http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-drugs29may29.story
About 180 years ago, the immense trade between China and the British was running into problems.
The huge British appetite for Chinese tea, porcelain etc. was not matched by the Chinese who had little need for British goods (the Industrial Revolution had not yet started so there was no ‘great’ entrepreneurial skills for some present day Asians to ‘fall heads over’).
As a result, the 'greatest empire' of the time found its silver and gold flowing one way, and decided to reverse that flow. They found it in opium, a British 'discovery' from Afghanistan and India after they whacked the Portugese and the Moghul Empire to create what they proudly called the ‘jewel of the British crown’ (just one sign that the immense returns from colonization was getting to their head).
At that time, this super-power of the time (for whose empire the sun never sets) found nothing wrong with selling opium, and sought to perpetuate that through the Opium Wars (their banning of its sale in Britain and ‘passionate appeals’ by certain British politicians claiming that ‘the war was unjust’ notwithstanding).
Even Adam Smith, the Scottish writer of The Wealth of Nations, supported the opium trade and the British for it 'expands free trade'. Perhaps this was the 'unseen hand' he had been talking about - what other better way is there to make money?
After the Opium Wars ended in mid-1800s, the Chinese were made (or rather whacked) to accept continued opium trade in the name of 'free trade', reparations of 50 million ounzes of silver, and concessions for Kowloon and the Hong Kong island which the British used as ‘safe haven’ for their opium supplies.
Before the wars, the Chinese had applied a ban on British trade because the latter refused to stop the opium trade. As a result, the British ‘exported tea with the help of the US’ (known commonly to some present day fools as ‘the most benevolent superpower in history’). During the wars, when the British armada was attacking various coastal towns, the Americans went along as a sort of ‘deputy sheriff’ (a role not unlike what Mahathir used to describe present-day Australia). One American naval commander was reported to have cried ‘blood is thicker than water’ in one of those attacks (blood thirsty frenzy aside, that is also more than a sign of Anglo-Saxon bravado).
Today, the Afghans doing the same represents ‘an enormous threat to world stability’, says the ‘nice’ Americans. Or perhaps the Americans are looking for a reason to whack those Afghans some more (see attached report).
At about the same time as the Opium Wars, a bunch of Chinamen plotting to change a weak China by ‘learning from the west’ was drawing inspiration from some certain ‘commandments’. Claiming variously to be the ‘brother' of some godly fella, and speaking for some 'holy ghost’ et cetera, they were leading a revolution known as the Taiping Revolution.
Of course, these Chinamen were not the first, nor the last in the world to make such claims. A certain Mohammed, for instance, did something similar and his followers had since been competing with the other fella’s in a ‘my god’s such and such is better than to your god’s such and such’ fight to be 'most god-right' till today as exemplified by my favorite global-idiot, George Bush Jr and his nemesis, Osama.
But and probably ‘surprisingly’ to those that believe in the powers of those books, the British found this set of ‘enlightened’ Chinamen a nuisance, and dispatched its own ‘Ever Victorious Army’ (assisted again by who else, the Americans) to help the Qing government whack them. Apparently, the British preferred a backward China than an enlightened one (always easier to ‘screw’ a greater idiot, perhaps). This army was also recorded to have brought home to London ‘incalculable quantities of loot'. 30 million Chinamen perished in this revolution, a feat to be matched by the Japanese some 50 years later.
Although the British were 'really' peace-loving people that would have preferred others to submit to their nice colonial rule like what the Indians did (reason why India was such a 'jewel'), other means was brought to bear on those less willing to 'toe the line'.
'Learning' from the 'great' British and Americans, other ‘great powers’ realized (faster than many present day histo-ignoramuses) that the strategy of war and loot/reparations was so rewarding that a couple of decades later, a bigger group came together to do the same thing on the back of the Boxer Rebellion.
So, can you see how useful intoxicated and ‘enlightened Chinamen’ can be? In fact, this strategy, no doubt honed from similar ones by the Spaniards, Portugese, and ‘Americans’ in the New World, was so lucrative (who needs hard work?) that it soon inspired the ‘rush for Africa the last continent’ exemplified by our King Leopold II, and, of course, the equally smart Germans and Japanese.
During the Boxer Rebellion, a total of eight nations (Prussia and Japan included) joined in the 'Chinese feast'. In addition to being looted, China had to pay reparations of 500 million ounzes of silver (more countries to feed so bigger amount). This amount represents more than 1 ounze per Chinaman, enlightened and not. Or about 10 years of Chinese government revenue.
After that, Japan separately decided to fatten itself by attacking north China and Korea, and got another 250 million ounzes of silver from China for themselves. Along the way, they whacked the Russians and thereby inflated their egos which led to their famous 'free all Asians by replacing the European colonists with themselves as master of Asia' ambition.
With so much easy money from China, India, Africa etc., these powers went over each other and we had WWI.
The victors of WWI led by the British and Americans tried to do the same 'war reparations trick' on the Germans in a form of 'globalization of reparation revenue', and created 'new jewels' in their crown by carving for themselves all the oil rich territories that belonged to the Ottomans (by then the value of oil known to exist abundantly in the 'near east' for hundreds of years was well apparent). At the same time, they created the new state of Israel to 'fulfill the vision' of their book, and a god-perfect setting for perpetual conflict between the other 2 sets of 'idiots of the book' which served their purposes well to today.
Along the way, they also under-estimated and over-ignored the Japanese who was left feeling short changed because they did not get their 'fair share' of Prussia's Chinese possessions. Thus setting the scene for WWII.
Today, if you swap the British and the Americans around, change opium for a few other commodities, and swap a few place names with the ones above, you can about see the same things happening around us (including recent stories of a certain son of a Thatcher). Of course, one should not leave out the ‘faithful’ Australians that had been living off the spoils of these bigger fellas all the while in their little pirates’ lair down south.
If you are a Chinaman like me, the above may give you reasons to despise your forefathers, and look down on their practices and systems.
Many entranced by the wealth of those 'powers' had obviously wished to reproduce the same for themselves. Some who fail to do so via commonly accepted ways of hard work etc. and do not know the 'value' of the strategies outlined above (can't see the 'unseen hand'), may give in to desperation, and adopt the other's beliefs in a 'monkey see monkey do' act of desperate delusion in the hope that it will somehow get them there (the cost of being second or third class citizens notwithstanding – topic for another day).
But then again, as the Taiping fellas learnt, blind faith does not help, no matter what high deity you claim you represent.
p.s. Mark Twain said that "when one reads the book, one is less impressed with what the deity knows than what he does not". But then, that writer from so many years ago, what does he know? Which writer??
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