I assume that’s similar to the way in which history in British schools jumps straight from Henry VIII to the Blitz and sort of bypasses the Empire entirely?

NomadUK

I don’t actually think that’s true. If I had a criticism it would be the opposite – excessive political correctness.

I don’t know, Craig. My youngest son’s gone through primary and secondary school, is finishing up his first year of GCSEs, and I don’t think anywhere in there did he learn anything about the rise and fall of an empire that, for good and bad, forged the world we live in right now.

Are we taught in school exactly where the major decisions in UK government are made? For instance, there was no debate in Cabinet about going to war with Iraq, so are we to assume that this decision was made by Tony Blair alone? Just one man made this mammoth decision. I don’t think so.

Instead of diverting our attention to other countries it is far more important to find our who really governs our country?

Might want to check out our “history” books before poking fun of the Russians.

No doubt our history books will state four Muslims were responsible for 7/7 and avoid the evidence that it was most probably a false flag operation conducted by our intelligence services to lend credence to aggressive wars and to hype up the terrorist threat to reduce our civil rights ready for the mass unrest when the economy starts to bite.

Gadzooks, this thread’s gone a bit postal already. Fair enough complaining about how history is taught in schools, for that matter any subject when we’re churning out kids (even with degrees) who can’t communicate effectively, but we do have a free press and other than Justice Eady, an historically free publishing industry. As far as I know we can get access to all websites and search for any info we want.

Airbrushing history is obviously a bit of a problem for every society, in that people forget or that there’s a lack of incentive and enthusiasm in the teaching profession, but i’d be inclined to think that Britain has always fostered a spirit of eccentricity which allows and even respects opinions and narratives which don’t usually gain academic acceptance.

Are they planning to downplay the horrors of the post-Soviet era as well? Chechnya presumably will be dressed up as the war on terror and it accomplices, people like Anna Politkovskaya.

iara lee speaks at UN:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTZWhQL22o

Suppose the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact will get short shrift!

‘It is already the case that the Stalin/Hitler pact and invasion of Poland in 1939 are not taught in Russian schools.’

‘As a result of the holding, the teaching of evolution remained illegal in Tennessee, and continued campaigning succeeded in removing evolution from school textbooks throughout the United States.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation%E2%80%93evolution_controversy

Quite right Ruth, when and who will own up to the shooting at Canary Wharf on 7/7/05 seen by bank employees told not to look and prevented from leaving the building.

Do you know anything? – contact me confidentially at help@coia.org.uk

We should worry more about the lies and omissions in history lessons in our own schools.

Omissions are more deadly than downright lies.

Lies, at least, will possibly be challenged……unless there is a D-Notice on challenges to subject matter or on the mentioning of any other unmentionables.

There are many such taboos in operation, itches that must no be scratched.

Some one above mentioned Anna Politkovskaya. These might be of interest:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/25/anna-politkovskaya-russia-supreme-court-retrial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/14/nothing-but-the-truth-anna-politkovskaya-review-by-peter-preston

Her book ‘A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya’ is worth reading. Going from memory – I read it some time ago – she recounts summary executions by Russian forces (including of patients in hospitals). Also, the imprisonment of a three year old child in, essentially, an oubliette (pit in the ground). There’s much more – these are just some bits that stuck in memory. She doesn’t ignore the actions of Chechen rebels either.

Haven’t got round to reading ‘Putin’s Russia’ yet – probably ought to.

Ruth said “are we to assume that this decision was made by Tony Blair alone? Just one man made this mammoth decision. I don’t think so.”

I don’t think so either. The House of Commons debated the issue on 18 March 2003 and voted for war by 412 – 149.

We mustn’t be guilty of re-writing history.

To Paul J Lewis -

Thanks for the links.

Would highly recommend “Nothing but the Truth: Selected Dispatches” – an anthology of Politkovskaya’s work. Amazing journalism, as courageous at it gets.

Two brief things to say about her here in response to some of the comments – (1) she was often very critical of Chechnya’s leaders; (2) she was at her best, in my view, in establishing that the Nord-Ost theatre massacre was facilitated by one of the Russian security/intelligence agencies.

But as they say, read the whole thing.

“It is already the case that the Stalin/Hitler pact and invasion of Poland in 1939 are not taught in Russian schools.”

Or, I’m guessing, pre-war Soviet assistance to Nazi Germany in development of weapons and providing an out of sight place to train its armed forces.

Blegburnduddoo

True, the House of Commons debated the issue on 18 March 2003 and voted for war by 412 – 149. But surely Parliament wouldn’t have voted for war if they hadn’t been misled. The question is why did Blair have to lie to Parliament? On whose authority did he do this?

