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International Coalition for British Reparations: People of the World, it's Time to get Paid.

Letter To The ICBR: Re: Idiocy

03.07.2007

You, as enlightened people, of course realise the huge idiocy of what you are here advocating?

There are so many errors in what you are saying that I don't think there is enough space here to list them. I truly hope you are joking; otherwise, you are very, very misinformed people.

Your mistakes on your website range from the petty and annoying (of course it's not racist, the UK isn't a race!) to the confusing (are you blaming the UK, Britain, the British empire or England? All are very seperate and yet blamed together as one on your website! Please do look up the terms or make your mind up!) and the downright and fantastically crazy (yes, we helped invent machine guns - thus we forced the Soviets to use them on their own people?!? We had an industrial revolution...of course, had we not thought of this first it would never have happenned??).

Just a few of the things that made me laugh the most
"The deaths caused by all the major wars of the 19th and early 20th century could have been prevented, or at least lessened, if the British hadn't waited until their backs were up against the wall before getting into the action" - so sayeth the American, whose nation only joined in WW2 after they were attacked very late. A war that the British joined when their allies were attacked.

"Most of the worst tyrants in power through the end of the 20th century were put there by the British, or came to power by filling the power vacuum the British Empire left behind." - in the latter part of this psueo-point, you seem to suggest that by dismantling its empire the British caused problems. Now just hold on. This is the same empire you have just been blaming for, well, everything. You are suggesting perhaps the empire should have been dismantled without being dismantled. An amazing idea.

"Machine guns, slums, prisons, child labor, bad hygiene, the Black Plague, concentration camps, you name it. If it hurts people, the British probably came up with it." - we invented bad hygiene, an uninventable thing? Fantastic point. We created prisons? For shame! Who needs gaols - we should let the guilty roam free!

"Britain has long controlled our patterns of thought through the modern university, an English invention" - ah, education. Another plight we have brought on the world. For shame! At least you yourselves seem to have avoided the worst of it :)

I entirely understand that as a nation the US is embarassed of itself and how it is so widely hated. Hmm, maybe the USA is hard done by. Maybe they were right to steal the native Indian's land and violate every treaty they made. Perhaps their years of racism (especially in the form of slavery which was a bigger thing in America, was abolished much later and much more bloodily, leaving great racism to this day) were in someway justified. Perhaps the selfish actions in wars when so many lives could have been saved were acceptable. Perhaps the use of two nuclear bombs (at least one completely undefendable) was in someway necessary, et cetera. Please do not try and shift this blame and dislike, however unfair you view it to be, onto the UK. Maybe you should try and raise the profile of your own nation, as opposed to trying (without success) to damage that of the UK. If anything, you have made more people dislike America by this blatant and hilarious move to shift the unshiftable weight of blame.

One final thought: you mention the "500 years" for which the British owe you. Of course, modern America was to a great extent created by settlers from Britain - fewer than 500 years ago. Besides which, a huge number of Americans are descended from UK stock. So that means that American people are just as responsible for at least some of the debts :) Funny that!

I do so hope you're joking.

Yours with enormous pity,

Kevin Howes - on behalf of the sane everywhere

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