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feronia

Time Out
Jul 19, 2006
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The songs are antiquated and the words no longer have the same meaning. For example take Yankee Doodle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_doodle The earliest lyrics are as such:

Yankee Doodle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Yankee Doodle" is a well-known American song, often sung patriotically today (although originally satirical). It is the state anthem of Connecticut.
The first verse and refrain, as often sung today, run thus:

Yankee Doodle went to town, A-Riding on a pony;
He stuck a feather in his hat, And called it macaroni. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaroni_(fashion)
Yankee Doodle, keep it up, Yankee Doodle dandy;
Mind the music and the step, And with the girls be handy!

The tune has become synonymous with the United States. The Voice of America begins and ends all broadcasts with the interval signal of "Yankee Doodle".

//


History and lyrics

The song's origins were in a pre-Revolutionary War song originally sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled, unorganized colonial "Yankees" with whom they served in the French and Indian War. At the time, the most common meaning of the word doodle had the meaning of "simpleton" or "fool". It is believed that the tune comes from the nursery rhyme Lucy Locket. One version of the Yankee Doodle lyrics is attributed to Doctor Richard Shuckburgh, a British Army surgeon.
The Boston Journal of the Times wrote about a British band declaring "that Yankee Doodle song was the Capital Piece of their band music."


The earliest known version of the lyrics comes from 1775:
Brother Ephraim sold his Cow And bought him a Commission; And then he went to Canada To fight for the Nation; But when Ephraim he came home He proved an arrant Coward, He wouldn't fight the Frenchmen there For fear of being devour'd. (Note that the sheet music which accompanies these lyrics reads, "The Words to be Sung through the Nose, & in the West Country drawl & dialect.")
The Ephraim referenced here was Ephraim Williams, a popularly known Colonel in the Massachusetts militia who was killed in the Battle of Lake George. He left his land and property to the founding of a school in Western Massachusetts, now known as Williams College.
During the Revolutionary War, the Americans embraced the song and made it their own, turning it back on those who had used it to mock them. A newspaper account after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, a Boston newspaper reported, "Upon their return to Boston [pursued by the Minutemen], one [Briton] asked his brother officer how he liked the tune now,-- 'Damn them,' returned he, 'they made us dance it till we were tired.' -- Since which Yankee Doodle sounds less sweet to their ears."
The British responded with another set of lyrics following the Battle of Bunker Hill:

The seventeen of June, at Break of Day,
The Rebels they supriz'd us,
With their strong Works,
which they'd thrown up,
To burn the Town and drive us.


It's all about perspective.
 

Hotshot

Electoral Member
May 31, 2006
330
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Hotshot - which part do you agree with?

The bigger dick

or

The British Empire's superiority, of course we have to include the Royals and the extreme poverty not to mention abject slavery was acceptable.....ahem.....

They still believe in that old saw primogeniture.... which is a crock after what I've seen emerge from the loins of Victoria Regina.

"Blackleaf spewed: It's a pity you Yanks can't do the same every 4th July.

And he continued: What about the Indians? I think they successfully revolted against us.
And of course I have a superiority complex. If you Americans ever conquer a quarter of the world's landmass - including what is now the world's superpower and also a country of one billion people - and a third of its people then we'll allow you to have a superiority complex, too.
The current American superpower is puny compared to what Britain was at the height of its powers."

Thats what I grudgingly agree with.

I don't care to know about the size of their dicks.
 

MattUK

Electoral Member
Aug 11, 2006
119
0
16
UK
China are the most powerful country in the world. America just like to think they are.

Even Bush would not dare to cross the Chinese.
 

Daz_Hockey

Council Member
Nov 21, 2005
1,927
7
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China are the most powerful country in the world. America just like to think they are.

Even Bush would not dare to cross the Chinese.

That's very true actually, China is a HUGE beast in itself, if you look through history, this Anglo-dominance for what?, 3 hundred years has been a mere blip on what is a actually a Chinese megapower world, order will be restored shortly though.