The former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said, “I have no doubt whatsoever that if Mr Blair had told his Cabinet what he is now saying, he’d have found it very difficult to keep all of them – he did of course lose Robin Cook and eventually Clare Short.

“But the one place he would have undoubtedly failed would have been in the House of Commons. He would not have obtained the endorsement of the House of Commons on 18 March 2003 if he had been as frank with the House of Commons then as he appears to be willing to be frank with the BBC now.”

I have a recommendation:

Read ‘Conjouring Hitler’ by Professor Guido Giacomo Preparata. It is a seriously unsettling antidote to the ‘official narrative’ of the genesis, conduct and denoument of World War II which we are all so sedulously schooled in. A narrative that in near equal measure is sanctimonious, self-serving and false; not to mention well past its sell-by date.

The Invasion of Poland and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact indeed turn out NOT to have been the pivotal events of fond, popular and simplistic imagining.

There are 3 reviews and an afterword on my wikispooks.com site for anyone interested – all linked from the front page ‘Latest Articles’.

Preperata’s own site is also well worth a visit. As a bonus, it’s also a veritable work of art with some exquisite music on hand to boot. guidopreparata.com.

PS while I’m overstaying my welcome here (in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound as they say) I could do with some good editors/authors on WikiSpooks too. Volunteers most welcome.

That gaurdian which was pimping for war criminal still at large tony bastard blair?

the same gaurdian which was opimping for british attack n iraq anad afgansitan and most of the agenda to make another british empire now derailed by resitance by brave iraqi and afggan fighters?

U.S. relations with Russia have been horrendously bad ever since Putin threw out the oligarchs and decided not to take dictation from either Washington or London.

chamberlain in 1938 at Munich was several times heard saying_intercepted by the soviets-that “we shoudl make soviets and Germany fight amosnt each other till they are bloodied and then we british will get in Europe”

=======================================================================================================================

“Modus operandi of british and american scumbags –Groom an opposition candidate to run against the guy you hate, pay him well and line up your media to back him.

During the campaign, sell him as the savior of the bourgeois opposition who lost their money in the revolution. Use your own pollsters and media propaganda to convince his followers that they are going to win by a wide margin.

When your guy loses, scream “FRAUD!” It’s akin to yelling “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre, inflaming all those disappointed bourgeois counter-revolutionaries. Get them out on the street, setting fires, playing the victim, waving flags, ready-to-go placards, banners, women crying in front of CNN and BBC cameras and men yelling angrily ”

Russia i=under medvedev is already looking like yeltsin style sell out to anglosaxon bastards. itis high time that the world says to the anglos acumbags-keep off my territory otehrwise you will ose your teritory.!

World war =all two ere started by the british to wage war agasint Germany and Russia and ruin them.

As America teetered on the brink of entering World War II, Charles A. Lindbergh gave a fateful speech that did more damage to the America First movement for peace than all the propagandistic efforts of the pro-war groups he named in Des Moines that day. In his oration, the great aviator and American hero sought to define who and what had brought us to the point of no return:

“The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.

“Behind these groups, but of lesser importance, are a number of capitalists, Anglophiles, and intellectuals who believe that the future of mankind depends upon the domination of the British empire. Add to these the Communistic groups who were opposed to intervention until a few weeks ago, and I believe I have named the major war agitators in this country.”

========================================

“During the months prior to his assassination, U.S. President John F. Kennedy had come to a solid agreement with U.S.A. General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur respecting the implications of a U.S.A./Indo-China conflict. The President and General MacArthur had agreed, that the U.S.A. should abhor any effort to conduct extended warfare within the continent of Asia; they, and those who shared this view, were able to block a Trans-Atlantic, Anglo-American oligarchical faction’s impulse for such warfare for as long as President Kennedy lived, but not much longer.

The United States has never recovered, whether in physical economy, or in the morale of its citizens, from the effects of that long war of ten more years, then, a war through which the U.S.A. largely destroyed both its own economy and public morality as a result.

The inception of that war-policy which President Kennedy had opposed, had already been set into motion on the day following the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The sweeping change, from President Franklin Roosevelt’s anti-imperialist policy, to the Churchill-directed, contrary policies of the U.S. under President Harry S Truman, was expressed as Truman’s support for Churchill’s defense of pre-war British, Dutch, and French imperialism, that against what had been the just-deceased Franklin Roosevelt’s intention to eliminate all territorial imperialisms as soon as the war had been won.

