
London’s Laundry Business - iamben
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/londons-laundry-business.html
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exratione
"Any moralizing remnant of the British Empire is gone; it has turned back to
the pirate England of Sir Walter Raleigh."

Come on - the British Empire was exactly the same under the hood as the
Elizabethan Era, just wealthier and capable of far larger, lengthier, and more
sophisticated acts of piracy. Fig leaves for the actions of the state change,
but people are people in every age, and the goals of those with power ever
remain the same.

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keithpeter
[http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/27/fragile-
empire-...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/27/fragile-empire-
russia-putin-review)

Ben Judah seems interesting. I shall read more of his work.

Now, how do we _change_ things? I'd like the Labour party back myself. You
know, actual socialists with a vaguely radical agenda.

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PaulAJ
"It boils down to this: Britain is ready to betray the United States to
protect the City of London’s hold on dirty Russian money."

And when exactly did we sign up to be your vassals?

~~~
presidentender
American diplomacy assumes NATO lapdogs (or vassals, as it were) and so the
idea is probably that you signed a vassal contract when you went policing
Europe with us during the cold war.

As far as I'm concerned, any trust placed without consulting the other party
is just an assumption. You defy assumptions, you don't betray them. Why is
America's stance any more just than Russia's?

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iamwithnail
That article's way off. Our buses are really clean now.

But seriously, damned if i'll be lectured by an American institution on
anything to do with morals or normative ethics.

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beejay
Money, like politics makes for strange bedfellows