The sleeping dragon will arise once more.
 

MattUK

Electoral Member
Aug 11, 2006
119
0
16
UK
"The sleeping dragon will arise once more."

It never went to sleep! About 2 years ago, an Ameriacn fighter jet was causght flying in Chinese airspace. So they shot it down. Captured the pilots. Called the US and told Mr Bush that they had 2 of their pilots and one of their planes. Mr Bush did nothing.

The Chinese continued for about 2 weeks to question the pilots about the plane, and took the remains of the plane to pieces and made the plans that they needed to make their own.

After they had done this, as promised, they put the pilots back on a plane totally unharmed and well fed back to the US, and called Mr Bush and told him that the remains of his plane were available for collection whenever they wanted to pick it up.

To this day, Bush has not had the guts to retaliate, or to collect the pieces of his plane.

Thats power.
 

Curiosity

Senate Member
Jul 30, 2005
7,326
138
63
California
MattUK

Where is your link to this anecdotal post?

If you are making accusations you might want to provide substantive information other than what you "heard".
 

MattUK

Electoral Member
Aug 11, 2006
119
0
16
UK
I told a story, I was not intending it as an accusation. The source of which I am more than happy to believe as its a relative of mine that knew the navigator on board. Close to the horses mouth as I am going to get - but as you say - still something I "heard".

But, in all honesty, do you really think that Bush would admit to this? He would have to be more stupid that we give him credit for.
 

Daz_Hockey

Council Member
Nov 21, 2005
1,927
7
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It's not an accusation actually, it's fact.

Britain went to war with China at the very PEAK of it's power, managed to take a couple of islands from some drugged up warlords, nothing more. If the US were to dare cross China, they'd know what they'd get.

Why do you think MacArthur was recalled SOOO quickly, the idiot wanted to take on China as well, which Truman knew VERY well was an idiot thing to do. No, China, if they wanted to be, would be the most powerful country in the world.

That is a FACT, not an Accusation.
 

Curiosity

Senate Member
Jul 30, 2005
7,326
138
63
California
MattUK

Perhaps your relative wrote the story here? My I hope the Chinese are not going to start shooting down commercial airlines flights to Hong Kong by Air Canada.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/apr2001/spy-a03.shtml