The U.S. major warfare in Indo-China which was unleashed after the assassination of President Kennedy, became, in effect, the means employed for the British empire’s revenge against the United States, revenge for what London hated as President Franklin Roosevelt’s declared intention for the post-war period, his repeatedly stated commitment to bringing the existence of imperial systems such as the British quickly to an early end once the war had concluded.

Those facts must remind us, that the nations of continental Europe, including Russia, have had repeated experiences of a similarly ruinous type of what the British slyly term “foreign relations” among nations, still, to the present date, as I note that fact here in the following terms.

There had been the case of the long religious warfare in Europe during the A.D. 1492-1648 interval. There had been the so-called “Seven Years War,” whose concluding 1763 Peace of Paris saw the newly hatched British Empire of Lord Shelburne as triumphant over nearly all of those nations of continental Europe. Later came Napoleon Bonaparte’s imperial wars, which were, in effect, a new “Seven Years War,” in their turn, wars which strengthened that British Empire immensely, as had been done in the Peace of Paris earlier, thus, once more at the expense of the nations of a duped continental Europe.

So, later, Germany’s then-ousted Chancellor Bismarck had warned, insightfully, that the British monarchy’s plans for what would become the general war in Europe and Asia of the 1895-1917 interval, would be “a new Seven Years War.” Later, the great war of 1939-1945, had been launched with initial British backing of the Adolf Hitler regime. Virtually at the moment of the cessation of that war, Britain’s Winston Churchill, and his admirer and accomplice President Harry S Truman joined an evil Bertrand Russell in launching what came to be called a 1946-1989 “Cold War”; that was, at that time, a more recent illustration of the same kind of strategic folly of “long wars” in the tradition of the “new Seven Years War” to which the ousted Chancellor Bismarck had referred. Today, the long warfare which is presently centered in the poppy fields of Afghanistan, has been another such case of the follies of the often half-witting powers of the post-World War II modern world

“

war monger state england the real criminal state.

How did England started the w.w.2. It happened like this. Though admirer of Hitler and his despicable views, England got worried of German might. (England always has inferiority complex versus Germans).England made a secret pact with Germany that it was all right for Germany to attack East And later Russia. England will in public make a few sound-bites but inside it will fully support Hitler and his nasty aims. England may offer token resistance for public consumption. Hitler believed it. He should have known better. In fact what Hitler described in

Bleargh.

Would this be a good time to recommend the ‘preview’ button ? Or learning from other peoples’ mistakes ?

No. Too late.

Posting links would be a great improvement, if only it didn’t cause posts to disappear into “moderation”, never to be seen again.

Sorry if this sounds a bit sour, I just wish meaningful conversation wasn’t so easy to make difficult (even if inadvertently).

Nothing like the anti-Semitic revisionism of the comments at Craig Murray’s website to get me going in the morning! Thanks Avatar Singh!

(I’m still in the Seattle area, btw. That still does not mean that I’ve moved to the Seattle area).

They don’t appear to be moving in the right direction. That Larry bloke sounds like a cock.

Craig, you are a qualified historian. Why not write a history of Russia better than the others? You might be invited to lecture at the Foreign Office or Harvard on the modern history of the ex-Soviet Islamic republics relevant to diplomats, and have even more money and influence as a special advisor, than you did as an ambassador (no harm dreaming).

Off topic but the flotilla posts are now way back here.

This is about the yellow belly of the FCO and in particular the one of Alistair Burt, the ME Minister and a good member of the CFoI. Shame on him and Hague. We have heard from the passengers that the British consular people hardly lifted a finger in Ashdod and at the prison in Beersheva.

http://aqsa.org.uk/HOME/tabid/36/ctl/Details/mid/649/ItemID/3173/language/en-US/Default.aspx

British Flotilla activists meet FCO Minister Alistair Burt and are frustrated with the outcome

17 June 2010

Thirteen British peace activists from the Gaza flotilla met with Minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt MP, at 11am today. The meeting was the first between the FCO and the group of activists, taking place almost two weeks after most activists returned to the UK following their ordeal.

Others present at the meeting, which lasted 1 hour 10 minutes, included representatives from the Consular Directorates and FCO staff. ……

Avatar, there certainly are areas of the history of the British Empire about which it would do well for people in Britain to be made aware. The situation vis a vis Germany and the USSR, etc. during the inter-war period is certainly one of them.

However, if that’s what you are seeking to do, if I may suggest, you rather defeat the purpose by making derogatory comments on various peoples. You seem to be ascribing fixed personality and political characteristics to entire groups of people based not on what they might or might not have done but on their presumed genetic composition.

