A Bridge in Baltimore
RSS
Search Text Case Sensitive Exact Words Include Comments
List of Bookmarks
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge is the finishing blow to one of America’s worst cities.
Subscribe to View From the Right on BitChute here.
(Republished from American Renaissance by permission of author or representative)
• Category: Ideology • Tags: Political Correctness
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
The bridge looks more like it was demolished. I’m no engineer but it seems pretty bizarre that the ship hitting one end could bring the far end and everything in between, down. Maybe that’s exactly what happened, I don’t know. But with all of the train derailments, toxic spills, spontaneous explosions, and other inexplicable mishaps affecting transportation, food production, and energy production since January, 2021, it looks to me like an organized effort to force-crash the United States is ongoing. Note that government officials are threatening anyone flying a drone near the wreck to photograph it with imprisonment – they don’t want any close-up photography they can’t control.
The black imbeciles in designer sports wear with monograms masquerading as “leaders” are wonderful comedy, by the way.
Joe Biden has announced that the (U.S. taxpayer) money is on the way to rebuild the bridge. Since the ship alone was responsible for the destruction and is insured by Lloyds of London, why should we pay?
Race-ism is truth.
Race-ist Biden was the Best Biden. That was a long time ago.
Good point, I suppose. Surely Lloyd’s can afford to spare a few bucks for this purpose, no?
Partly, I think, because the political leadership in this country is all about socializing losses of any kind; partly because the notion of responsibility in general is seen as a white construct and hence reviled.
Then of course there’s the idea that borrowed money is free forever and comes completely without cost. At least until after the current leadership is dead and buried.
He is a hood from the hood in a hoodie.
I don’t know how long it will take, how much it will cost, or what design the new bridge will have.
But I can guarantee you all one thing. It will not be named after Francis Scott Key.
Shame what has happened to a once great place to live.
How much did Lucky Larry Silverstein 💰 on the Key Bridge? Wait a minute. That name sounds familiar? What the hell? That same guy from the WTC 911?
5 Dancing Israel 🇮🇱
Just another COHENcidence.
As strange as it may sound today, Baltimore was once one of America’s leading cities. So was Detroit.
The Star Spangled Banner is one of the ugliest songs in the world. A quick and clean consignment to the dustbin of history might gain whitey a shred of dignity, which is why he won’t do it.
I believe in 1970 Baltimore was the 6th largest city in America and Detroit was the 5th largest city in terms of city populations. Baltimore peaked in population in 1950 at roughly 950 thousand in the city not counting the metro. In 1910 the population of Baltimore was just 558 thousand which was huge back then. Over a century later Baltimore is well under 600 thousand. Baltimore and especially Detroit helped put America on the map. Shame what has happened to 2 of America’s most historic cities which also include St. Louis, New Orleans, San Francisco and to a lesser extent Philly & D.C. which are not far behind in terms of negro and/or modern day urban shitholes.
🍀 Lucky Larry 🇮🇱
The Brandon Regime says it will take too long for the insurers to cut a check. But it has more to do with the fact that a private insurer will want to do its own investigation first. Just as in all prior Washington cover-ups in which he played a part, Brandon wants none of that.
Freddie Gray Memorial Bridge incels!!! You heard it here first!
There was one guy in Baltimore who could have straightened this bridge mess up damn quick. Unfortunately Proposition Joe is dead.
If you see a pattern
Close your eyes.
Quite true.
In terms of Witey,
‘Home of the brave’
Is laughable.
They’ve already decided that the new bridge will be called the Trayvonus Jackson memorial bridge. Who is or was Trayvonus Jackson? He was the last negro to graduate from the Baltimore School District. That was in 1963. He died of a purple drank overdose in 2020.
But Anacreon in Heaven is celestial!
You can say that again.
☎️ P Diddler at 777-9311
Fleece says no vaz, raw dawg, yo.
‘The Bridge’ from Ivo Andric got the Nobel Prize for literature in 1961 for the main reason that bridges symbolize the Life of Man:
https://www.academia.edu/34446481/The_Infinite_Life_of_the_Bridge_Photo_Essay_
The case at hand in Baltimore thus means much more than it would appear:
https://www.academia.edu/74111120/The_Last_Act_Red_Alert_
Note that to read the articles, simply SCROLL DOWN; no sign-in is necessary. Thanks.
