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Na ilha da Grã-Bretanha há três países: Inglaterra, Escócia e País de Gales. Nos tempos do Império Romano, a Grã-Bretanha, chamada de Britânia, era ocupada por britânicos (ou bretões). Daí o nome da ilha. Por que existe essa divisão de países? Durante a Idade Média, tribos bárbaras saíram da atual Dinamarca e da Saxônia para conquistar a Grã-Bretanha e expulsar os britânicos, um povo celta, de suas terras. Eram os anglos e os saxões, que se misturaram entre si e deram origem à Inglaterra, ou Terra dos Anglos. Uma parte dos britânicos expulsos foi para um pedaço da França que ganhou o nome de Bretanha, fazendo com que o nome Grã-Bretanha se tornasse conveniente para diferenciar a grande ilha da terra continental dos bretões. Outra parte ficou encurralada no diminuto País de Gales, a terra de onde o Rei Artur, cristão, tentava resistir e reconquistar a terra perdida para os bárbaros infiéis.

Ora, dado o insucesso do pobre rei celta, por que será que a Inglaterra resolveu criar, no período elisabetano, o Império Britânico? E não, digamos, um Império Inglês?

A resposta está na mitologia em torno da fundação da Inglaterra. Ainda na Alta Idade Média, uma obra anônima intitulada Historia Brittonum alegava que o primeiro rei britânico havia sido um certo Brutus de Troia, que era descendente de Enéas, mítico fundador de Roma. No século XII, um clérigo galês com muito talento literário chamado Godofredo de Monmouth fez as vezes de historiador com a obra Historia Regum Brittaniae, na qual descreve até a noite de amor na qual o Rei Arthur foi concebido. Agora Arthur era um rei britânico descendente de Enéas e de Brutus, que nomeia a ilha como Britânia em homenagem a si próprio. Godofredo inventou também uma porção de conquistas nórdicas para Arthur.

Nos albores da modernidade, a mitologia britânica, inventada na Idade Média, ganha uma importância política sem precedente, com a coroação do galês Henrique VII em 1485 como Rei da Inglaterra. Era o primeiro rei da problemática dinastia Tudor – e os reis Tudor, por serem de origem galesa, serão transformados em descendentes do Rei Arthur, de Brutus de Troia e, como não, do fundador de Roma.

Para complicar ainda mais a coisa, há a Reforma: Henrique VIII, filho de Henrique VII, rompe com a Igreja Católica na década de 1530, porque não aceita continuar casado com a esposa que não lhe dera um herdeiro varão. Na mesma época, o reformador John Bale (1495 – 1563), pioneiro em apresentar Roma como Babilônia e o Papa como o Anticristo, já jurava que os antigos britânicos tinham um cristianismo mais puro do que o dos romanos; que os britânicos sempre combateram Roma e que os Tudor são legítimos herdeiros do Rei Artur, tendo portanto a obrigação de combater Roma, sob pena de serem punidos por Deus.

Para os fanáticos protestantes do período, combater Roma poderia significar algo relativamente simples como purgar a Igreja Anglicana de coisas consideradas papistas. (Tanto que centenas de puritanos, frustrados com o governo da Rainha Elisabete, iriam embora para América por acreditarem que Deus iria destruir a Inglaterra por causa disso. A destruição do papado, acompanhada pelos maiores cataclismos, estava prevista para 1650.) Mas nessa época de loucura generalizada, nem todos os loucos eram de um tipo pio. E o louco que nos interessa é um louco ocultista chamado John Dee (1527 – 1609).

Mais um império mundial

Já vimos em textos anteriores que, nos séculos XVII, rondava em meios influenciados pela cabala a ideia de que um novo império mundial estava na iminência de surgir, junto com uma nova religião ecumênica e o Milênio. Na maioria das versões, o novo imperador liberta Jerusalém dos turcos e governa o mundo de lá. No seiscentos, destaquei Cristina da Suécia e Antonio Vieira como adeptos de La Peyrère, que a seu turno repetia o quinhentista Postel. No esquema destes últimos, os franceses são o povo eleito, e um rei francês iria libertar Jerusalém dos turcos, instalando lá os judeus. Para Antonio Vieira, o povo destinado ao Quinto Império do mundo era o português, liderado por D. João IV, que cumpre as profecias do Bandarra e ressuscitará para levar Portugal à glória. Ora, em relação à França e Portugal, a Inglaterra tinha a vantagem de ter no trono uma descendente do próprio Enéas!

Na Inglaterra, John Dee, que chegou a conhecer Postel, foi o mentor do “Brytish Impire”, do Império Britânico. Ele era filho de galês e conselheiro da Rainha Elisabete desde quando esta ascendeu ao trono em 1558. Na verdade, aos 20 anos o jovem Dee já era admirado dentro e fora da Inglaterra por seus avançados conhecimentos matemáticos.

Sobre a consultoria, vale citar um artigo desclassificado da NSA: “Como consultor do governo, era excelente em matemática, criptografia, ciência natural, navegação, biblioteconomia e, acima de tudo, nas ciências que mais recompensavam naqueles dias: astrologia, alquimia e fenômenos psíquicos. Ele era, sozinho, uma Rand Corporation para o governo Tudor de Elisabete”. A Rand Corporation é uma organização privada de financiamento obscuro que subsidia a inteligência militar dos Estados Unidos com pesquisas científicas e sociais.

Não é possível exagerar a importância de John Dee para a coroa britânica. Por isso, o relativo silêncio da academia sobre ele é algo digno de nota. Por incrível que pareça, o âmbito no qual é mais fácil encontrar escritos e informações sobre Dee é o esoterismo. Assim, é relativamente fácil descobrir que John Dee conversava com “anjos” usando apetrechos como um espelho asteca, uma bola de cristal, tabuleiros estrelados (apetrechos expostos no Museu Britânico), mais o auxílio do médium Edward Kelley – e que a parceria durou até ambos obedecerem às ordens de um “anjo” de trocarem de esposas. Difícil é descobrir que essa figura excêntrica foi tão importante na política.

As grandes crenças de Dee conexas com o Império

Uma das poucas obras dedicadas à vida política e filosófica de John Dee é John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, de Peter French. Na obra, vemos que John Dee acreditava na mitologia britânica, de modo que a Rainha Elisabete descendia do fundador de Roma através o Rei Arthur.Vale destacar que a mitologia britânica já havia sido refutada pelo humanista italiano Polidoro Virgílio na primeira metade do século com a obra Anglica Historia. No entanto, além de acreditar na lenda, Dee a ampliava, colocando o Rei Arthur como líder de um Império Britânico colossal ao qual a Rainha Elisabete tinha direito.

Em algum momento entre 1578 e 1580, Dee entregou à rainha o documento Title Royall to… foreyn Regions [Direito real a… regiões estrangeiras] nas quais, por ser descendente de Arthur, Elisabete tinha direito à “Atlântida” (era como Dee chamada a América), Islândia, Groenlândia, bem como às ilhas fantasmas de Friseland e Estotiland (que eram mencionadas na Viagem dos Irmãos Zeno, uma obra medieval publicada na Renascença).

Da década de 1550 até a década de 1580, Dee foi a principal liderança das navegações inglesas. Isso se deve tanto a um fator ideológico quanto a um fator prático. O fator prático é que a Inglaterra, antes mesmo da Reforma protestante, passava por um espírito reformista erasmiano que visava a combater a influência da Idade Média na universidade e substituí-la por beletrismo. Com a adesão da Inglaterra ao protestantismo, essa tendência se aprofundou, e no breve reinado (1547 – 1553) de Eduardo VI (o herdeiro homem tão desejado por Henrique VIII), os puritanos invadiram as universidades e destruíram os escritos identificados com o “papismo”. Para piorar, a matemática era associada com o ocultismo. Assim, grosso modo, era como se as universidades inglesas só tratassem de belas letras e apenas o excêntrico mago John Dee fosse capacitado para tratar de coisas práticas como a navegação.

Quanto à razão ideológica, Dee acreditava que a Rainha Elisabete deveria liderar um Império Britânico, e que tal império deveria se dar pela supremacia naval acompanhada por uma grande atividade mercantil. Essa é a descrição do Império Britânico tal como ele entrou para a história, mas ela reflete sobretudo o século XIX. Na época de Dee, não exisitam nem colônias inglesas na América, mas ele achava que um tal Lorde Madoc, Príncipe de Gales do Norte, havia construído uma “colônia” perto da Flórida e por isso a Rainha Elisabete tinha direito à “Atlântida”.