Spy plane standoff heightens US-China tensions

By Patrick Martin
3 April 2001


The collision of a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet in the South China Sea has exacerbated political and military tensions between the two countries. The incident, while apparently accidental, comes in the context of US diplomatic provocations and on the eve of a decision by the Bush administration on whether to sell advanced US anti-missile and air defense systems to Taiwan.
The US EP3-C turboprop, a plane about the size of a Boeing 737 jetliner, crossed paths with two Chinese air defense jets while it was engaged in electronic spying southeast of the island of Hainan, China's southernmost province. The EP3 was monitoring Chinese military communications, while the two jets were monitoring it, in an exercise in mutual surveillance that was a staple of the Cold War and still continues between the United States and China.
There is no way to determine independently what actually took place in the collision. Chinese officials say that the EP3 suddenly veered to its left and struck one of the two F-8 jets, the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet MiG-21. US officials claim the collision was the fault of the Chinese, citing the greater speed and maneuverability of the F-8s compared to the slow and heavy EP3, with its load of sophisticated electronic gear and crew of 24.
The F-8 plunged swiftly into the sea, with the pilot presumably killed. The EP3 sustained damage, forcing it to make an emergency landing on Hainan, where the crew and the plane have been detained. Press reports indicate that none of the US crewmen was injured either in the collision or the landing.
The initial reaction of the Pentagon and the Bush administration was strident and aggressive, with President Bush demanding that US officials be allowed to meet with the crew of the captured spy plane and the military brass demanding that the plane be considered US territory, that the Chinese authorities refrain from boarding it and that they extend diplomatic immunity to the crew.
The likely death of the Chinese pilot was treated callously, with only a perfunctory statement that US ships and planes would be available to participate in the search for his remains. Meanwhile, in a saber-rattling move, the US Navy diverted three destroyers that were passing through the region en route to the US Pacific coast from the Persian Gulf, and ordered them to the waters off Hainan.
Subsequent statements toned down the harsh rhetoric, particularly after Beijing announced that US officials would be allowed to see the crewmen some time on April 3. State Department and Pentagon spokesmen both admitted that the collision was unintentional on the part of the Chinese.
In this incident the US has once again assumed its standard posture of the aggrieved party, even as it arrogantly asserts its “right” to deploy military and intelligence forces around the world, intruding into air space and waters claimed by targeted nations. In an unusually frank article published April 2 in the web edition of Time magazine, entitled “Is It Really Any Wonder that the Chinese are Sore Over Spy Plane?”, writer Tony Karon presented a picture of how the incident would look to the US if the roles were reversed:
“Imagine a Chinese plane flying a surveillance mission off the Florida coast colliding with a Navy F-16 sent on an aggressive monitoring mission. The Navy fighter goes down and the pilot is lost; the Chinese plane is forced to land on US soil. The incident occurs at a moment when China is about to supply a package of sophisticated weapons to Cuba (possibly including the very same model spy plane now in US hands); is planning to deploy a missile shield that would neutralize the US nuclear arsenal; and has signaled that curbing US regional ambitions it to become the organizing principle of its military doctrine. Imagine further that the incident comes two years after Chinese bombs had destroyed (albeit inadvertently) a US embassy in Europe... It's unlikely Americans would feel in a particularly forgiving mood, either.”
The region off Hainan and the mainland provinces of Guangdong and Fukien have long been a potential flashpoint. US spy planes regularly fly up and down the Chinese coast from Air Force bases in Okinawa, patrolling the Taiwan Strait and the northern part of the South China Sea, which contains a number of small islands whose sovereignty is disputed between China, the Philippines and Vietnam.
According to US press reports citing Pentagon officials, naval intelligence operations in the western Pacific were retargeted in 1992, with China supplanting the former Soviet Union as the top priority. The EP3 and similar spy planes collect data for US Navy aircraft battle groups. Hainan is a particular focus, since it is covered with military bases due to its strategic location at China's southernmost point.
There is an eerie resemblance between the military situation today around Hainan and that prevailing at the Soviet offshore island of Sakhalin in 1983, at the time of the KAL 007 incident. The Korean passenger jet was shot down by Soviet air defense fighters after it deliberately flew over Sakhalin, the site of numerous Soviet military bases, as part of an operation coordinated with US intelligence agencies. A US spy plane similar to the EP3 was flying on a parallel course, shadowing the KAL flight, and observing the responses of Soviet radar installations and air bases.
US demands for diplomatic immunity for the crew of the EP3 contrast sharply with the American government's treatment of those it claims to have caught engaging in espionage. Just last month the Bush administration ordered the expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats and trade officials, an extraordinarily disproportionate retaliation for an alleged Russian intelligence coup in the case of Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterspy arrested for working for the KGB and its successors.