Drink poison with your pedo-friends in the Fusion Center, Glownigger.
It’s just a troon-fanboying Kike, everyone. The refuse of Mittleuropan shitliberalism infecting every continent like Yahweh desires.
You should kill yourself and your workmates at the Fed Office, glowie.
Even as businesses have to take measures like this, they cannot admit it’s a black problem.
Under a system of Economic Fascism like the one we have here in the United States, corporate profits are shared among corporate executives and stockholders, with loses shared among taxpayers in the form of tax write-offs and un-earned tax refunds.
The next steps will include robbing patrons for french fries as they leave the “restaurant” followed by kidnappings to force people to order food. This will be supplanted by UBI with free food for everyone not white (ENW).
Anyway contrary to what those people say Netanyahu’s choice trumps even that of the American deep state and his choice is Trump. Since the genocide of Gaza has begun the signal has been given to all Jewry to drop DEI in the same fashion the takeover of Israel by Menahem Begin and Ariel Sharon in 1977 was the signal given to all Jews to drop pro-worker marxism.
At Johns Hopkins (Baltimore) in the old lobby, there is a large statue of Jesus. Sometimes patients, families, and yes, top-tier docs, touch Jesus’s toes for good luck as they pass by. (Yes, docs. Maybe a brain surgeon on his way to operate. Hey, it can’t hurt…”The Divine Healer” after all. I guess it can’t hurt…as long as the doc doesn’t rely on the toe-touch to get it right.) Anyway, as long as they are doing the toe-rub anyway, maybe they should throw-in a prayer for a speedy rebuilding of the bridge.
2009 Samurai sword incident
No charge for Md. college student in sword slaying
By BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press Writer
Jan. 28, 2010 4:01 PM PT
BALTIMORE — Prosecutors say a Johns Hopkins University student feared for his life when he used a samurai sword to kill an unarmed intruder and they have decided not to file any charges.
Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said Thursday that John Pontolillo will not be charged in the death of career criminal Donald D. Rice.
Jessamy says a review of the evidence and witness interviews shows Pontolillo was justified in striking Rice.
https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2009/09/hopkins-student-kills-intruder-with-samurai-sword-16872/
Uhhh, let’s see.
Emmett Till … Malcolm X … Harriet Tubman … George Floyd …
Wait! Got it!
Martin Luther King.
You wanna be a dindoos sissy boi so bad dont you Trina?
Here’s my Baltimore experience, which happened in 2018. My husband and I wanted to see Fort McHenry and the aquarium while we lived in Virginia briefly, so we spent a few days there. We decided a simple way to get to Fort McHenry would be to take the local, free bus — the Charm City Circulator — and we planned to catch it early to be there when it opened.
Several people were loitering at the bus stop. First, we saw a young man smoking a joint, and he would blow the exhale into his girlfriend’s mouth while masturbating himself. Then a short, homeless guy who reminded me of Dustin Hoffman came up and shouted one long shout into our faces. He then turned around and walked a few yards away to receive a cigarette from a black woman (payment for the attempt at intimidation?). The bus arrived, and we got on the nearly empty bus. We sat near the back, and the one passenger behind us started singing very loudly. So we moved to the front of the bus and sat across from a perhaps 8-year-old boy who was accompanied by a woman with Down’s Syndrome. He stared at me and began to masturbate.
Baltimore is a beautiful city. Millions have been spent renovating the inner harbor, and the waterfront is gorgeous, despite all the real estate development. I can only imagine how nice it was in safer times.
Why are so many Black males cawksuckers and homosexuals on the DL, playa?
P Diddler wants those cheeks, yo.
At JHU on Charles St there is a bronze statue of Johns Hopkins—students rub his nose before exams (at least they did years ago when I was there) for good luck—hence is nose is very shiny unlike the rest of the statue
Its a powerful patriotic poem later set to music.
A poem that could only be written by a witness to the very dramatic emotional events of those two days.