Na época de Dee, a os ingleses inventaram sistema de chartered companies, tão aproveitado pelos holandeses, no qual o Estado dava a uma companhia comercial o monopólio das relações comerciais com uma região. (Já escrevi em maior detalhe sobre isto aqui.) Assim, os projetos navais mais imediatos de Dee incluíam as expedições da primeira chartered company inglesa pelo Ártico (buscava-se uma rota da Inglaterra para o Oriente através do Ártico), expedições para o Canadá (se Humphrey Gilbert não tivesse naufragado, Dee teria direito a terras no Canadá), ou a circunavegação de Drake (a segunda circunavegação da História, que se seguiu à de Fernão de Magalhães).

Navegações de tão grande escopos eram, por fim, necessárias porque a Rainha Elisabete estava predestinada a liderar um império mundial, sem comparação com todos os precedentes: o “Incomparable Brytish Impire”, no inglês da época.

Assim, pois, temos que o Império Britânico é a invenção de um feiticeiro celta que se comunicava com “anjos” um tanto esquisitos (pois recomendavam troca de casais…) e acreditava que a Rainha Elisabete restauraria e superaria o império mítico do Rei Artur.

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On the island of Great Britain there are three countries: England, Scotland, and Wales. During the Roman Empire, Great Britain, called Britannia, was populated by Britons. Hence the island’s name. Why this division of countries? During the Middle Ages, barbarian tribes left present-day Denmark and Saxony to conquer Great Britain and expel the Britons, a Celtic people, from their lands. These were the Angles and the Saxons, who mixed with each other and gave rise to England, or the Land of the Angles. A portion of the expelled Britons went to a part of France that became known as Brittany, making the name Great Britain convenient for differentiating the large island from this new land of Britons. Another portion of Britons was trapped in the tiny country of Wales, the land from which the Christian King Arthur tried to resist and reconquer the land lost to the infidel barbarians.

Now, given the failure of the poor Celtic king, why did England decide to create, in the Elizabethan period, the British Empire? And not, say, an English Empire?

The answer lies in the mythology surrounding the founding of England. Still in the High Middle Ages, an anonymous work entitled Historia Brittonum claimed that the first British king had been a certain Brutus of Troy, who was a descendant of Aeneas, the mythical founder of Rome. In the 12th century, a Welsh cleric with great literary talent named Geoffrey of Monmouth acted as historian with the work Historia Regum Brittaniae, in which he describes even the night of love in which King Arthur was conceived. Now Arthur was a British king descended from Aeneas and Brutus, who named the island Britain in his own honor. Geoffrey also invented a number of Nordic conquests for Arthur.

At the dawn of modernity, British mythology, invented in the Middle Ages, gained unprecedented political importance with the coronation of the Welshman Henry VII in 1485 as King of England. He was the first king of the problematic Tudor dynasty – and the Tudor kings, being of Welsh origin, would be transformed into descendants of King Arthur, Brutus of Troy and, of course, the founder of Rome.

To complicate matters further, there was the Reformation: Henry VIII, son of Henry VII, broke with the Catholic Church in the 1530s because he refused to remain married to his wife, who had not given him a male heir. At the same time, the reformer John Bale (1495 – 1563), a pioneer in presenting Rome as Babylon and the Pope as the Antichrist, was already swearing that the ancient Britons had a purer Christianity than that of the Romans; that the British had always fought Rome and that the Tudors were the legitimate heirs of King Arthur, therefore having the obligation to fight Rome, under penalty of being punished by God.

For the fanatical Protestants of the period, fighting Rome could mean something relatively simple like purging the Anglican Church of things considered papist. (So much so that hundreds of Puritans, frustrated with the rule of Queen Elizabeth, would leave for America because they believed that God would destroy England because of it. The destruction of the papacy, accompanied by the greatest cataclysms, was predicted for 1650.) But in this time of widespread madness, not all madmen were of a pious kind. And the madman who interests us is an occultist madman named John Dee (1527 – 1609).

Another World Empire

We have seen in previous articles that, in the 17th century, the idea that a new world empire was about to emerge, along with a new ecumenical religion and the Millennium, circulated among circles influenced by Kabbalah. In most versions, the new emperor liberates Jerusalem from the Turks and rules the world from there. In the 17th century, I highlighted Christina of Sweden and Antonio Vieira as followers of La Peyrère, who in turn repeated the 16th-century Postel. In the latter’s scheme, the French are the chosen people, and a French king would liberate Jerusalem from the Turks, installing the Jews there. For Antonio Vieira, the people destined for the Fifth Empire of the world were the Portuguese, led by D. João IV, who fulfills Bandarra’s prophecies and will be resurrected to lead Portugal to glory. Now, in relation to France and Portugal, England had the advantage of having a descendant of Aeneas himself on the throne!

In England, John Dee, who came to know Postel, was the mentor of the “Brytish Impire.” He was the son of a Welshmen, and he was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I since she ascended the throne in 1558. In fact, at the age of 20, the young Dee was already admired inside and outside England for his advanced mathematical knowledge.

Regarding the consultancy, it is worth citing a declassified NSA article: “As government consultant, he excelled in mathematics, cryptography, natural science, navigation, and library science, and above all in the really rewarding sciences of those days – astrology, alchemy, and psychic phenomena. He was, all by himself, a Rand Corporation for the Tudor government of Elizabeth.” Rand Corporation is a private organization with obscure funding that subsidizes United States military intelligence with scientific and social research.

It is impossible to overstate John Dee’s importance to the British crown. Therefore, the relative silence of academia about him is noteworthy. Surprisingly, the area in which it is easiest to find writings and information about Dee is esotericism. Thus, it is relatively easy to discover that John Dee conversed with “angels” using paraphernalia such as an Aztec mirror, a crystal ball, starry boards (paraphernalia on display at the British Museum), plus the assistance of the medium Edward Kelley – and that the partnership lasted until both obeyed the orders of an “angel” to exchange wives. What is difficult to discover is that this eccentric figure was so important in politics.

Dee’s great beliefs connected to the Empire

One of the few works dedicated to the political and philosophical life of John Dee is John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, by Peter French. In the work, we see that John Dee believed in British mythology, so that Queen Elizabeth descended from the founder of Rome through King Arthur. It is worth noting that British mythology had already been refuted by the Italian humanist Polydorus Virgil in the first half of the century with the work Anglica Historia. However, in addition to believing in the legend, Dee expanded it, placing King Arthur as the leader of a colossal British Empire to which Queen Elizabeth was entitled.

Sometime between 1578 and 1580, Dee delivered to the queen the document Title Royall to… foreyn Regions in which, as a descendant of Arthur, Elizabeth was entitled to “Atlantis” (as Dee called America), Iceland, Greenland, as well as the phantom islands of Friseland and Estotiland (which were mentioned in the Voyage of the Zeno Brothers, a medieval work published in the Renaissance).

From the 1550s to the 1580s, Dee was the leading mentor in English navigation. This was due to both ideological and practical factors. The practical factor was that England, even before the Protestant Reformation, was experiencing an Erasmian reformist spirit aimed at combating the influence of the Middle Ages in universities and replacing it with belles-lettres. With England’s conversion to Protestantism, this trend deepened, and during the brief reign (1547-1553) of Edward VI (the male heir so desired by Henry VIII), the Puritans invaded the universities and destroyed writings identified with “papism.” To make matters worse, mathematics was associated with occultism. Thus, broadly speaking, it was as if English universities only dealt with belles-lettres, and only the eccentric magician John Dee was qualified to deal with practical matters such as navigation.

Regarding the ideological rationale, Dee believed that Queen Elizabeth should lead a British Empire, and that such an empire should be based on naval supremacy accompanied by extensive mercantile activity. This is the description of the British Empire as it went down in history, but it primarily reflects the 19th century. In Dee’s time, there were no English colonies in America, but he believed that a certain Lord Madoc, Prince of Northwales, had built a “colony” near Florida and therefore Queen Elizabeth had a right to “Atlantis.”

In Dee’s time, England invented a system of chartered companies in which the state gave a trading company a monopoly on trade relations with a region. (I have already written about this in more detail here.) Thus, Dee’s most immediate naval projects included the expeditions of the first English chartered company through the Arctic (seeking a route from England to the East via the Arctic), expeditions to Canada (if Humphrey Gilbert had not been shipwrecked, Dee would have been entitled to land in Canada), or the circumnavigation of Drake (the second circumnavigation in history, following that of Ferdinand Magellan).

Voyages of such great scope were, ultimately, necessary because Queen Elizabeth was destined to lead a world empire, without comparison to all precedents: the “Incomparable Brytish Impire,” in the English of the time.

