearance. I am not one of those people. The conservatives, like me, want the prosperity and the not-overweening government to be the global norm, and want it to be spread around.

Of course it is. It's an anti-leftist, anti-fascist point of view. The two are one, as thoughtful students of both can tell you. It's all about the breaking of tyranny, to which action you object, DanaC. Perhaps you are morally bankrupt after all?:rolleyes:

So I'm a racist now? lol. Because I am of the left I am a racist unenlightened bastard?

I assure you my parentage was never in question. And I am morally bankrupt. But only in your moral currency which is valueless to me anyway:P

Making liberty, in the face of anyone, regardless, who thinks people shouldn't have as much liberty as we do, is not an act of oppression. It is not an act of oppression to deny somebody the chance to do some oppressing himself.

People in whom "white liberal guilt" is absent can figure this out without being told. Only the mistakenly guiltridden, with their pro-fascist values, can mistake removing undemocracy and promoting genuine democracy for an oppression or tyranny.

White liberal guilt is a fascist-loving way to be, and it's horribly cowardly too. I do not love fascism/communism, and thus I have no guilt, nor any patience with those who do. You're in chains! Strike them off!

Our views of government are the human views of government. Most other modes are just aggrandized street-gang stuff -- exhibitions of what a highly motivated sociopath could achieve in the undemocratic Third World.

Why do you suppose it is our government that works, while so many others seem all about abusing somebody or are dysfunctional and failing? Are we Americans so uniquely suited to republican democracy that it cannot work anywhere else on the globe? I don't believe so, and for two examples I name Japan and Germany -- two very divergent cultural structures. Yet how are they now? Where's the idea this cannot be done again coming from? Again, it is from that bastion of American antidemocracy, the Left.

That's because you're not thinking in an enlightened way yet. Otherwise you wouldn't still be in the Socialist Party, and at your age, too. Moral currency is, I'm afraid, a universal. Remember that I was never in life a socialist, not at twenty, and not now -- and what the aphorism says.

The history of the Left in power is one of man's inhumanity to man, and we can tot up the millions of mighty questionable deaths that happened. Nothing "progressive" there, I assure you. Where, then, is the not-bastardliness?

The one thing I dislike about the Brits in general, and it is too bad, is their easy bigotry; it's more accepted there than here. They have no idea that showing it would raise my American hackles.

We Americans feel embarrassed to discover ourselves harboring prejudices about out-groups. We've done it before -- Catholics, Irish, blacks, Jews -- and we find at the end of the day there's no benefit in it. This enlightenment has not yet dawned on most of the British population -- and the yobbos who actually give physical expression to such racist impulses aren't being left in the dungeons of society's scorn for doing it.

Ok.

UG was on a bit of a rampage yesterday it would seem. lol

Maybe he shouldn't post when he's been drinking. :D

I think perhaps that's safer than him posting when he's been thinking.

If I wanted to be funny, I'd say I'd never actually seen that, so don't really know what you mean. ;)

UG really believes in what he posts. I can't get upset with him when I remember that he really can't help being who he is. If he wasn't so pompus, we wouldn't get such great food tips from him, and I don't think he really means to be so rude. He just doesn't realize how badly he comes off sometimes...or at least that's what I tell myself. It's far better than being upset by the silly things he says/assumptions he makes sometimes.

As of just now, I am finishing a first glass of California shiraz, with a serving of ground-turkey-sauced pasta. Got peas too. Maybe could have used more Italian seasoning.

That's how I am, sober, Ali. I slay dragons. The dragons fucking hate that, and insist on being undemocrats, which are naturally enemies of mankind.

Of course it would be so much better if they weren't undemocrats.

There aren't any dragons here.