1000s of old and modern pop songs are far far worse, when merely comparing song to song.
My great aunts and uncles lived there and said it was almost like heaven until the late 1960s
1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Baltimore)
1.6 mile bridge for $141m in 1977.
2)
NYT March 26 claims cost $141m in 1977 after ~ 5 years of construction
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/us/francis-scott-key-bridge-baltimore-history.html
“When the bridge opened, The New York Times reported that construction costs had totaled $141 million, which is roughly $735 million in today’s dollars.
The bridge itself spans 1.6 miles over the Patapsco River, but the crossing’s overall structure, including its connecting approaches, is almost 11 miles long. As part of Interstate 695, it is the outermost of three major crossings of the Baltimore Harbor.”
3)
This bridge opened in 1835 remains in use as a railway bridge. Perhaps President Biden was referring to this 1835 bridge that spans the same river
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Viaduct
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patapsco_River
4) Johns Hopkins private armed police force: JHU is lobbying hard for changes in state law
cost to rebuild
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/04/02/how-much-will-the-baltimore-bridge-reconstruction-cost/
1940’s Baltimore
Harper’s Ferry ~ 6:40
Video Link
Video Link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Levinson
Thanks. Another reminder of how casually (but thoroughly) civilized this country once was, and how full of casually (but thoroughly) competent people it was.
Lest anyone wonder, I use the word ‘casually’ in the previous paragraph merely to denote how much a matter of course these things had become.
“There’s a lot of ruin in a nation” and in recent decades our leaders seem to interpret that as a kind of challenge.
I studied structural engineering in college. My classwork included, Mechanics of Materials, Foundation Engineering, Steel Structures, Concrete Design 1 & 2, and Bridge Design.
Steel Bridges rely on the main structural attachment to it foundation. This is usually based on 2 main supports. Most steel bridges built in the 1960’s and 70’s are of similar design.
If one of the main supports is damaged the entire bridge will collapse. The steel truss design is a balancing act of vertical and horizontal forces with triangles. The main support sections are usually much larger than the other members.
I present two examples of sudden steel bridge failures.
1) Tampa Bay (Sunshine Skyway) Bridge Disaster (look it up). A ship struck one of the supports and the whole thing came down.
2) I-35w mississippi river bridge collapse There is good video of this one.
Almost all structural failures are sudden.
For example: Surfside condominium collapse
The I-20 bridge (steel) on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg has been hit multiple times by large tows. The I-20 bridge was purposely built just down river from the old HWY 80 bridge. Therefore the old bridge usually takes the brunt of each hit protecting the I-20 bridge from collapse.
Back to Baltimore Key Bridge. Bases of above review one can see that this type of collapse is typical of a ship striking the main support.
The bridge could not have been demoed without a lot of very loud bangs.
In 1965, the USACE preformed studies of what it would take to cut large steel sections (beams) with C-4. C-4 is plasticized RDX explosive first mass produced in 1942 or 1943.
In this test two cross sections were cut with C-4. The section followed by amount of C-4 required for assured cut are listed below.
36WF300 ~7 lb
14WF426 ~12 lb
I was 1/4 mile away when we demoed a M60 mortar HE round that contained about 1/2 lb of explosive with 1 lb of C-4. The explosion was loud and we felt the pressure wave at that distance.
Therefore the sound and pressure waves from demoing the Key bridge would have been in multiple explosions with large pressure waves. These would have been heard by a lot of people.
Could the ship have been directed into the support? possibility.
Should there have been better Dolphins to protect the main bridge support? I believe yes.
The pilot steering the ship was a harbor pilot. All ports use harbor pilot for ships to enter and exit ports.
The whole thing stinks but bridge collapses have occurred many times and they will happen again in the future.
The problem here seems to have been a lack of redundancies on the ship. How can there be no backup power for steering controls? How does a ship “lose power?”
When they were peopled by civilized white people. Now they are peopled by negro savages and the whites that remain are typically self hating blue haired freaks.
The JEW/WASP Ruling Class of the American Empire has used Black criminality and Black unpleasantness to chase a lot of White Core Americans out of cities and then the Black criminality and Black unpleasantness was curbed and some Whites moved back to the cities and now some Whites are remembering what White Flight was about from four or five or six decades ago.