Thus, we have that the British Empire is the invention of a Celtic sorcerer who communicated with rather strange “angels” (since they recommended wife swapping…) and believed that Queen Elizabeth would restore and surpass the mythical empire of King Arthur.

Despite British efforts to regain some of the prestige lost throughout the 20th century, London has faced either a lack of material means or excessively adverse conditions.

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The United Kingdom occupies a unique geopolitical position in the contemporary world. Once the world’s leading power during the century spanning Napoleon’s defeat to the onset of World War I, the UK found itself surpassed by the United States (and the Soviet Union) following the conclusion of World War II. This decline led to the gradual loss of almost all its overseas possessions.

The geopolitical collapse of the UK has been so pronounced that, particularly after Brexit, many began to label the country as the “51st state” of the United States, denying any semblance of autonomy or agency to a nation once synonymous with Atlanticism and a key driver of the European project for several decades.

However, this narrative that dismisses the UK as merely an extension of U.S. geopolitical interests is incomplete or even misinformed. While it is true that, particularly in recent decades, the UK has struggled to act independently or contrary to U.S. policies, the country has pursued independent initiatives in regions such as the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Ibero-America.

In fact, Brexit can be seen as a trigger that provided new life to British foreign policy directed toward these regions, as its external relations have partially “de-Europeanized” (with the exception of Eastern Europe).

Thus, British intelligence (MI5, MI6, etc.) remains an influential actor on the international stage, with priorities that do not always align with those of the U.S. intelligence community.

The British Empire was the dominant external power in Ibero-America during much of the 19th century. Through diplomacy and elite clubs such as Freemasonry, Britain aimed to dismantle and eliminate the Spanish Empire from the New World. This was largely achieved in the early decades of that century with the independence movements, most of which were supported by London.

By doing so, the UK replaced Spain as the de facto metropolis overseeing nations that were formally independent but effectively subordinated as colonies of London’s finance-centric City. Beyond controlling the region’s economies through monopolies on primary products and loans or by purchasing sovereign debt, Britain also imposed military hegemony through actions such as the naval blockade of Buenos Aires and the Falklands issue.

While the Monroe Doctrine gradually eroded British dominance in the Western Hemisphere, leading to Washington replacing London as the primary power, historical ties (and some possessions) were never completely severed.

However, London’s influence in the region has largely been confined to environmental debates in recent years. For instance, in Brazil, despite attempts to expand trade relations, the UK’s primary engagement revolved around financing environmental NGOs and issuing threats against the Bolsonaro government over accusations of “Amazon destruction.” These included hints at invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine on environmental grounds.

A dangerous precedent was also set with the confiscation of Venezuelan gold stored at the Bank of England during the dispute involving Juan Guaidó. Venezuela’s attempts to legally recover the gold culminated in a final legal defeat in 2023. Consequently, any country deemed “illegitimate” by the so-called “international community” risks having its assets frozen and confiscated by London, undermining trust in bilateral relations.

Clearly, the UK is a declining force in Ibero-America, with China and, increasingly, Russia strengthening trade, military, and energy ties with regional countries at the expense of British influence.

In contrast, British foreign policy in the Middle East has been more consistent and assertive post-Brexit.

This region, traditionally a zone of British influence, especially following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire where the UK played a pivotal role in dividing territories and drawing borders to suit its own interests, remains an area of strong British activity.

Among Britain’s most reliable allies in the region, none stands out more than Jordan, whose Hashemite monarchy has historically been a “client” of London. This relationship has not changed in recent years, with intensified military exercises and joint efforts by both countries to intercept Iranian projectiles during retaliatory attacks against Israel.

However, the UK’s relations with other countries in the region are more ambiguous.

A classic example of such ambiguous relationships is Turkey, which balances its ties with Western countries, including the UK, with whom it has signed a free trade agreement and cooperates on a military modernization project, while simultaneously maintaining relations with Russia, Iran, and even, covertly, with Israel.

On the other hand, with Saudi Arabia, another traditional ally, there are contradictions involving the sale of arms and other military equipment by London to Riyadh. Furthermore, Britain’s emphasis on the Green Agenda contrasts with Saudi Arabia’s own strategic interests. While the Saudis are not opposed to energy diversification, they have leaned toward the “nuclear” route, which has led Riyadh to strengthen relations with China and Russia.

In countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman, the UK maintains military installations and deployments. However, this distribution of troops—primarily aimed at controlling the Persian Gulf—may be numbered as the region increasingly becomes hostile to Western presence.

Iraq provides another example. The UK, which once played a significant role alongside the U.S., has seen its military and economic operations in the country reduced to a bare minimum and practically wiped out, with companies like Shell exiting Iraq. To some extent, Iran has replaced most of the Western influence that has retreated from the country.

Meanwhile, in the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions, the UK’s strategy seems to mirror that of the U.S., with an emphasis on prioritization.

The British strategy for this part of the world was formalized in the 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defense, Development, and Foreign Policy, which identified the region as a priority due to China’s growing influence.

However, this is the principal obstacle to Britain’s recovery of influence in the area. Although the Belt and Road Initiative has global scope, its greatest impact has been on Southeast Asian countries and, broadly, ASEAN nations. The UK lacks a viable alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative. To make matters worse, far from its 19th-century naval projection capabilities, the UK now depends entirely on its regional alliances (such as AUKUS, for instance) to project any power in the Pacific.

In summary, despite British efforts to regain some of the prestige lost throughout the 20th century, London has faced either a lack of material means (be it investment capacity or military capability) or excessively adverse conditions (shifting geopolitical contexts, competition from local powers). Overall, it has struggled to offer countries in these regions any significant advantages that would make it a preferred partner.

Because the British are very arrogant, they still think that the rest of the world is a crowd of subjects. Subservient support for the United States guarantees them only some survival, but few privileges.

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The victory in the Second World War was the swan song of the British Empire. What we saw after that was an unbridled decline, which only avoided reaching rock bottom because the British clung to the Americans to save themselves. As a result, they became an appendage of the American empire. This began with the war itself. Before it, the British and the Americans competed for world markets. In Latin America itself, British competitiveness was only overcome by the United States after the start of the Second World War. Subsequently, the Crown lost hundreds of millions of subjects with the independence of about 50 colonies that became nations in the following three decades.

Today, the empire where the sun never set is nothing more than nostalgia. Because the British are very arrogant, they still think that the rest of the world is a crowd of subjects. Subservient support for the United States guarantees them only some survival, but few privileges. When Bush invaded and devastated Iraq, British companies were left with the pulp, the juice of which was consumed by American multinationals. But Tony Blair’s successors maintained their vulture policy (even though the Chilcot Inquiry ruled that their participation in the invasion of Iraq was illegal) and for over a year they have been bombing Yemen together with the Americans, in the name of freeing the seas for navigation… by the U.S., which has long since replaced London as the great maritime power.

But this does not mean that the decadent and dependent British Empire is not harmful to the rest of the world. The Afghans suffered first-hand from the Anglo-French-American aggression and the Taliban took revenge by expelling them in 2021, displaying coffins with their flags at victory demonstrations. However, British imperialists have returned to the fray by conspiring with the U.S. to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, and MI6 is currently working hard with the CIA to blackmail the terrorists who have become pop stars and the Turks into expelling the Russians from the military bases in Latakia and Tartous. They have already indicated that there will be no stability while Russia is in Syrian territory. Only the most naive voters believed that Sir Keir Starmer would adopt a policy different from that of the Conservatives who governed the country for a decade and a half. The genocide in Gaza co-sponsored by Washington, London and the West is there for all to see.

It is not only through weapons that British imperialism acts to destabilize and take control of the small slice that the U.S. allows it to have. The British flags that fluttered in the hands of masked protesters in Hong Kong between 2019 and 2020 made the interference in its former colonies clear.

Since China is the United States’ greatest enemy – even more so than Russia, for most of the U.S. establishment – a vast containment network is being created in the Asia-Pacific. And the British are obviously part of it. The AUKUS, established in 2021, has only just formalized the pact that allows the Americans and British to use Australia as an instrument of aggression against the Chinese. Western military bases on the Pacific islands are part of the network and enable strong control over those small nations, which are being pitted against China by the Anglo-Americans – and whose citizens’ data is contained in the CIA and MI6 files, thanks to the Five Eyes Alliance.

However, the main mechanism by which London still manages to prove itself useful to its masters in Washington is financial. A fundamental characteristic of European colonization in Asia, Africa and Latin America was the theft of native gold and its deposit in English banks. This was even done by other powers of the time, such as Portugal and Spain. The tradition of plundering has continued and even today many countries in the so-called “Global South” send part of their international gold reserves to English banks.

