The Empire Strikes Back!

This thread is about the book,The Evil Empire.101 Ways That England Ruined The World. by Steven A.Grasse.

He wrote it because he's sick of Americans being blamed for everything.But that is what happens when you are in charge;its all your fault!
Not true of course,but that is what you have to put up with if you wanna rule the world.

I should point out that i agree with a lot of what he writes on subjects such as,Cricket,Shakespear,Princess Diana,Taxes,Factories,the House of Lords, fox hunting,snobbery and all that killing and violence!

(all titles are from the book.)


They Are Secretly Pagan.

Grasse states,

Deep in the woods of Brittany and Wales,long after the Middle East was basking in the glow of sane monotheism,Druid priests led early Britons in pagan ceremony.

I should point out that Brittany is in France.
The Druids existed before Rome,when Caeser wiped most of them out in the 1st century BCE.At that time in the Middle East only the Hebrews believed in one God,everyone else was "pagan."


They Tried To Drag Christ To London.
This page is about the poem Jerusalem by William Blake.He wrote it as a protest to the British Empire,it was just the idiot Toffs who thought it was about the glory of the empire and made it our unofficial national anthem.Grasse also says,

Before soccer games fans sing the song Jerusalem.

No we don't.We sing God Save The Queen and Rule Britannia!


They Adopted A Roman As Their Saint.
This page is about St George and all of it is wrong!
George was from Anatolia in Turkey,not Palestine.The story of the Dragon was not invented by us,but was brought back from the East during the Crusades.The earliest known depiction is from 8th century Cappodocia.The earliest narrative is an 11th century Georgian text.He was a martyr,1 of the 14 Holy Helpers and he is also the patron saint of about 12 countries not just England.


They Conceal Their Caveman Past With False Histories.
(dark ages)

At this time,while British civilization existed only in caves and fiction,the Aztecs were doing astronomy and calculus and the Chinese were building a wall so big you can see it from the moon

Aztec civilization:1200's to 1500's.Britain was involved in countless wars.We killed William Wallace,there was a peasants revolt,there was the Black Death,we took part in the Crusades,and then there was the Renaissance.(for starters.)


They Make Time For Tea.
On this page Grasse winges about our breaks at work.
The tea brake came about because people were being made to work up to 18 hours a day 7 days a week (had the 8th day off) and this was in noisy and hot factories,at the shipyards and down the mines.In this day and age that type of work regime is against a person's civil rights.It has nothing to do with our need/urge to drink tea!!


They Hooked The Chinese On Opium.
Chinese records date that the first time opium was used as a recreational drug dates back to the early 15th century,and it quickly became popular.We got involved with China much later,and it was India we enslaved with our opium trade (more than we did with China) because Bengal opium was considered much superior.


They Created The 1st Very Stupid & Very Violent Puppet Show For Children.
He means Punch and Judy.
This show has it's roots in 15th century Italy.The first recorded performance in Britain took place in 1662,the 17th century.It was also popular in 6 other European countries.


They Couldn't Stand Up To Napoleon.
Hmm,strange title when he admits that we did.But he says that we only won because Napoleon had lost half a million troops trying to invade Russia.
War with Russia took place in 1812,about 120,000 men died,a 3rd of them Russian.In 1814 he was exiled for the 1st time.He escaped in 1815 and raised an army of 140,000 regular soldiers and about 200,000 volunteers,so lack of men can not be used as an excuse!


They Invented Child Labor.
In the 1700's apparantly.It seems children were not made to work before then.How laughable.


They Invented Slums.
Also laughable.Slums have existed as long as cities have!


They Invented The Machine Gun.
Did we?
First of all,he names the incorrect gun,the Maxim,which came after Gatlin.
Richard Gatlin,born 1818 in North Carolina .Invented the Gatlin Gun in 1861.
Hiram Maxim,born 1840 in Maine.Invented the Maxim Gun in 1881.He then sold it to us Brits.


They Gunned Down 10's of 1000's Of Defenseless Africans.
No argument about that!
But there is against this,a battle in 1884 against the Ottoman tribe where we first used the Maxim gun.
The Ottomans are Turkish,heard of the Ottoman Empire? The ppl we fought were the Ndebele nation and the war (1st Matabele war) took place between 1893-1894.The Ndebele were not

armed with nothing more than spears and a few old muskets.

There was 80,000 spearmen and 20,000 riflemen,(armed with nine pound Martini-Henrys which were modern arms at that time) but these were not effective due to lack of training.


They Invented Concentration Camps.
1st recorded camp was in Cuba 1895 and this was set up by the Spaniard Valeriano Weyler y Nicolan.Britain followed his example a year later in South Africa.


They Perfected The Art Of Carpet Bombing.
Carpet bombing was 1st used by the Nazi's in Spain.It was then used extensivley by them,the Brits,the Japanese and the Americans so i'm not sure how he can pin point us as being the ones who perfected it!



You Could Feed Every Starving African Kid With The Money They Spend On Their Palaces.
There are about 50 Royal residences in the United Kingdom,but half of them are not even owned by the Royal Family and several are now museums.It should also be noted that the Queen doesn't even make it to the list of the top 100 billionaires.(of which 30 are American) What Grasse says about the Queen could also be said about the British P.M and many other heads of sate.