Your understandable hatred of the British Empire ought not to blind you to rational analysis. It just plays into the hands of the defenders of imperialism.

I know what you’re saying about people in the West critiquing Russia and that’s a valid argument. But my advice would be please don’t go spoiling it with emotional diatribes!

When did the same war start, I wonder, for people who lived in China ?

Dear oh dear Craig,

As if we’re any different? I’m in the Pacific so why don’t I bring up the local bullshit? Says our textbooks: the Japanese started the war in the Pacific. This in spite of the fact that they’d been put under a total oil, coal, and steel embargo, which, were it done to us, would be viewed as an act of war.

And sure, this was in response to their wickedness in Manchuria but they were only following the example set to them by the West who’d so rudely sailed their gunboats into Yokohama Bay a few decades earlier. Any roundeyes who want to pretend that the Japanese were somehow worse than the West who brutally occupied every single other country in Asia is an idiot. In fact they should pile in with their textbook-quoting arguments and prove my point for me.

I think this single example says it all – see if any English history books contain even a mention of David Sassoon, the then richest man in the world and for whom the Opium Wars were fought. The mere fact that he has no entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (at all!) is enough to make whatever you want to say about the Russians look silly.

And how about the Americans in the Philippines? As soon as the Spanish were defeated, the Americans went on to slaughter every male old enough to bear arms. Is that in any textbooks? Hollywood movies? Anywhere at all? No?

The Russians have a loooooong way to go before they can even come close to our ability to utterly disappear our sins, sins which make those of our ‘enemies’ look half-arsed. And we do this not just from our textbooks but from every medium that exists – books, movies, TV, all of it.

I swear to God – every single crime committed by our enemies, we in the West topped. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

And you want to wag your fingers at the Russians? Well of course! What with us being so free of sin, ha ha ha ha.

“I swear to God – every single crime committed by our enemies, we in the West topped. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

And you want to wag your fingers at the Russians? Well of course! What with us being so free of sin, ha ha ha ha.”

Have you stopped beating yourself with chains, yet?

What’s wrong, anonymous poster at 820am, you don’t like beating yourself with chains? You prefer twine? Hose? Uniforms? Thigh-length black leather boots?

“But surely Parliament wouldn’t have voted for war if they hadn’t been misled.”

Perhaps I have funny friends, but I knew of no-one at the time who believed that Iraq was a threat or that Blair was acting on any other grounds than orders from Washington. It is simply not credible that our MPs are so stupid that they did not fully understand the completely spurious nature of Blair’s prospectus (and I believe they’re pretty stupid). The plea that Blair was terribly persuasive (‘ablaze with conviction’ said the Guardian) is advanced as an excuse, as if those who voted for the war were victims of some skillfully induced hallucination. If I knew what was happening, so did those bastards.

Yes it’s a theft…….but in self defence of course

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/06/where_is_britai.html#comments

Here comes old Ban Ki Moon riding in with his usual sticking plaster.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia_pacific/10356065.stm

Who on earth knows how many people are ‘displaced’? 400,000 according to this BBC report.

suhail sadi,

I donot hate british or any race -. what i hate is exploiters whtther idnian s or otherwise.

I hate mahmud (turkish afgan) of ghazni -aswell but that was incidence of 1002ad, what the british govt and media and establishment are doing is not only what they did during last 200 years of exploitation(real true coulour of so called democracy) but what they are doing NOW1 who the hell are thse bastards to lecture to others when they have ruined the europe germany russia and everyother country in the world every 20 years for last 200 years?

as for Rbbentrop pact there was a reason for that -becaus the soviets discov3ered tha lying britihs were planning something else so soviets had to buy time–

#chamberlain in 1938 at Munich was several times heard saying_intercepted by the soviets-that “we shoudl make soviets and Germany fight amosnt each other till they are bloodied and then we british will get in Europe”

suhail sadi,

I donot hate british or any race -. what i hate is exploiters whtther idnian s or otherwise.

I hate mahmud (turkish afgan) of ghazni -aswell but that was incidence of 1002ad, what the british govt and media and establishment are doing is not only what they did during last 200 years of exploitation(real true coulour of so called democracy) but what they are doing NOW1 who the hell are thse bastards to lecture to others when they have ruined the europe germany russia and everyother country in the world every 20 years for last 200 years?

as for Rbbentrop pact there was a reason for that -becaus the soviets discov3ered the lying britihs were planning something else so soviets had to buy time–

#chamberlain in 1938 at Munich was several times heard saying_intercepted by the soviets-that “we shoudl make soviets and Germany fight amosnt each other till they are bloodied and then we british will get in Europe”

suhail sadi,

I donot hate british or any race -. what i hate is exploiters whtther idnian s or otherwise.