But this comes at a higher price than one might imagine. As part of the coup campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the Bank of England withheld U.S.$1.95 billion in gold reserves from Caracas in 2020. And it never returned them, even after complaints from Venezuela and part of the international community. Javier Milei seems not to care about the possibility that Argentina may suffer the same fate and has already withdrawn U.S.$1 billion in reserves from the Central Bank (estimated at U.S.$4.6 billion) to send to the British. It is estimated that 60% of Argentina’s gold reserves have been destined for London in recent years.

This is one of the reasons why The Economist – the City of London newspaper – published an interview with Milei, an article written by the Argentine president and three podcasts praising the “Argentine economic miracle” in November. After all, Milei’s dream, as he himself has stated several times, is to take Argentina back to the time when it was practically a colony of the United Kingdom (more than of the United States itself!), when, due to so much control over the Argentine economy and politics, many Argentine military personnel began to support Nazi Germany in World War II just to get rid of the British if they lost.

Juan Domingo Perón once told an anecdote to demonstrate the level of subjugation in Argentina. The British had taken control of the railways – built by the Argentines themselves, not by them, as was customary – and the Argentines had to pay them to transport meat from the countryside to the city and ports. The anecdote was about a meatpacking plant set up by the British in 1905:

“The British brought 1 million pounds sterling as investment capital, that is, 11 million pesos at the exchange rate at the time. After installing their machines, they asked the Banco de la Nación for a loan that was successively increased to 100 million pesos. Thus, of the 100 million pesos, the foreign capital was only 10%. But in the first financial remittance, 10% of the installed capital went to London. With that, they repatriated all the invested capital and over the next fifty years they decapitalized us at a rate of 10 million a year, for a total of 500 million pesos.”

The small Caribbean islands have demonstrated greater dignity and sovereignty than the government of one of the Latin American giants. Barbados gained independence from the British Crown and adopted a republican system in 2021. Jamaica, where Africans were enslaved and taken there by the British, is now demanding $10 billion in compensation. In total, the Caribbean nations want the United Kingdom to compensate them $33 trillion for slavery and colonial plunder. This would simply be a return of part of the wealth that was stolen and allowed the Empire to grow even richer.

Will London compensate them with Syrian oil and Argentine gold?

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A vitória na Segunda Guerra Mundial foi o canto do cisne do império britânico. O que vimos depois daquilo foi uma decadência desenfreada, que só não chegou ao fundo do poço porque os britânicos se agarraram aos americanos para se salvar. Como consequência, tornaram-se um apêndice do império americano. Isso começou com a própria Guerra. Antes dela, britânicos e americanos competiam pelos mercados mundiais. Na própria América Latina, a competitividade britânica só foi vencida pelos Estados Unidos após o início da Segunda Guerra. Na sequência, a Coroa perdeu centenas de milhões de súditos com a independência de cerca de 50 colônias tornadas nações nas três décadas seguintes.

Hoje, o império onde o sol nunca se punha não passa de nostalgia. Como os britânicos são muito arrogantes, ainda acham que o resto do mundo é uma multidão de súditos. O apoio subserviente aos EUA lhes garante apenas alguma sobrevivência, mas poucos privilégios. Quando Bush invadiu e devastou o Iraque, as companhias britânicas ficaram com o bagaço da laranja, cujo suco foi todo consumido pelas multinacionais americanas. Mas os sucessores de Tony Blair mantiveram a sua política de abutre (mesmo que o Chilcot Inquiry tenha considerado ilegal a participação na invasão ao Iraque) e há mais de um ano bombardeiam o Iêmen em conjunto com os americanos, em nome de libertar os mares para a navegação… dos EUA, que desbancaram Londres como a grande potência marítima há muito tempo.

Mas isso não significa que o decadente e dependente Império Britânico não seja nocivo ao restante do mundo. Os afegãos sofreram na pele a agressão anglo-franco-americana e os talibãs se vingaram dela ao os expulsar em 2021, exibindo caixões com as suas bandeiras nas manifestações comemorativas da vitória. Entretanto, os imperialistas britânicos voltaram à carga ao conspirar com os EUA para derrubar Bashar al-Assad e neste momento o MI6 trabalha intensamente junto com a CIA para chantagear os terroristas transformados em popstars e os turcos a expulsarem os russos das bases militares de Latakia e Tartous. Já indicaram que não haverá estabilidade enquanto a Rússia estiver em território sírio. Só os eleitores mais ingênuos acreditaram que Sir Keir Starmer adotaria uma política diferente da dos conservadores que governaram o país por uma década e meia. O genocídio em Gaza copatrocinado por Washington, Londres e o Ocidente está aí para todos verem.

Não é somente pelas armas que o imperialismo britânico atua para desestabilizar e tomar o controle da pequena fatia que os EUA lhe permitem ter. As bandeiras britânicas que tremulavam nas mãos de manifestantes mascarados em Hong Kong entre 2019 e 2020 explicitaram a ingerência em suas ex-colônias.

Como a China é o grande inimigo dos Estados Unidos – ainda mais que a Rússia, para a maior parte do establishment norte-americano –, uma ampla rede de contenção está sendo criada na Ásia-Pacífico. E os britânicos, obviamente, fazem parte dela. O AUKUS, estabelecido em 2021, apenas oficializou o pacto que permite a americanos e britânicos utilizarem a Austrália como um instrumento de agressão contra os chineses. As bases militares ocidentais nas ilhas do Pacífico fazem parte da rede e possibilitam um forte controle sobre aquelas pequenas nações, que estão sendo jogadas contra a China pelos angloamericanos – e cujos dados de seus cidadãos constam nos arquivos da CIA e do MI6, graças à Five Eyes Alliance.

Contudo, o principal mecanismo pelo qual Londres ainda consegue se provar útil aos seus amos de Washington é financeiro. Uma característica fundamental da colonização europeia na Ásia, África e América Latina foi o roubo do ouro nativo e o seu depósito nos bancos da Inglaterra. Isso era feito até mesmo por outras potências da época, como Portugal e Espanha.

A tradição espoliadora se manteve e ainda hoje muitos países do chamado “Sul Global” enviam parte de suas reservas internacionais de ouro aos bancos ingleses.

Mas isso tem um preço maior do que se imagina. Como parte da campanha golpista contra Nicolás Maduro, o Banco da Inglaterra reteve US$ 1,95 bilhão em reservas de ouro de Caracas em 2020. E nunca os devolveu, mesmo após as denúncias da Venezuela e de parte da comunidade internacional. Javier Milei parece não se importar com a possibilidade de que a Argentina sofra o mesmo destino e já retirou US$ 1 bilhão em reservas do Banco Central (estimadas em US$ 4,6 bilhões) para enviá-las aos britânicos. Calcula-se que 60% das reservas argentinas de ouro tiveram Londres como destino nos últimos anos.

Esse é um dos motivos pelos quais The Economist – órgão da City de Londres – publicou uma entrevista com Milei, um artigo assinado pelo presidente argentino e três podcasts elogiando o “milagre econômico argentino” no mês de novembro. Afinal de contas, o sonho de Milei, como ele mesmo já declarou várias vezes, é fazer a Argentina retroceder ao tempo em que era praticamente uma colônia do Reino Unido (mais do que dos próprios EUA!), quando, de tanto controle que detinha sobre a economia e a política argentinas, muitos militares argentinos passaram a apoiar a Alemanha nazista na Segunda Guerra apenas para se livrarem dos britânicos, caso estes perdessem.

Certa vez, Juan Domingo Perón contou uma anedota para demonstrar o nível de subjugação da Argentina. Os britânicos haviam tomado o controle das ferrovias – construídas pelos próprios argentinos, e não por eles, como era de costume – e os argentinos tinham de pagá-los para transportar a carne do campo para a cidade e os portos. A anedota era sobre um frigorífico instalado pelos britânicos em 1905:

“Os ingleses trouxeram como capital de inversão 1 milhão de libras esterlinas, isto é, 11 milhões de pesos ao câmbio da época. Após instalarem suas máquinas, pediram ao Banco de la Nación um crédito que foi sucessivamente ampliado até 100 milhões de pesos. Dessa maneira, sobre os 100 milhões de pesos, o capital estrangeiro era de apenas 10%. Mas na primeira remessa financeira foram para Londres os 10% do capital instalado. Com isso, repatriaram todo o capital aplicado e durante os próximos cinquenta anos nos descapitalizaram à razão de 10 milhões por ano, num total de 500 milhões de pesos.”