As a matter of international law, the US claim is more than a little dubious, since diplomatic immunity does not apply automatically to all employees and agents of a foreign government. This is particularly the case when the agents, as in this case, did not enter China with the permission of the Chinese government.
Perhaps the most arrogant comment came from Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican and former Navy Secretary who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “This is a tragic military accident that could have been avoided if Chinese pilots had respected the laws of international air space,” Warner said. “China, as an emerging military power, appears in the eyes of military persons the world over very unprofessional, unless it comes forward promptly with an accurate explanation of the incident and returns our aircraft and crew.”
The insinuation that the collision was the result of incompetence on the part of the Chinese pilots rings false after recent well-publicized disasters involving US military personnel and innocent civilians around the world: the killing of 20 Italian and German vacationers when a US jet cut the wires of a ski lift in the Alps; the ramming and sinking of a Japanese research vessel by the US submarine Greenville off Pearl Harbor only two months ago; the plane and helicopter crashes that kill US servicemen and women virtually every month.
The Hainan incident comes as the byproduct of an increasingly reckless and aggressive American policy on the whole periphery of China. Last month the Bush administration repudiated the joint US-South Korean policy of rapprochement with the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il, a policy that had relied on Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang. Bush's commitment to the establishment of a national missile defense system, while overtly targeting North Korea, is widely viewed as being directed against China as well, and there have been suggestions that Taiwan would be included under a US missile defense shield once it was deployed.
To this must be added unceasing US pressure over trade and human rights issues and provocations such as the charges, voiced as Bush was moving into the White House, that China was aiding Baghdad in developing Iraqi anti-aircraft defenses. The new Republican president has installed a whole group of senior advisers linked to a pro-Taiwan, anti-Beijing policy. Four top national security officials signed a statement in 1999 condemning the Clinton administration's policy as being too soft on China: Richard Armitage, the nominee for deputy secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary-designate, Vice-President Richard Cheney's chief-of-staff and national security adviser, Lewis Libby, and the nominee for chief strategic arms negotiator, John Bolton.
While the incident near Hainan may be accidental, the heightened conflict that produced it is not. The provocative US policy was examined, in worried tones, in the March 15 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, a business journal that can hardly be accused of a bias towards Beijing.
Under the headline, “Dangerous Brinkmanship,” the magazine warned that the Bush administration was risking a major crisis with China. “Bush's rhetoric has been hawkish, not conciliatory; his administration's policy towards China has been more reactive than tactical. As contentious decisions ranging from military support for Taiwan to missile defence to human rights force their way onto the new president's agenda, Bush could well precipitate a crisis in relations with China even before he has had time to appoint a full contingent of advisers or spell out his goals toward Beijing.”
A key decision comes this month, with Bush to announce whether he will approve a proposed sale of four high-tech destroyers equipped with Aegis radar and Patriot anti-missile systems to Taiwan. Since US shipyards are not scheduled to deliver these ships until 2006, such an announcement would serve no immediate military purpose. Its aim would be to humiliate China and appease the extreme-right elements in the Republican Party that still regard Beijing as a “communist” regime, despite the economic transformation of the past two decades and the country's integration into the capitalist world market.
After the US missile attack on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999—aimed at punishing Beijing for its support to Yugoslavia against the US-led air war—Chinese officials announced a military buildup to upgrade Chinese forces for the kind of electronic and computerized warfare that prevailed in the Persian Gulf and Balkans wars.
A Chinese defense white paper released last October presented the country's military position in much gloomier terms than previously, and last month Beijing announced a 17 percent boost in military spending to counter the perceived US threat. As it is, however, Taiwan's military spending in the 1990s has increased far more rapidly than China's, and the island has become one of the most lucrative markets for the US war industry.
Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, at a March 6 press conference, warned Washington against approving advanced new weaponry for the island when the sales come up for review in April. “The US should recognize the serious dangers involved” in the arms-sales question, he said sternly. “It should rein in its wild horse from the edge of the precipice.”
Far from “reining in,” however, the Bush administration's policy towards China seems driven by the desire to provoke a conflict of potentially disastrous dimensions. It is an open secret that Pentagon military planners have projected China as the most likely antagonist in a major US war in the opening decades of the 21st century.