I hate mahmud (turkish afgan) of ghazni -aswell but that was incidence of 1002ad, what the british govt and media and establishment are doing is not only what they did during last 200 years of exploitation(real true coulour of so called democracy) but what they are doing NOW1 who the hell are thse bastards to lecture to others when they have ruined the europe germany russia and everyother country in the world every 20 years for last 200 years?

as for Rbbentrop pact there was a reason for that -becaus the soviets discov3ered the lying britihs were planning something else so soviets had to buy time–

#chamberlain in 1938 at Munich was several times heard saying_intercepted by the soviets-that “we shoudl make soviets and Germany fight amosnt each other till they are bloodied and then we british will get in Europe”

suhail ,

have you been to the place where sadi was born?

do you know that both Hindus and muslims of India have and had a very high reagrad of the persian poets and that poetry recital in idnia attracts the same number of crowds which the rock festival attract is the west.

Thanks, Avatar Singh. I’ve not been to that place, but I know about the syncretic poetry and the mushairas and the unifying force which it is in India – you’re absolutely correct about that.

In fact, Josh Malihabadi and others used to take part in poetry recitals in my paternal grandfather’s house in Agra during the 1920s and 1930s and my grandfather edited a couple of Urdu poetry magazines during that period. His own grandfather was hung by the British during the 1857-9 War of Independence and his father, shot in the head by the ‘Tommies’ – but survived, hail and hearty, to the age of 99!

Revolutionary Indian/ Pakistani poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz was a mentor and friend to my father-in-law, who wrote his biography, ‘Hum Ke Tere Ajnabi’ as well as, subsequently a biographical novel on revolutionary Indian thinker and activist, Dada Amir Haider Khan.

I know what you mean and I don’t disagree with your basic argument, as I’ve said. I’m sure the British rulers, who represent(ed) corporate capitalist interests, had their own, ulterior motives as you suggest in relation to Europe – empires always do – as well as wrt the world in general. I know that the British Empire absolutely looted India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Malihabadi

It is certainly true that there were areas of Empire where the Imperial power looted their colonies. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Congo where during the rubber boom of a century ago it is estimated that there were 10 million deaths just to enrich a greedy Belgian King — more innocents killed than in the holocaust. One can well believe that the trauma that this murderous Monarch caused in the Congo is still a contributant to that country’s sorry state even today.

And of course there are many other areas where the history of Empire was not a proud one. And yet, there were also some successes. The war against the Japanese (in defense of Malaya) at the time we were fighting Germany, was hugely costly for the UK, yet the benefit of Britain’s victory accrued almost entirely to the soon to be independent countries of the far east. It does seem to me that, while the London elites may have profited, some of the biggest victims of Empire were the ordinary British people themselves who through taxes and blood paid the cost of defending an Empire without seeing much of a return. Indeed I suspect that if the effort that was put into Empire had been put into the UK instead that Britain would be much more prosperous today ?” though I wonder if Malaysia, Singapore would have been as well off today?

A comparison:-

The US

A. George Bush Sr. was the head of the CIA, he becomes President.

B. George Bush Jr. later becomes President, and the state which determines the questionable final vote, is Florida, in which another Bush, Jeb Bush, was the Governor at the material time.

C. George Bush Jr. goes on to win a second term as President.

Russia

A. Gorbachev introduces a number of reforms ( Glasnost and Perestroika) and ultimately the Soviet Union implodes, leaving Gorbachev a disliked leader in Russia.

B. Putin was the head of the KGB.

C. Putin becomes the President of Russia, and from all appearances governed ( and maybe from behind the scenes, still has significant influence on Medvedev ) with a strong nationalist message for “Mother Russia” and his message resonates with a majority of Russians.

The factors to note are:-

1. A strong nationalist message ?” of “them” out there ?” wanting to do harm to the homeland, and the President’s message resonating with the people as he acts with policies professed to be in defence of the homeland.

2. The people of the United States of America, and the Russian people, at the material time(s) of implementation of avowedly pro-nationalist policies when faced with dangers (e.g. be this 9/11 or the attacks emanating from the Chechen region), are strongly supportive of the President.

3. When the policies ultimately are seen in the people’s eyes, not to be working, support for the policies are questioned by the majority or public support naturally wanes.

Craig – it would be extremely naive to assume that in both Russia and America, the military-industrial complex(es) and the intelligence communities are not consistently influential on the direction of central government(s)’ policies. Not saying that you are not experienced and aware enough not to understand this. What I am trying to do, is broadly point out the points of similarities between the powers.