As pequenas ilhas caribenhas demonstram ter mais dignidade e soberania que o governo de um dos gigantes latino-americanos. Barbados conquistou a independência da Coroa britânica e adotou o sistema republicano em 2021. A Jamaica, onde africanos foram escravizados e levados para lá pelos britânicos, agora exige US$ 10 bilhões em indenizações. No total, as nações do Caribe querem que o Reino Unido as compensem em US$ 33 trilhões pela escravidão e a espoliação colonial. Seria apenas uma devolução de parte da riqueza que foi roubada e permitiu que o Império enriquecesse ainda mais.

Londres vai indenizá-las com o petróleo sírio e o ouro argentino?

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La victoria en la Segunda Guerra Mundial fue el canto del cisne del imperio británico. Lo que vimos después de eso fue una decadencia desenfrenada, que sólo no llegó al fondo porque los británicos se aferraron a los estadounidenses para salvarse. Como consecuencia de ello, se convirtieron en un apéndice del imperio americano. Esto comenzó con la guerra misma. Antes que ella, los británicos y los estadounidenses compitieron por los mercados mundiales. En la propia América Latina, la competitividad británica sólo fue derrotada por Estados Unidos después del inicio de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Posteriormente, la Corona perdió cientos de millones de súbditos con la independencia de unas 50 colonias que se convirtieron en naciones en las tres décadas siguientes.

Hoy, el imperio donde nunca se ponía el sol no es más que nostalgia. Como los británicos son muy arrogantes, todavía piensan que el resto del mundo es una multitud de súbditos. El apoyo servil a Estados Unidos les garantiza sólo cierta supervivencia, pero pocos privilegios. Cuando Bush invadió y devastó Irak, las empresas británicas se quedaron con el orujo de naranja, cuyo jugo fue consumido en su totalidad por las multinacionales estadounidenses. Pero los sucesores de Tony Blair mantuvieron su política buitre (aunque la investigación Chilcot consideró ilegal la participación en la invasión de Irak) y desde hace más de un año bombardean Yemen junto con los estadounidenses, en nombre de la liberación de los mares para la navegación… de Estados Unidos, que hace mucho tiempo desplazó a Londres como gran potencia marítima.

Pero esto no significa que el decadente y dependiente Imperio Británico no sea perjudicial para el resto del mundo. Los afganos sufrieron en carne propia la agresión anglo-francesa-estadounidense y los talibanes se vengaron expulsándolos en 2021, exhibiendo ataúdes con sus banderas en manifestaciones celebrando su victoria. Mientras tanto, los imperialistas británicos han vuelto al ataque conspirando con Estados Unidos para derrocar a Bashar al-Assad y en este momento el MI6 está trabajando intensamente junto con la CIA para chantajear a los terroristas convertidos en estrellas del pop y a los turcos para expulsar a los rusos de las bases de Latakia y Tartous. Ya han indicado que no habrá estabilidad mientras Rusia esté en territorio sirio. Sólo los votantes más ingenuos creían que Sir Keir Starmer adoptaría una política diferente a la de los conservadores que gobernaron el país durante una década y media. El genocidio en Gaza copatrocinado por Washington, Londres y Occidente está ahí para que todos lo vean.

No es sólo a través de las armas que el imperialismo británico actúa para desestabilizar y tomar el control de la pequeña porción que Estados Unidos le permite tener. Las banderas británicas que ondearon en manos de manifestantes enmascarados en Hong Kong entre 2019 y 2020 dejaron clara la injerencia en sus antiguas colonias.

Como China es el gran enemigo de Estados Unidos –incluso más que Rusia, para la mayor parte del establishment norteamericano– se está creando una amplia red de contención en Asia-Pacífico. Y los británicos, obviamente, son parte de ello. AUKUS, establecido en 2021, solo formalizó el pacto que permite a estadounidenses y británicos utilizar Australia como instrumento de agresión contra los chinos. Las bases militares occidentales en las islas del Pacífico son parte de la red y permiten un fuerte control sobre esas pequeñas naciones, que los angloamericanos están jugando contra China y cuyos datos de los ciudadanos están contenidos en los archivos de la CIA y el MI6, gracias a la Alianza de los Cinco Ojos.

Sin embargo, el principal mecanismo por el cual Londres aún logra demostrar su utilidad a sus amos de Washington es el financiero. Un rasgo fundamental de la colonización europea en Asia, África y América Latina fue el robo del oro nativo y su depósito en bancos de Inglaterra. Esto lo hicieron incluso otras potencias de la época, como Portugal y España. La tradición saqueadora continuó y aún hoy muchos países del llamado “Sur Global” envían parte de sus reservas internacionales de oro a bancos ingleses.

Pero esto tiene un precio mayor de lo que uno podría imaginar. Como parte de la campaña golpista contra Nicolás Maduro, el Banco de Inglaterra retuvo 1.950 millones de dólares en reservas de oro de Caracas en 2020. Y nunca los devolvió, incluso después de las quejas de Venezuela y parte de la comunidad internacional. A Javier Milei parece no importarle la posibilidad de que Argentina corra la misma suerte y ya ha retirado 1.000 millones de dólares en reservas del Banco Central (estimados en 4.600 millones de dólares) para enviárselos a los británicos. Se estima que el 60% de las reservas de oro argentinas han ido a parar a Londres en los últimos años.

Esta es una de las razones por las que The Economist -órgano de la City de Londres- publicó una entrevista a Milei, un artículo firmado por el presidente argentino y tres podcasts elogiando el “milagro económico argentino” en el mes de noviembre. Al fin y al cabo, el sueño de Milei, como él mismo lo ha afirmado varias veces, es hacer que la Argentina regrese a la época en la que era prácticamente una colonia del Reino Unido (¡más que de los propios EE.UU.!), cuando, con tanto control, tenido con respecto a la economía y la política argentinas, muchos oficiales del ejército argentino comenzaron a apoyar a la Alemania nazi en la Segunda Guerra Mundial solo para deshacerse de los británicos, si perdían.

Juan Domingo Perón contó una vez una anécdota para demostrar el nivel de subyugación de Argentina. Los británicos habían tomado el control de los ferrocarriles –construidos por los propios argentinos, no por ellos, como era costumbre– y los argentinos tenían que pagarles para transportar carne desde el campo a la ciudad y los puertos. La anécdota trataba sobre un frigorífico instalado por los británicos en 1905:

“Los ingleses trajeron 1 millón de libras esterlinas como capital de inversión, es decir, 11 millones de pesos al tipo de cambio de la época. Luego de instalar sus máquinas, pidieron un crédito al Banco de la Nación que fue incrementado sucesivamente hasta los 100 millones de pesos. Así, de los 100 millones de pesos, el capital extranjero fue sólo el 10%. Pero en la primera remesa financiera, el 10% del capital instalado fue a Londres. Con eso repatriaron todo el capital invertido y durante los siguientes cincuenta años nos descapitalizaron a razón de 10 millones por año, para un total de 500 millones de pesos”.

Las pequeñas islas caribeñas demuestran que tienen más dignidad y soberanía que el gobierno de uno de los gigantes latinoamericanos. Barbados se independizó de la Corona británica y adoptó el sistema republicano en 2021. Jamaica, donde los africanos fueron esclavizados y llevados allí por los británicos, exige ahora 10.000 millones de dólares en compensación. En total, las naciones caribeñas quieren que el Reino Unido les compense 33 billones de dólares por la esclavitud y el despojo colonial. Sería simplemente la devolución de parte de la riqueza robada y que permitió al Imperio enriquecerse aún más.

¿Londres los compensará con petróleo sirio y oro argentino?

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By Kit Klarenberg 

Leaked British intelligence files reviewed by The Grayzone raise grave questions about whether London has aided the rise of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group which was proscribed by Western governments until it seized power in Syria this December.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stated it is “too early” to remove HTS from Britain’s list of proscribed terrorist organizations. When the group was added in 2017, its entry stated it should be considered among “alternative names” for Al Qaeda. It was therefore illegal for British government officials to meet with HTS representatives while its status endured.

However, on December 16, British diplomats including Ann Snow, London’s special representative for Syria, convened a summit with Jolani and other HTS leaders in Damascus.