[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
 

MattUK

Electoral Member
Aug 11, 2006
119
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UK
So that shows that the Americans demanded their plane back, but did not get it. They threatened military force, but never had the guts to press the "fire" button. They parked a couple of ships off the coast as a threat that never did anything. The claimed that they had a right to fly in China's airspace, though the Chinese can't fly spy-planes in American air-space and could not defend why they had this "right".

They were generally arrogant, and forceful, but when it came to the crunch, they issued the letter of two sorries;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_the_two_sorries "The Letter of the two sorries was the letter delivered by the United States Ambassador Joseph Prueher to Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan of the People's Republic of China to defuse the Hainan Island incident in April 2001. Upon the collision between the U.S. surveillance aircraft and the Chinese fighter aircraft, the U.S. plane made an emergency landing on Chinese territory, while the Chinese fighter pilot and his plane were lost. The delivery of the letter led to the release of the U.S. crew from Chinese custody, as well as the return of the disassembled plane."
 

MattUK

Electoral Member
Aug 11, 2006
119
0
16
UK
So, all that shows is that China had an American plane, and America demanded it back. China said no. So America got aggressive, moved a couple of boats to the area, threatened military action, then pluued back.

On top of that, they then took the ultimate step backwards that showed complete unwilling to engage with the chinese in military action - they issued the "letter of two Sorries";

The Letter of the two sorries was the letter delivered by the United States Ambassador Joseph Prueher to Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan of the People's Republic of China to defuse the Hainan Island incident in April 2001. Upon the collision between the U.S. surveillance aircraft and the Chinese fighter aircraft, the U.S. plane made an emergency landing on Chinese territory, while the Chinese fighter pilot and his plane were lost. The delivery of the letter led to the release of the U.S. crew from Chinese custody, as well as the return of the disassembled plane.
 

MattUK

Electoral Member
Aug 11, 2006
119
0
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UK
So, the Chinese had an American plane, which the americans demanded back. China said no. They threatend military action. China didnt budge. They were told not to touch the place as it was to be considered US property. China dissasembled it. They moved three warships into the area. China still did not budge.

From that article, all I can see is the AMericans getting arrogant and stomping their feet. They did not have the guts to fire on the Chinese, and they certainly were not going ot engage in full military action.

In fact, they were so unwilling to do so that they issued the "Letter of Two Sorries";

The Letter of the two sorries was the letter delivered by the United States Ambassador Joseph Prueher to Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan of the People's Republic of China to defuse the Hainan Island incident in April 2001. Upon the collision between the U.S. surveillance aircraft and the Chinese fighter aircraft, the U.S. plane made an emergency landing on Chinese territory, while the Chinese fighter pilot and his plane were lost. The delivery of the letter led to the release of the U.S. crew from Chinese custody, as well as the return of the disassembled plane.
 

thomaska

Council Member
May 24, 2006
1,509
37
48
Great Satan
What about the Indians? I think they successfully revolted against us.

And of course I have a superiority complex. If you Americans ever conquer a quarter of the world's landmass - including what is now the world's superpower and also a country of one billion people - and a third of its people then we'll allow you to have a superiority complex, too.

The current American superpower is puny compared to what Britain was at the height of its powers.

Hmmph..so let me see..

We have the ability to do what you suggest are the requirements for a superiority comlex but choose not to do so.

You had the ability and exercised it. So who has the moral high ground I wonder.

Oh, and last time I checked, all 255 million of us arent packed up each others ass on a tiny island...

So how did that world conquest stuff work out for ya?
 

Daz_Hockey

Council Member
Nov 21, 2005
1,927
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Hmmph..so let me see..

We have the ability to do what you suggest are the requirements for a superiority comlex but choose not to do so.

You had the ability and exercised it. So who has the moral high ground I wonder.

Oh, and last time I checked, all 255 million of us arent packed up each others ass on a tiny island...

So how did that world conquest stuff work out for ya?


You are speaking English are you not?. Never heard the term "standing on the shoulders of giants?"

Basically, if it were not for the military might of the British Empire, paradoxically, there would be no USA. There would be no Atom Bomb...or did you not know it was built by mostly British-based German jewish Scientists?.

The people left in the UK are a mere tiny amount of the british people in the old British Empire. Did you not know this?, how was this possible?. Do not quote moral superiority arguements because it's a misanoma.

Who was the country who "forced" japan to open up to the world against their will?, I could go on for day, but don't try to prove the USA is anything of a "morally superior" superpower to that of the British Empire. Because it aint.