The nationalist mantra: “”We need a united society. We need a united textbook.” Maybe a bit cruder when expressed in Russian than when similarly expressed in the US ( or, aren’t there instances of US extreme blind nationalism also?).

There may be far more similarities in statecraft, than there are differences, when it comes on to viewing the big powers.

Here is a credible set of academic views from Harvard ( Burden) and Kenny ( Louisiana State University) – http://polmeth.wustl.edu/media/Paper/burde00.pdf, an extract from which, as to purpose, reads:-

“The ideological positions of candidates play a central role in elections around the world.

The spatial voting model, associated with Downs and his followers, posits that ideological

locations are central to voters’ decisions and election outcomes generally. As a result, most

comprehensive empirical studies also attempt to account for ideology in their models. Indeed, no

research on candidate behavior or voter response would be complete without incorporating

ideological positions. Even among those who dismiss ideology as a factor in some elections,

measures are required that permit empirical demonstration of this assertion. The centrality of

ideology requires researchers to develop the best measures of the concept possible. Despite the

clever efforts of many researchers to do so, rarely have adequate estimates of candidates’

positions been produced that fully meet our collective need. The problem is that candidates,

particularly the hundreds running for Congress every two years, come in two rather different

types: incumbent and non-incumbent. Some excellent though imperfect ideological measures

have been developed for incumbents, but the candidates who run to replace them have been

largely neglected.

This paper reports on the early stages of a project that seeks to remedy this problem. In

particular, it details the pilot study for what will be known as the Candidate Ideology Survey

(CIS). We develop a research design that provides comparable measures of ideological position

for both incumbents and challengers.”

Not surprisingly, it is found that Southern states are more conservative ( and I must conclude ?” would them be more prone to embrace blindly nationalistic positions expounded at election time).

I guess, if some bright spark reading Craig’s blog, were to dig deeply enough, an equivalent credible academic study could be found about the bases of Russian political attitudes, and this, I believe, would be enlightening in serving better to understand Russian political attitudes ( and more particularly ?” nationalist sentiments ) towards incumbents and aspirant parties/candidates.

When considering Craig’s post, do recall that the official British texts gave prominence to the “Battle of Britain” and somehow we forgot the 20 million that sacrificed lives when fighting on the Soviet side against Hitler. Did someone speak about cooking the history books?

Again, I am just throwing out food for thought, as to how political processes actually work.

Yes, I think Roderick Russell’s points on this matter are valid ones, too. As with most people, our provenances are broad and often conflicting. So just as one side of my ancestors fought against the British Empire, the other side collaborated with them.

My maternal grandfather was an (Afghan) officer in the British Indian Army and he fought on the Burma Front, a horrible war (all war is horrible but that front was particular disgusting and also under-supplied and unsung; obviously the focus was in Europe). They were fortunate in General Slim, who rose from private during WWI to Lt General during WW2 and arguably the best commander the British had during WW2, but unlike Montgomery not a ‘grandstander’. If India had fallen to the Japanese at that point, it would’ve been a lot worse for Indians (even considering the Bengal Famine, etc.), Britain/ the Empire would not have had the resources with which to continue fighting, Japan would have invaded the USSR from the south and east along the German invasion from the west and the Axis powers would have been victorious, at least in Eurasia.

The interactions b/w British ruling elites, class and Empire are fascinating. Each empire possessed different dynamics and the British Empire had many of its own.

What do you expect? I strongly doubt that the UK-German Naval Pact of 1935 is on the English national curriculum.

George,

Hitler renounced it in 1939. However, the real point is that, just like the Russians, the UK suppresses and avoid unpleasant historical facts – so how does a fact such as this make us different in conduct than the Russians?

Wikileaks Soldier Reveals Orders for “360 Rotational Fire” Against Civilians in Iraq

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25759.htm

Follow the “Letter of Apology” link if you want to add your name.

Hi George!

Hi Mark.

Hi Courtenay – yes, in 1941 Hitler renounced both the 1935 pact with the UK and the 1939 pact with the USSR.

Thanks Clark

Never ever forget (key to false-flag attacks)

The famous incident in Basra where two British paramilitaries were caught *disguised as Arabs* with a truck-full of explosives in their vehicle. Panicky British forces destroyed the Basra jail to release the two captured *SAS soldiers* clearly afraid that occupation forces would be directly connected to the savage bombings that are designed to promote sectarian warfare.