Ahmad al-Shar’a (Jawlani) with the British delegation in Damascus. No hijab for the UK’s Special Envoy to Syria Ann Snow (@UKSyriaRep). Different than the CNN interview. Not directly next to one another, but interesting change. pic.twitter.com/LWnhYuHzZE

— Aaron Y. Zelin (@azelin) December 16, 2024

That same day, The Times of London granted Jolani a sympathetic interview, during which he called for an end to Western sanctions on the country, promising Syria would not be a “launchpad for attacks on Israel” under his watch. This followed a fawning BBC profile intended to highlight Jolani’s “rebranding” of HTS. The stage now appears set for HTS’ proscription to be rescinded, and London to recognize the group as legitimate rulers of post-Assad Syria.

The UK’s embrace of HTS represents the culmination of a long and secretive process which began when the group’s leadership was still closely aligned with Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, Jabhat Al Nusra, and even the Islamic State. While British intelligence once embarked on a campaign to undermine HTS in opposition-controlled areas of Syria, while cultivating supposedly “moderate” factions, leaked files reviewed by The Grayzone reveal the clandestine efforts wound up strengthening Jolani’s organization, helping pave its path to power. More troublingly, these documents suggest that, contrary to mainstream accounts of the group’s split from Al Qaeda, the pair remain close collaborators in Syria.

One file dated 2020 (see below) notes Al Qaeda’s local affiliates peacefully “coexist” with HTS in the country’s north west, which “provides space” for the “explicitly Salafi-Jihadist transnational group” to “maintain an instability fuelled safe haven in Syria, from which they are able to train and prepare for future expansion” outside the country. With Assad’s fall, however, British diplomats seem to have cast these assessments to the wind as they rush to Damascus to embrace Jolani.

MI6 propaganda assists Syrian ‘opposition’

From the first days of the Syrian crisis, the British state secretly employed a constellation of contractors, staffed by military and intelligence veterans to conduct elaborate psyops, at a cost of many million pounds. The aim was to demonize and destabilize Assad’s government, convince the domestic population, international bodies and Western citizens that the militant groups pillaging the country represented a “moderate” alternative, while flooding news outlets with favorable coverage.

Along the way, the Western-backed network spun out numerous opposition media outlets, while training a small army of so-called “citizen journalists” to produce slick propaganda for domestic and international audiences. Two of the leading British contractors were ARK and Global Strategy, both led by MI6 veterans.

In a leaked joint submission to the Foreign Office, the contractors bragged how since 2011:

“[We] have developed extensive networks covering stakeholders across Syria, from key members of civil governance structures, brigade commanders and members of ninety MAO [Moderate Armed Opposition] groups to civil society organisations, service providers and activists. ARK and TGSN have been providing ongoing reporting on this to [Her Majesty’s Government] and, through the MAO project’s dedicated liaison, to the International Coalition and both have well-established, extensive research networks across opposition held areas.”

ARK and Global Strategy both independently and in tandem took the lead on attempting to “undermine” HTS through cloak-and-dagger “strategic communications” efforts, and civil society projects. Incongruously though, leaked files related to these efforts stress that such initiatives should not “directly criticise HTS (or linked groups).” For one, it was believed overt censure of HTS could be “polarising” in opposition-controlled areas, “for many who view it as a legitimate resistance force, though not a desirable governance actor.”

Moreover, “any perceived challenge to HTS control could result in arrest of project staff, partners and beneficiaries or other sanctions against the project.”

This assessment reflects the understanding by British intelligence assets and agents in occupied Syria that their safety was contingent on protection from HTS. By avoiding a direct challenge to the extremist group, ARK and Global Strategy hoped they could conduct “activities that indirectly enable communities to contest HTS control.”

Along with psychological warfare efforts extolling a “positive narrative around moderate opposition governance activities,” and driven by “values-based messaging,” British intelligence cutouts aimed to establish “safe spaces for community gatherings” in opposition territory. There, according to leaked files, attendees would be able to enjoy British-created propaganda films extolling “moderate” virtues, “shared activities such as sports and arts classes,” and “informative” presentations on topics ranging from “psycho-social care [to] unexploded ordnance” – “in coordination” with the ARK-created Syria Civil Defence, more popularly known as the White Helmets.

British assets operate with HTS protection

The White Helmets were just one component of a wider effort to establish a series of foreign-controlled quasi-states across occupied Syria, replete with parallel governance structures staffed by locals trained and funded by Britain, the EU, and US. Western propaganda and media reporting universally portrayed these breakaway Islamist colonies as “moderate” success stories, when in reality they were deeply chaotic and dangerous, run by violent extremist elements like HTS with an iron fist, often under extremely strict interpretations of Sharia Law.

As one British contractor noted in a leaked submission to the Foreign Office, “presenting [emphasis added] a functioning yet consistent model in Syria’s liberated areas will strengthen the opposition and be the basis for a new civilian-led and accountable state security architecture.” Dated 2016, elsewhere in the document the firm looked ahead to British-run governance structures and entities such as the White Helmets, and Free Syria Police (FSP), being exported “into newly liberated territory” in the country.

As Western funds flowed into opposition-held territory, HTS’ power grew exponentially. One leaked document noted that HTS was able to “consolidate its position, neutralise opponents, and position itself as a key actor in northern Syria.” This was particularly pronounced in Idlib, where HTS had “dramatically grown its influence and territorial control across the governorate.” And as the Al Qaeda ally entrenched its control, British-backed governance structures and opposition elements operated under its watch with near-total freedom, safe from violent reprisals.

Another particularly striking leaked file noted that “HTS and other extremist armed groups are significantly less likely to attack opposition entities that are receiving support” from the British government’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF).

According to the British assessment, HTS’ friendly approach to “opposition entities” like the White Helmets and Free Syrian Police stemmed from the fact they “demonstrably provide key services” to residents of occupied territory. By funding a network of social service organizations in the immediate realm of HTS, while churning out waves of positive media coverage about life in the areas it controlled, British contractors such as ARK and Global Strategy inadvertently boosted the extremist group’s credibility as a governing entity.

Repeated reference is made in the leaked trove to the necessity of “[raising] awareness of moderate opposition service provision,” and providing audiences with “compelling narratives and demonstrations of a credible alternative to the [Assad] regime”. This need was particularly pronounced among citizens who may once have supported regime change, but now believed the “revolution is dead,” and residents of occupied territory who “[accommodate] HTS, particularly if [they are] receiving services from it.” In many cases, however, those “services” were being provided by proxies of British intelligence.

Another leaked document noted, “to secure its domination, HTS has been willing to work with a collection of more moderate groups.” This almost certainly included the very same “moderate” elements British intelligence sought to promote. Of course, none of these factions meaningfully adhered to any definition of the term “moderate,” but their lack of proscription under British terror laws allowed for expansive direct collaboration and funding that would have been prohibited if granted directly to HTS.

In Washington, meanwhile, a lobbying campaign had begun in 2018 to allow HTS to receive aid, but “indirectly,” through other groups operating in Idlib. James Jeffrey, a Trump administration diplomat who emerged as one of the top boosters of HTS, claimed to US media at the time that Jolani had pleaded to him, “We want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad.”

In secret assessments from the ground, however, British contractors provided a much more disturbing view of the dynamics in HTS-controlled Idlib.

“We cannot estimate the number of people who…did not go on to join Daesh or HTS”

As recently as 2020, British intelligence was flooding Idlib with money for projects officially intended to “undermine” HTS, while bemoaning the group’s constantly “growing influence,” the “impact” of which they said was “likely to be long lasting.”

Accordingly, British spies warned that “Salafi-Jihadi actors” would “increasingly come to be regarded as synonymous with opposition to Assad.” In submissions to the Foreign Office, Global Strategy effectively admitted defeat, acknowledging it faced “challenges” in “providing credible data that provides cause-effect linkages” of its anti-HTS operations, or any tangible real-world results at all:

“We cannot estimate the number of people who, because of the project, did not go on to join Daesh or HTS… there is no rigorous way to definitively ascertain the extent to which their collective resilience to VEO [Violent Extremist] propaganda has increased.”

The British intelligence contractors clearly understood that HTS’ rise to power had offset any efforts by London to neutralize the operations and appeal of other extremist groups in Syria. Al Qaeda affiliates in occupied territory were said to not only “[coexist] with HTS,” but “HTS domination” of the country’s north was observed to actively “provide space for [Al Qaeda] aligned groups and individuals to exist.” From this “safe haven,” jihadist elements had free rein to focus on “objectives and targets which extend outside Syria’s borders.”

Moreover, they concluded that the “consolidation of HTS influence in Idlib” furthered a “binary dynamic” in which HTS and Assad represented the only serious potential candidates to fill the power vacuum.

Perhaps predictably, the leaked files were devoid of any reflection on whether Britain’s vast psychological warfare operations in Syria designed to demonize Assad and promote “moderate opposition service provision” may have contributed to that same “binary dynamic.”