White Flight Churn is the word for it in the real estate business, just like Non-Supervisory Worker Churn is what the business world calls the shuffling in and shuffling out of non-supervisory workers.
For decades since the moment Fed Chairman Volcker kicked the federal funds rate up to about 20 percent in 1981 there has been a debt binge of a massive magnitude, and this debt binge went bananas in the places that had already been set up for a long time to absorb massive re-development and massive increases in population, suburbs and urban centers, and these suburbs and urban centers started to sprawl and blend in together and mingle and overlap, and that is what that fancy word ‘conurbation’ means, I guess.
In the song The Big Country, Scottish baby boomer scamp David Byrne croaks out something about the undeveloped areas and suburbs and he said he wouldn’t live there if they paid him.
The debt-based fiat currency called the dollar requires a constant expansion of debt or the financial system would contract or implode, and conurbation fits the bill pretty good and if the banker wankers ain’t getting their conurbation then they would be up Shit’s Creek without any saps to clam rake loot out of.
The Pewitt Conjured Loot Portion(PCLP) will pay each American who has all blood ancestry born in colonial America or the USA before 1924 a cool ten thousand dollars a month. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank shall work together to conjure up the cash out of thin air, just like the ruling class is doing now.
The dirty slob money-grubbing landlords and the greedy evil business owners don’t want no Pewitt Conjured Loot Portion(PCLP) because logic would dictate that many people would give the double bird to the landlords and the greedy business owners if they were to get the ten thousand dollars a month from the PCLP.
Conurbation will be reversed and trees restored when the Pewitt Plan to be environmentally-friendly is put in place and the USA goes back to the 220 million people we had in 1978. Foreigners and their spawn and plenty of old stocker scumbags who’ve pushed nation-killing open borders mass immigration will be legally removed using citizenship revocations and the like and there will be plenty of space for the patriotic WHITE CORE AMERICANS.
The Big Country by Talking Heads:
Video Link
H.L. Mencken(1880-1956) was a German who loved being German in a Baltimore and a Maryland that had filled up with Germans by the time he was born. Mencken rode out prohibition by stacking booze up to the rafters in his basement and just waited out the drinkwater kooks who cooked up prohibition. They could have just stopped the rot gut coming in from Canada without spoiling everybody else’s fun.
Mencken loved to play in a brass band with his pals and then drink beer. Mencken was an interesting man. Most of us are too lazy nowadays to read deeply in the way that Mencken did.
Germans everywhere are warily bemused by Blacks, I imagine. Mid-Atlantic Germans who have had extensive contact with Blacks are not judgemental of Southerners regarding how to live with Blacks.
Baltimore has gone from being a European Christian port city that shipped out tobacco to an Africanized hellhole where Blacks blast and butcher each other and everybody else with wild abandon. The Whites who live in Baltimore must be either low IQ dolts or nutcakes or both.
The business model for tobacco cultivation must have taken a lot of labor. Greedy businessmen used the Black slaves to make bundles of loot on tobacco and other crops. Now Baltimore is harvesting a bushel of Black butchers who kill each other and everybody else without much thought or care.
The Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League celebrate the cop-hating Black thugs who infest the Black Lives Matter mob. They don’t seem to much care for the Blacks killed by other blacks or anybody else killed by Blacks.
The Baltimore Ravens have a training facility in Owings Mills, Maryland.
Nathaniel Owings served as an officer in the American Colonial Secessionary War from the English Empire.
WSJ / civil engineer thinks that bridge can be rebuilt within 12 months
https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-shouldnt-take-long-to-rebuild-baltimores-key-bridge-maryland-construction-46eb8151
David Byrne was a local to the Baltimore area from 8 to 20. You can read it in the “Early life and education” section of his wikipedia page.
Blacks are more muscular and more aggressive. Best argument against racial integration.
But this most essential admittance was prevented by stupid white male pride.
Muscular and aggressive just like gorillas, yet we wouldn’t think of living with gorillas.
Yes, Detroit was once called the Paris of the Midwest. How the mighty have fallen.