An interview on Syrian TV with Ziyad Al-Munajid on the night the special-forces soldiers were caught clarifies this point, Al-Munajid said,

“This incident gave answers to questions and suspicions that were lacking evidence about the participation of the occupation in some armed operations in Iraq. Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in some armed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But those were only suspicions that lacked proof. The proof came today through the arrest of the two British soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets. This proves, according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sow sedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraq for a longer period. ”

Courtesy ICH

Conservative Dave Davies MP

…think again … whether deliberately or not, the government have not told the British public the whole truth about the circumstances and mistakes leading up to the July 7 attacks’.” ?” The Guardian

I think everyone in Britain needs to find out about the Texas school textbook controversy. Because Texas bulk-buys so many textbooks, it can dictate the editing of books used across the nation. So the extreme Christian Right targeted and captured the textbook board (an elected board), and is now putting in extremely twisted far-right ideology, even downgrading Jefferson for his lack of enthusiasm for theocracy.

I’m less afraid of Russian nationalist tyrants with nukes than I am American Christian Dominionists with nukes. Nationalists want their nation to survive. Dominionists believe that they must enslave the entire planet or die trying to make Jesus return.

It’s remarkable how successful propagandists have been in telling people the ‘cold war’ lasted until 1989, and that e.g. the 1972 Fischer-Spassky chess match happened at its ‘height’. In actual fact, that match happened at the height of detente. Those who know something about the history of US-Soviet relations know that the cold war began c.1947 and lasted until somewhere between 1962-63 (Cuba/Turkey, TBT) and some time before 1968-69 (NPT, the short war between USSR and China), being at its height in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We also know that US-Soviet friendship was a key factor both in 1934 when the USSR joined the League of Nations (and soon built a car industry with US help) and in 1943 when the USSR dissolved the Comintern, scrapped the Internationale as its anthem, admitted that the law of value operated on its territory, and got ready to participate at Bretton Woods the following year. I could go on, but I won’t bore people.

Incidentally, what I’ve said here is not at all controversial in British diplomatic circles, nor at, er, ‘connected’ academic institutions such as SSEES in Londond and its inferior rival St Antony’s College in Oxford. Ain’t that right, Craig?

I wonder who engineered the demise of Iceland through massive fraud and front men?

Iceland – here are some connections to follow:

1) Tchenguiz – London

2) president Grimsson’s ‘private’ visit to Israel with his Israeli wife Dorrit Moussaieff a few weeks before the FE

3) Soros (look at Wikileaks in Iceland after the financial event (FE))

Kaupthing operated mainly in London and secretly owned almost half of its own shares!

Tchenguiz and Moussaieff are said to be longstanding friends. The Tchenguiz brothers have many ‘friends’ in London too. They used to own Millbank Tower, of which you may have heard.

Why is it that London attracts so many foreign maf – er, Businessmen with Unclear Sources of Wealth (BUSWs)?

Did you know that while the EU (i.e. Frankfurt) told Iceland to eat dirt rather than offer them a loan, the Russian government, along with Russian interests admitted to be ‘private’, went straight in there, helping to bail them out? Or should that be ‘made them an offer they couldn’t refuse’?

The Stalin-Hitler pact was, for Russia, a defensive arrangement: better an alliance with Hitler than the assault on Russia by Germany that Chamberlain hoped to engineer. And from the Russian perspective, the partition of Poland with Germany was no more than a restoration of the situation of 1846.

“It’s remarkable how successful propagandists have been in telling people the ‘cold war’ lasted until 1989, and that e.g. the 1972 Fischer-Spassky chess match happened at its ‘height’. In actual fact, that match happened at the height of detente. Those who know something about the history of US-Soviet relations know that the cold war began c.1947 and lasted until somewhere between 1962-63 (Cuba/Turkey, TBT)”

Riiiiight,

So the Vietnam War (or the American War if you will) had nothing to do with the Cold War?

The Soviet Union didn’t spend itself to destruction on its nuclear weapons and other military heavy industry.

The people in Eastern Europe weren’t still under the cosh of the KGB and forced to learn Russian at schools and there was no Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The war in Afghanistan presumably never happened or had nothing to do with the Cold War while Ronald Reagan’s Cold War rhetoric about signing into law legislation that would abolish Russia was twenty years before.

“I could go on, but I won’t bore people”

Welcome back George, you are not boring anyone at all, your contributions are well valued here, thank you.

I also agree with super 390′s comparrison between russina oligarchs in charge of nukes vs. US global spectrum dominators, I also find the latter, very much in lieu with rightwing fanatics in israel just to mention it, the more dangerous, more secretive and conspiring threat to humanity.