This was hardly the first time London’s connivances benefited extremists rampaging across Syria. In 2016, British intelligence launched an operation to train “moderate” Syrian rebel fighters at a secret base in Jordan. Leaked documents indicate that contractors bidding for the project concluded that militants would inevitably funnel the aid supplied to them by London to Nusra, ISIS, and other “extremist actors.” Rather than abandon the doomed project, the contractors decided to “tolerate” the risk to “a reasonable degree.”

Almost a decade later, and after shelling out tens of millions of pounds to build a supposedly moderate opposition, the British Foreign Office has emerged from the shadows to embrace the ultimate beneficiary of its secret Syrian project – Jolani, the founder of the country’s Al Qaeda affiliate and former deputy head of ISIS – as he assumes power in Damascus. The new leader’s record of gruesome sectarian violence is all but forgotten as a clearly enthused British PM Keir Starmer pledges his country will now “play a more present and consistent role throughout the region.”

Original article: thegrayzone.com

Caroline Elkins’ accounts of British soldiers ramming broken bottles into the vaginas of female Kenyan prisoners during the Kikuyus’ Mau Mau revolt is not, by any stretch, the worst example of Albion’s imperial violence she recounts. Because this 870 page book is awash with similar instances of systematic war crimes by the British administration in Kenya, in Nigeria, Jamaica, South Africa, Malaya, Palestine, Cyprus, Nyasaland, India and countless other outposts of empire, justifiable comparisons between the British and the Nazis arise time and again.

And, although many Nazis were brought to book for their crimes, no British were, even though General Sir Frank Kitson, one of the most notorious of these Grade A war criminals, who hopscotched about from one colonial killing field to the next, is still alive and, no doubt, still plotting the murder of others. The book makes it plain that the British had a bunch of such military and civil service troubleshooters, psychopathic thugs like Kitson and Bomber Harris they were prepared to send, almost at a moment’s notice, to any part of their rotten empire where the “natives” had to be duffed up, a euphemism for barbaric tortures derived from Douglas Duff, one of their Satanic number.

Many of these savages, such as Percival and Montgomery, served alongside the Black and Tan terrorist group in Ireland, before moving on to Palestine, India and Malaya where they honed their torture techniques, which resembled those devils use in medieval paintings.

Gruesome as her descriptions of that savagery is, the book’s strongest point is that it gives us the oxymoronic prism of liberal imperialism to ruminate on these crimes of empire and the savages who committed them, who colluded in them and who covered them up both judicially and with the pomp and circumstance of empire.

Elkins stresses that Queen Victoria’s Silver Jubilee was, much like the 1952 coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth, used to bamboozle her subjects with the majesty of empire and to convince those cretins they were part of the much bigger and nobler project of Making Britain Great Again. Queen Elizabeth 11 spelt out the method by which the Great was to be put back in Britain when she declared, on her first prorogation of Parliament, that her thugs had murder by the throat in Malaya by the use of terror tactics they had honed in Palestine. Although the media lionized Gerald Templer, Templer of Malaya as they christened the Queen’s chief war criminal in Malaya, it is worth noting, with respect to Wikileaks and her forces’ more recent war crimes, that only the Communists’ Daily Worker newspaper asked any probing questions about Malayan war crimes and that Templer and his fellow thugs gave them short shrift.

Elkins alleges on page 649 that the main reason MI5 ‘fessed up to their Mau Mau war crimes was because Julian Assange, whom they now hold in their most secure dungeon, was going to release a trove of papers exposing their horrendous war crimes against the Kikuyu in Kenya. She also shows, with examples from Malaya, India, Palestine and elsewhere, that Assange was far from the first instance of these colonial thugs shooting, torturing or just plain murdering the messenger.

The book’s pre-eminent strength is in showing how such propaganda and censorship were both central to Britain’s genocide campaigns and to these criminals self fashioning themselves, like their current American partners in crime do, as the standard bearers of progress and enlightenment.

It was to whitewash those crimes and to confer some faux dignity on Albion’s empire of concentration camps and gulags that Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell’s “prophet of British imperialism” was given the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature. Kipling was part of a gigantic propaganda fig leaf that hid the oxymoron of liberal imperialism, the velvet glove that sheathed a merciless fist that crushed, castrated and enslaved Albion’s new-caught, sullen peoples who were half devil and half child.

Elkins makes it plain as day there was no sparing the rod when “our boys” held it over these half-children, that uprisings in India, Palestine and Jamaica were brutally suppressed by Tommies, who revelled in cutting the genitals off their prisoners and sticking them down their throats. Although their genocide of the Boers is well-known (by those who want to know), less known is that over £6 million was raised for wounded Tommies, and a mere £6,500 for Afrikaner women and children those same Tommies were starving to death in concentration camps that were as bad as Hitler’s. Think of that when you watch youtube’s homecoming videos of American service personnel returning Stateside after doing their own little Mỹ Lais and Abu Ghraibs.

Although Elkins makes the excellent point that Irish collaborators were central to all of these crimes in India, in Malaya, in Palestine and in South Africa, she also claims that the Irish Times was “long a thorn in Britain’s imperial side”. The Irish Times is, in fact as much a defender of liberal imperialism as is NATO’s most hawkish British or American media outlets.

Her knowledge of the so-called Irish War of Independence, the (Black and) Tan War, as we purists call it, is likewise flaky. It was the solid, unwavering Sinn Féin vote for independence that the British feared and not the IRA’s campaign that warranted barely a footnote in any of the British Army regimental histories and that Montgomery dismissed a light training exercise. Nor did the IRA get their tactics from the Boers who were excellent horsemen and marksmen but rather, theirs was a hotchpotch, aided by some talented bomb makers like Jim O’Donovan. And, though it is heartening to know that Dan Breen’s My Fight for Irish Freedom was a best seller in Hindi, Punjabi and Tamil, the reason for that and for why the great General Võ Nguyên Giáp had his own dog-eared copy was there was little other relevant literature about. Though Breen was no Giáp and Tom Barry was no Chairman Mao, they made their own modest contributions to the theory and practice of guerilla warfare, which need not detain us here, except to say that Elkins, no more than anyone else, can be experts on all things.

Elkins’ very considerable contribution is not on such localized detail. Rather, she has given us an edifice, a petard, a gallows I would hope, on which to hoist those British and American criminals, who move heaven and earth to persecute Julian Assange, even as the Biden, Blair, Bush, Clinton and Obama organized crime families swan about leaving a slug’s trail of misery and slime on whatever they touch.

We have, on Facebook and similar social media outlets, beautiful young Syrian, Yemeni and Palestinian children asking, in their innocence, for NATO to stop throttling them. And then we have the bigger battalions, who are as impervious to today’s crimes of empire in Syria, Yemen and Palestine, as their colonial forefathers were to similar crimes in those very same theaters. I know whose side I am on.

Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, Caroline Elkins, The Bodley Head.

By Brett WILKINS

As millions of Britons and admirers the world over mourned Queen Elizabeth II’s death Thursday, others—especially in nations formerly colonized by the British Empire—voiced reminders of the “horrendous cruelties” perpetrated against them during the monarch’s reign.

“Her legacy is colonialism, slavery, racism, loot, and plundering.”

“We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history,” declared Julius Malema, head of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party in South Africa.

“Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, reigning for 70 years as a head of an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world,” he continued.

“During her 70-year reign as queen, she never once acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world,” Malema noted. “She willingly benefited from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world.”

“The British royal family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation, at the center of which lies the British royal family,” Malema added.

Larry Madowo, a CNN International correspondent from Kenya, said during a Thursday broadcast that “the fairytale is that Queen Elizabeth went up the treetops here in Kenya a princess and came down a queen because it’s when she was here in Kenya that she learned that her dad had died and she was to be the queen.”

“But that also was the start of the eight years after that, that the… British colonial government cracked down brutally on the Mau Mau rebellion against the colonial administration,” he continued. “They herded more than a million people into concentration camps, where they were tortured and dehumanized.”

In addition to rampant torture—including the systemic castration of suspected rebels and sympathizers, often with pliers—British forces and their local allies massacred unarmed civilians, disappeared their children, sadistically raped women, and clubbed prisoners to death.

“And so,” added Madowo, “across the African continent, there have been people who are saying, ‘I will not mourn for Queen Elizabeth, because my ancestors suffered great atrocities under her people that she never fully acknowledged that.”