They Came Up With Harry Potter,Boy Occultist.
I wonder how many children in America celebrate Halloween,a pagan festival.


They Invented College.(university)
The first University's in Europe and the Near East date back to the 9th century,the first British university didn't exist until the 13th century.


They ave Us The 1st Modern Serial Killer.
He says it's Jack the Ripper (1888).But the oldest known S.K.(that i could find) is Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers - French poisoner;executed in 1676.

























[edit on 31-10-2007 by jakyll]

I should also add this page from the book,

They Encouraged And Subsidized The Slave Trade.

It was the British taskmasters who 1st taught southern planters how to weild the whip,and British captains whose Liverpool and Birmingham ships brought their scandalous cargoes up for auction at Charleston and Richmond.

The African slave trade existed before the "discovery" of the new world.The rich Africans would sell their people to Europeans.

The Atlantic slave trade started with the Spanish and Portugese Empires,but flourished greatly under the British.An estimated 95% of the slaves wen to the Caribbean and Latin America,not North America.The Spanish were the first to

...devise the notoriously cruel "middle passage"...

Birmingham is a land locked city.

I heard about this book a while ago. I haven't read it, but I was led to believe it was rather tongue in cheek. It certainly arrived on the scene in a novel manner [bad pun, unintended...]

As a case study, "Empire" owes much to Grasse's position as CEO of Gyro, an interesting and aggressive Philadelphia agency that counts itself among those trying to massacre old marketing mores and has stuff like its own clothing line, sneakers, rum and full length movies to show for its original approach.

Source.

About the Author
Steven A. Grasse is the CEO of Gyro Worldwide, a multimillion-dollar ad agency. He has designed award-winning campaigns for clients such as Coca-Cola, MTV, and Puma. This is his first book. Penny Rimbaud is a drummer, writer, poet, and cofounder of the anarchist punk band Crass.

Source.

A case of more hype than substance? Probably...

Anyhow, it's no surprise that the next two reviewers had a serious sense of humour failure when confronted with it:

In trying to teach American-bashing Brits a lesson, Grasse may well have given them more fodder.

Source.

Our nation was fortunate enough to achieve power in an era when power was worth having. We have our national shames and regrets, of course, but the record is overwhelmingly one of success, worthy of pride.

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 countrymen, hankers in vain for some fragment of imperial glory. They find this tragically elusive, and it hurts.

Source.

Steven A Grasse is also the spokesman of the International Coalition for British Reparations. Can he really be serious?

There's a very peculiar full-page ad in this week's Philadelphia City Paper for a group called the International Coalition for British Reparations (and its web site, BritishReparations.com), which is demanding 31 trillion pounds in reparations for -- well, for literally billions of people worldwide, and almost everyone in the United States...

...Here is what I found interesting: Under the header of "Who is behind the International Coalition for British Reparations (ICBR)?" it says:
The ICBR was founded by Steve A. Grasse in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mr. Grasse is a lay historian and founder of a successful multinational marketing company
Allow me to translate:

"Lay historian": Someone who doesn't know # about History but has read a few books and watched a few TV programs and fancies himself an "historian."

"founder of a successful multinational marketing company" = Con artist.

Source.

Seriously though, who cares what a "lay historian" with a background in marketing and advertising thinks? Indeed, does he really feel this way? It certinly appears to me to be a rather cheap exercise in stirring hype and generating cash, and certainly not a work to be taken at all seriously.

[edit on 1/11/07 by Implosion]

Yeah,there's definatly a lot of tongue and cheek in the book,made me laugh.But like i said,my pet hate is people who write history but get the facts wrong.

I read some reviews of the book and they were hilarious,full of Snobbish outrage! And i noticed they never talked about the valid points the book raised,like the parts about our colonial past.It was all the daft stuff he brought up,like Oasis.For a country that spawned the Spice Girls i think its unfair to pick on the Gallagher brothers

And not one review i read pointed out the historical mistakes.I guess they couldn't get past their outrage that someone,and American to boot,would dare point out the misdeeds and mistakes of the glorious British Empire!!
Thats Toffs for ya,bunch've a***holes!


His British Reparations site is also full of mistakes,some i've pointed out in my thread.What i find terrible is that people believe those mistakes.He also seems to think that every English person led the high life which just isn't true;he blames all for the behaviour of the few;the Upper Classes!! He also seems to forget that the Spanish Empire ruled a huge chunk of the world before and during our Empire,and that France had a strong foot hold in America.


Like i said,if your gonna slag someone off,get your facts straight!
There's enough ammunition in Britain's dark past that there can be no possible excuse for getting things wrong!!


p.s.he also thinks all our inventions are bad.
I guess that includes the telephone,computers,the web,the suffregette movement,internal combustion engine,jet engine(co inventor)penicillin,radar,
sowing machine,steam engine,gas lighting,railways,canals,vacuum cleaner,football,iron bridges,steel ships,trains....and that just a few!
Just goes to show,with the bad there is always good.

Maybe instead of pointing fingers at the British Empire and crying like a baby,Grasse should show the world the good things America has done!!

[edit on 1-11-2007 by jakyll]