1963 film with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant : Grant’s character says his mother lives in Detroit.
The ship didn’t lose “steering control” per se; it lost motive power, and engines may fail any number of ways. (Though usually there is more than one.)
Anyway, without motive power you no longer have water flowing past the rudder hence no possible effect upon direction. You’re essentially helpless (“rudderless”) and adrift: at the mercy of the currents.
And all these years I thought Trayvon Martin was dead and now he turns up as mayor of Baltimore.
That and the fact that they have no conscience.
Another thing they have in common with jews.Of course, with jews it comes in the form of moral insanity, and with blacks moral imbecility.
Also, intellectually whites could do to both jews and blacks what this primate did to those boys. That’s why as soon as jews infiltrted the universities they immediately set about exluding whites. This would explain today’s cultural impoverishment in the universities.
Oh, so you are a jew. In fact, aren’t you that Jung-Freud contributor that commenters here say you are? You know, the one who posts those pretentious, badly written pieces under Culturalism (WTF?), and steals his ideas from TUR commenters.
In any event, there was nothing in the video that smacked of stupid white male pride. You just saw that and shared it because you’re a hate-filled anti-white shitposter looking to start a flame war. Better to ignore the flame war and just put you in your place.
If anything they showed gullible trust, which would explain why their guard was down.
And considering who they were talking to, a potentially fatal lack of situational-awareness. Both no doubt the result of extensive jew-driven brainwashing.
Same with the dumb white girl saying “Oh my God!” over and over again and idiotically chiming in that it was 1 against 7 when he obviously started it with a cowardly sucker punch and was clearly much stronger than them. Do you think that simian would take on 7 white men that could actually fight? That’s a rhetorical question of course.
The only brave ones in the video were the young white men who defended their friend even though they must have known that they were outmatched as is any human when up against a savage. After all, you can take the savage animal out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the savage.
The Biden clip would make an excellent campaign ad for the Republicans, if only they had the sense to run it. I would imagine that there are also sound bites with Biden demonstrating his flip-flopping rhetoric on illegal immigration.
Video Link
Video Link
Thanks for the response. When the engines of a 100,000 ton container ship fail the error margins and options have got to be quite limited.
Can’t anything be done with the river current and the ship’s inertia? That’s why it seems odd to me there’s no redundancy for the steering controls.
Freddy”s balls are on fire.
I don’t discount that what you suggest is true, but has everyone ruled out the idea that the actual problem might well have been an incompetent or criminal pilot—i.e., a black guy, perhaps even a black woman? Apropos which, am I correct in thinking that the name of the pilot still has not been revealed? If he were white, surely he would already be in prison and his family would be getting Derek Chauvin–style vilification.
In this video ( https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/lara-logan-francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-everyone/ ), which does not show the mechanics of FSK collapse, the container ship appears to steer out of the channel and directly for the pylon during the last few seconds before impact.
If the ship’s rudder control goes through a computer (as you would expect because it costs less) then the ship could have been taken over by malware, which subsequently erased itself. Remote steering could have been through harbor cameras, which quite likely broadcast over Eithernet cables (that being the standard today). With engine failure and power failure and the attempt at anchoring as distractions, the harbor pilot might not even have realized that his steering wheel had been disconnected. Since the ship was worked on while at Baltimore, just about anything could have been modified by some member of the work crew or even somebody with forged ID, without anybody even noticing.
Really a beautiful job if deliberate, and if considered from a professional covert ops point of view. Even loss of life was minimized by the middle-of-the-night time of attack (no need to be bloody minded about the takedown), although that timing might have just been to delay reaction by tugboats and port authority and take advantage of an ebb tide while leaving Baltimore harbor. And if the FSK takedown was not deliberate, it was very bad luck indeed for the US.