Indeed, instead of apologizing for its crimes and compensating its victims, the British government launched Operation Legacy, a massive effort to erase evidence of colonial crimes during the period of rapid decolonization in the 1950s-’70s.

“If the queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism and urged the Crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad,” tweeted Cornell University professor Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ. “As a Kenyan, I feel nothing. This theater is absurd.”

Aldani Marki, an activist with the Organization of Solidarity with the Yemeni Struggle, asserted that “Queen Elizabeth is a colonizer and has blood on her hands.”

“In 1963 the Yemeni people rebelled against British colonialism. In turn the Queen ordered her troops to violently suppress any and all dissent as fiercely as possible,” he tweeted. “The main punitive measure of Queen Elizabeth’s Aden colony was forced deportations of native Yemenis into Yemen’s desert heartland.”

“This is Queen Elizabeth’s legacy,” Marki continued. “A legacy of colonial violence and plunder. A legacy of racial segregation and institutionalized racism.”

“The queen’s England is today waging another war against Yemen together with the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the UAE,” he added.

Melissa Murray, a Jamaican-American professor at New York University School of Law, said that the queen’s death “will accelerate debates about colonialism, reparations, and the future of the Commonwealth” as “the residue of colonialism shadows day-to-day life in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean.”

Numerous observers noted how the British Empire plundered around $45 trillion from India over two centuries of colonialism that resulted in millions of deaths, and how the Kohinoor—one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, with an estimated value of $200 million—was stolen from India to be set in the queen mother’s crown.

“Why are Indians mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II?” asked Indian economist Manisha Kadyan on Twitter. “Her legacy is colonialism, slavery, racism, loot, and plundering. Despite having chances, she never apologized for [the] bloody history of her family. She reduced everything to a ‘difficult past episode’ on her visit to India. Evil.”

An Indian historian tweeted, “there are only 22 countries that Britain never invaded throughout history.”

“British ships transported a total of three million Africans to the New World as slaves,” he wrote. “An empire that brought misery and famine to Asia and Africa. No tears for the queen. No tears for the British monarchy.”

Negative reaction to the queen’s passing was not limited to the Global South. Despite the historic reconciliation between Ireland and Britain this century, there were celebrations in Dublin—as a crowd singing “Lizzie’s in a Box” at a Celtic FC football match attests—and among the Irish diaspora.

“I’m Irish,” tweeted MSNBC contributor Katelyn Burns, “hating the queen is a family matter.”

Welsh leftists got in on the action too. The Welsh Underground Network tweeted a litany of reasons why “we will not mourn.”

“We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the protection of known child molesters in the family,” the group said.

“We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the active destruction of the Welsh language, and the Welsh culture,” the separatists added.

Summing up the sentiments of many denizens of the Global South and decolonization defenders worldwide, Assal Rad, research director at the National Iranian American Council, tweeted, “If you have more sympathy for colonizers and oppressors than the people they oppress, you may need to evaluate your priorities.”

commondreams.org

By Brett WILKINS

As millions of Britons and admirers the world over mourned Queen Elizabeth II’s death Thursday, others — especially in nations formerly colonized by the British Empire — voiced reminders of the “horrendous cruelties” perpetrated against them during the monarch’s reign.

“We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history,” declared Julius Malema, head of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party in South Africa.

“Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, reigning for 70 years as a head of an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world,” he continued.

“During her 70-year reign as queen, she never once acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world,” Malema noted. “She willingly benefited from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world.”

Black and brown people around the world who were subject to horrendous cruelties and economic deprivation under British colonialism are allowed to have feelings about Queen Elizabeth.

After all, they were her “subjects” too.

— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) September 8, 2022

“The British royal family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation, at the center of which lies the British royal family,” Malema added.

Larry Madowo, a CNN International correspondent from Kenya, said during a Thursday broadcast that “the fairytale is that Queen Elizabeth went up the treetops here in Kenya a princess and came down a queen because it’s when she was here in Kenya that she learned that her dad had died and she was to be the queen.”

“But that also was the start of the eight years after that, that the … British colonial government cracked down brutally on the Mau Mau rebellion against the colonial administration,” he continued. “They herded more than a million people into concentration camps, where they were tortured and dehumanized.”

Larry Madowo is telling the African story as it is on a global platform. Queen Elizabeth was not universally loved in Africa.pic.twitter.com/pD4dfRS2FW

— Marvin, WordSmith ?? (@MarvinGakunyi) September 9, 2022

In addition to rampant torture — including the systemic castration of suspected rebels and sympathizers, often with pliers — British forces and their local allies massacred unarmed civilians, disappeared their children, sadistically raped women and clubbed prisoners to death.

“And so,” added Madowo, “across the African continent, there have been people who are saying, ‘I will not mourn for Queen Elizabeth, because my ancestors suffered great atrocities under her people that she never fully acknowledged that.”

Indeed, instead of apologizing for its crimes and compensating its victims, the British government launched Operation Legacy, a massive effort to erase evidence of colonial crimes during the period of rapid decolonization in the 1950s-’70s.

Reminder that Queen Elizabeth is not a remnant of colonial times. She was an active participant in colonialism. She actively tried to stop independence movements & she tried to keep newly independent colonies from leaving the commonwealth. The evil she did was enough https://t.co/SDGi0boCzx

— Nsafoa’s Feminist Duck ???? (@YaaAsantewaaBa) September 8, 2022

“If the queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism and urged the Crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad,” tweeted Cornell University professor Mukoma wa Ngugi. “As a Kenyan, I feel nothing. This theater is absurd.”

2022 Fall Fund Drive

Aldani Marki, an activist with the Organization of Solidarity with the Yemeni Struggle, asserted that “Queen Elizabeth is a colonizer and has blood on her hands.”

“In 1963 the Yemeni people rebelled against British colonialism. In turn the Queen ordered her troops to violently suppress any and all dissent as fiercely as possible,” he tweeted. “The main punitive measure of Queen Elizabeth’s Aden colony was forced deportations of native Yemenis into Yemen’s desert heartland.”

In 1963 the Yemeni people rebelled against British colonialism. In turn the Queen ordered her troops to violently suppress any and all dissent as fiercely as possible. pic.twitter.com/zAmhAe71Y5

— ???? ????????? (@Aldanimarki) September 8, 2022

“This is Queen Elizabeth’s legacy,” Marki continued. “A legacy of colonial violence and plunder. A legacy of racial segregation and institutionalized racism.”

“The queen’s England is today waging another war against Yemen together with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.,” he added.

Melissa Murray, a Jamaican-American professor at New York University School of Law, said that the queen’s death “will accelerate debates about colonialism, reparations, and the future of the Commonwealth” as “the residue of colonialism shadows day-to-day life in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean.”

Jamaica, Scotland, and Australia are just some of the countries that could decide to sever ties with the monarchy. https://t.co/NcUjfivutG

— VICE (@VICE) September 9, 2022

Numerous observers noted how the British Empire plundered around $45 trillion from India over two centuries of colonialism that resulted in millions of deaths, and how the Kohinoor — one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, with an estimated value of $200 million — was stolen from India to be set in the queen mother’s crown.

“Why are Indians mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II?” asked Indian economist Manisha Kadyan on Twitter. “Her legacy is colonialism, slavery, racism, loot, and plundering. Despite having chances, she never apologized for [the] bloody history of her family. She reduced everything to a ‘difficult past episode’ on her visit to India. Evil.”

If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star.

— Uju Anya (@UjuAnya) September 8, 2022

An Indian historian tweeted, “there are only 22 countries that Britain never invaded throughout history.”

“British ships transported a total of three million Africans to the New World as slaves,” he wrote. “An empire that brought misery and famine to Asia and Africa. No tears for the queen. No tears for the British monarchy.”

Negative reaction to the queen’s passing was not limited to the Global South. Despite the historic reconciliation between Ireland and Britain this century, there were celebrations in Dublin — as a crowd singing “Lizzie’s in a Box” at a Celtic FC football match attests — and among the Irish diaspora.

“I’m Irish,” tweeted MSNBC contributor Katelyn Burns, “hating the queen is a family matter.”

Welsh leftists got in on the action too. The Welsh Underground Network tweeted a litany of reasons why “we will not mourn.”

“We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the protection of known child molesters in the family,” the group said.

“We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the active destruction of the Welsh language, and the Welsh culture,” the separatists added.

Summing up the sentiments of many denizens of the Global South and decolonization defenders worldwide, Assal Rad, research director at the National Iranian American Council, tweeted, “If you have more sympathy for colonizers and oppressors than the people they oppress, you may need to evaluate your priorities.”

Common Dreams via consortiumnews.com