The Garden of American Opiates

"Let us suppose that foreigners came from another country, and brought opium into England, and seduced the people of your country to smoke it, would not you, the sovereign of the said country, look upon such a procedure with anger, and in your just indignation endeavor to get rid of it?"

This is an excerpt from the famous 1839 letter, penned by Lin Zexu, addressed to Queen Victoria. Supposedly, this letter was never received by the monarch; no halt in the export of the goods occurred. Several months later, Lin Zexu ordered the destruction of over 20,000 chests of Indian-grown British opium in the port of Canton, the First Opium War commenced, and with it, began China's century of humiliation.

Britain's export of opium to China was an undeniable evil. In the year of 1839, the Chinese population spent 100 million taels of silver on the product, whilst Chinese government expenditure came to only 40 million taels. At the 1909 Shanghai Opium Commission, the head of the US delegation stated 'with a fair amount of certainty' that 30% of the adult male Chinese population were addicted to opium.

William Gladstone, who would eventually become prime minister on four occasions, wrote in his personal diary, "I am in dread of the judgements of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China".

"From their inordinate thirst after gain, they are perfectly careless about the injuries they inflict upon us!" (Lin Zexu, 1839)

For an arrangement that brought about such excessive destabilisation and destruction of a society, the mechanism at play was simple. Lin knew this back then; that if the profit incentive could be removed, his people would not have to compete with such evil. Britain did not listen and continued exporting this horror up until 1917.

In the present day, Britain finds itself on the receiving end of the same mechanism. A karmic reversal if you will. The garden of Britain is overgrown with invasive plants, plants which have been allowed to grow to unmanageable heights. Every single one of these plants comes from America. Our society is addicted to American tech and the damage it has brought and continues to bring to this country is something that desperately needs to change. 

Take Amazon, existing as a massive plant whose fruit replenishes every day; we have become fat and full on this unnatural service, all to the detriment of high streets across the nation. In County Durham, where I grew up, the towns there are facing a third year in a row of increasing shop vacancies. In Peterlee 40.8% of the shops are vacant (Bishop Auckland: 35% Newton Aycliffe: 26%). We all know the reason, it is because online retailers can undercut high street shops every step of the way.

Ecommerce is not the only way Amazon fleeces us. Their AWS (Amazon Web Services) is embedded into Britain's highest offices of state; most of our security architecture is reliant on it... How have our public servants allowed this to happen, and to happen for so long? France has pledged to migrate its civil servants on to the French grown Visio platform by 2027. Earlier this year, they banned officials from US video tools including Zoom and Teams. The French understand that America can never again be allowed to be so deeply entrenched into the inner workings of its government. Britain should follow suit.

A palantir in the world of Middle-earth is a seeing stone, used more often than not for nefarious purposes. Why then would this Labour government allow an American seeing stone into our nation's healthcare records (mountains upon mountains of personal data)? A Mandelson-arranged government visit to the Palantir headquarters in Washington early last year produced some deeply unsettling pictures of Starmer. It seems the only thing that makes a man smile, who does not dream, does not have a favourite book and had no childhood fears, is when he is playing around with the very same tech the IDF has been using so mercilessly in the Gaza strip. 

Alex Karp, Palantir's CEO, recently distilled his book, The Technological Republic, into 22 bullet points in a post on X. In his last bullet point he managed to pluck something of note from his head, stating: "We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism." Yes, Alex. Let's resist hollow arrangements. Let's resist calling American surveillance "partnership." Let's resist calling dependency "innovation". Let’s resist calling subordination "alliance." Britain needs to wake up from its fifty-year dormancy; it needs to resist being further embedded into America’s sick, gimme-gimme-gimme culture. 

If pride before the fall could be encapsulated in one quote, this would be a contender: "Our celestial empire rules over ten thousand kingdoms! Most surely do we possess a measure of godlike majesty which ye cannot fathom!" (Lin Zexu, 1839).

World War 1 crippled the British Empire, over a million men from the British isles and overseas colonies died, with millions more left permanently disabled. This was the turning point in Britain's power; its hegemonic decline commenced from this point. We entered the war due to our signing of the treaty of London, which established the kingdom of Belgium and ensured its perpetual neutrality. This treaty was signed in 1839, the very same year Britain shattered Lin’s idea of China’s place in the world.

Fake patriots invoke the glory of empire yet gloss over the evils empire inflicted. They are so obsessed with a vision of empire, which will never return, that they have become blind to the methods of extraction we once ruthlessly utilised, now being utilised against us. 

Our current crop of right wing politicians make the appeasement of Trump their number one priority. How can it be that a five-time draft dodger, a man who said Britain's 457 fatalities in Afghanistan “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines”, commands their devotion? The answer of course is a lust for money and a detachment to the idea of public service… When Nigel Farage finds the time to step away from his cameo videos, when he doesn't have a gold bullion commercial to slip into, when he doesn't have his £100,000 a month GB news show to present, it is not the people of Clacton he goes to see and listen to the concerns of, no, it's an all inclusive trip to Mar-a-Lago he decides is a better use of his time.

In the last week, Donald Trump has threatened to tariff the UK if we do not remove the measly 2% digital services tax on America’s Tech companies, he has once again told us to open up the north sea, and in private email communications, it has been revealed that America plans on re-evaluating the ownership of the Falklands.

Any politician who claims they operate in the interest of the country, yet ushers in more American influence into Britain, should be rejected as a fraud. We have been seduced by the opium of the 21st century. We must endeavour to get rid of it.

Image: Flickr/Peter Thoeny

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