Bad luck because under current regulations the FSK was the only roadway open to no-permit shipments of fuel, propane, inflammable chemicals, gunpowder/ammunition, poison gases such as ammonia fertilizer, inert gases such as nitrogen, and other “hazardous materials” can be shipped by road from the US NE to the US SE. Presumably, all that will now have to be shipped by US coastal shipping or Mississippi barges. The infrastructure for such shipments is, at best, inadequate. The Feds prohibit shipment via other highways because other highways pass through tunnels, which require special permission and a night time convoy system to traverse. The idea is to prevent a mass casualty event in a tunnel. (Lit. ref.: See Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged for a very well known literary description of such a mass casualty event. And you can safely bet that if the Feds eliminate permitting, somebody (there would be many suspects) will arrange for a high casualty in-tunnel event. So, no end to permitting is likely.
Here’s another video of the ship destroying Francis Scott Key (FSK) bridge: https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1772514015790477667 . This video shows the mechanics of bridge collapse after the container ship destroyed a single pylon.
Note that the container ship hit just a little bit to the starboard of its prow. That demolished both columns of the first pier to go. That apparently pulled span on pictures’ right (to NorthEast) off its’ abutment or pulled its abutment over (abutment is off screen right (to NorthEast) and the entire picture’s right span broke when its screen right off camera end hit the shallow water, then the screen right span destroyed the pier to its screen right. Note how slender pier columns were. In summary, The second pier went down, and the remaining part of the truss bridge went with it.
Actually, you’d see about the same result if either pier had been taken down, but the first pier was taken down so quickly and completely that there was no chance that any of the truss bridge spans would somehow remain up.
Three other spans collapsed, same mechanism as the second pier to go. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_%28Baltimore%29 for diagram of destroyed bridge spans and piers.
The three other spans were shorter than the first two and used beam bridges, essentially just H beams resting on pairs of pylons. These three shortspans should not be all that hard to replace, same with the piers, which are not as high as for the two spans over the ship channel. I’d guess that the FSK replacement could also be a beam bridge, but might be a cable stayed bridge. see: https://www.engineeringclicks.com/types-of-bridges/ .
I’d recommend that new piers be placed away from harbor shipping channels. Mud flats make excellent barriers against even very massive ships. Ideally, a cable suspension bridge would be constructed to avoid placing a pier between the harbor’s entrance and exit channels, but cable suspension bridges are very expensive. Further, there is no obvious place (to me, at least) to anchor the suspension bridge cables.
Save for the pronoun, you are correct on all counts. Of course, everything else in your reply is true, too.
I agree. First of all, it started as a filthy rich drunkard’s song not even from America, but from Britain, from among the very degenerate rentier gentry the young nation was supposed to get independent from.
Second, the melody is ugly to the ears of most people who hear it for the first time without knowing what it is (I don’t discuss tastes and my opinion is that the ugliest melody can be beautiful when played by a resourceful virtuoso : the fact is that it is unpleasant to most non oligarchical music concert goers) and one of the most complicated ever in the repertoire of national anthems and patriotic songs, it is nearly unsingable to acceptable correction by the military and educational bodies it is intended for and one of the worst challenges to all orchestra arrangers as well to opera voices : it is absolutely devoid of popular origins as well as of of popular capacity or taste to sing it.
Third, the words are are chosen from one of the least heroic and most disputable episodes of the young US’ history : Baltimore was attacked by British regiments as a target of choice for the reason it was a (((privateering))) harbour specialized in illegal slave trade from both Ireland and Africa ( (((New Orleans))) would later on be bombarded for the same reason) while the attacking armies were composed in great part of liberated slaves, French Canadians and Amerindians. The destruction of both ports was not part of any British intention to invade and retake the USA, the USA’s sovereignty was not at stake (anyway the City of London considered the USA as an autonomous but obedient corporate dominion exactly as EIC’s territory in India), only its capacity to project imperialistic corporate power overseas and to perform that peculiar trade it had promised by treaty no longer to engage in. In that battle, most contrary to those of independence proper or of Tripoli, the US stood on the wrong side of history as the war being waged by Britain was to make the Atlantic ocean and Gulf of Mexico clear of pirates and securely navigable at last.
The adoption of that national anthem took place right at the moment the US Congress was becoming a Jewish-majority body and so as to mark that character, and also at a moment when the days of British sea power were clearly over. Just before the most played national anthem had been the same melody as Britain’s God Save the King with words about national parks, a telling sign the US pretence to independence vis a vis British finance had never been very serious.