Courtenay Barnet:

“When considering Craig’s post, do recall that the official British texts gave prominence to the “Battle of Britain” and somehow we forgot the 20 million that sacrificed lives when fighting on the Soviet side against Hitler. Did someone speak about cooking the history books?”

What official British texts are you talking about? Ever since I was in school the curriculum seems to have been that everyone has to know that the Soviet Union was the country that made the largest sacrifices in the war.

Well, it remains the case that the US fought a total war on two fronts against both the Germans and the Japanese and that the Soviets were immensely helped out by the US and the UK in terms of military material especially by such things as the arctic convoys (which I believe get barely a mention).

And this doesn’t take into account the fact that the Soviet Union joined in a bloody “non-agression” pact with the Nazis in which to carve up Poland together and invade Finland.

There is also the important fact that Stalin had been warned several times about Hitler’s designs on his country and yet he ignored them all.

Oh, and Stalin didn’t need the excuse of a world war to sacrifice 20,000,000 people. He did the same in peace time also.

Anyway, I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that Niall Ferguson is being drafted to write up a stirring history of the United Kingdom and do for history what Jamie Oliver did with his school dinners for the physical health of our young students by providing wholesome and nutritious fare for their minds.

Just to cheer you all up.

Remember this film?

Thing go round in circles. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn-Op7Q

The Cold War’s activities during the 1970s and 80s can be read about in John Barron’s “KGB: the hidden hand”. My favourite story in this second volume by Barron about the KGB is that of Stanislav Levchenko. I would also recommend the fictional works of Frederick Forsyth “The Fourth Protocol” and “The Deceiver” as most enjoyable, though I couldn’t say how realistic they are.

I think I have a pre-copy template of that book, in an English language version too! Some Russian academics gifted it to me. One reads it cautiously for fear of mind washing.

Western history books ones do it far more sneakily.

You know that story about some Russian feeling sorry for people in the West Re: their journalism….

“We (behind the iron curtain) know what we read is propaganda – we read in between the lines. You [westerners] however simply accept it as truth”

And Craig, School history books DO whitewash ALL British crimes against humanity vis-a-vis the empire. British history books are imperialist porn. Winder if they inspired Fahrenheit 451?

BBC:

http://coto2.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/bbc-sabotaging-press-tv-broadcasts/

lwtc247: Here’s something you might find interesting. An American comic book history “This godless Communism”. It was published in a Catholic magazine, as you might guess. You can read or download it free here:

http://www.archive.org/details/ThisGodlessCommunism

“And Craig, School history books DO whitewash ALL British crimes against humanity vis-a-vis the empire. British history books are imperialist porn.”

Are you sure you aren’t confusing them for the Flashman novels.

No idea Ruth but George as usual has come up with the best links. I do like your inquiring mind.

@ Angry,

You do not disagree that the 20m did die. I make no excuses of the second limb, that Stalin did himself cause a masssive loss of human life, in the context to which you refer.

So be it.

Excuse me – but worth interrupting.

FCO response to the Flotilla massacre:

(1) Promise to make a public call for an immediate return of the missing passports ‘within days’.

(2) Undertake to call privately for Israel to return all possessions belonging to activists.

(3) The British government is willing to accept an enquiry by Israel into the attack on the Flotilla and will not call for an independent international enquiry.

Epilogue:

Despite the grave and serious nature of Israel’s attack on the Flotilla, Mr Burt refused to facilitate a meeting between the activists and the Foreign Secretary William Hague MP.

The West’s policy – in other words, the policy of the Anglo-Americans, as the European Union does not have a policy worth citing – toward the Middle East has long been formulated by Bernard Lewis. The British-born Lewis started his career as an intelligence officer and has remained in bed with British intelligence ever since. Avowedly anti-Russia and pro-Israel, Lewis reaped a rich harvest among US academia and policymakers. He brought president Jimmy Carter’s virulently anti-Russian National Security Council chief, Zbigniew Brzezinski, into his fold in the 1980s, and made the US neo-conservatives, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, dance to his tune on the Middle East in 2001. In between, he penned dozens of books and was taken seriously by people as a historian. But, in fact, Lewis is what he always was: a British intelligence officer. . . .

The recent developments in Uzbekistan have all the hallmarks of the same process. This time the objective is to weaken China, Russia, and possibly India, using the HT to unleash the dogs of war in Central Asia. It is not difficult for those on the ground to see what is happening. The leader of the Islamic Party of Tajikistan, Deputy Prime Minister Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, has identified HT as a Western-sponsored bogeyman for “remaking Central Asia”. . . .

@ Roderick,

You say: “British people themselves who through taxes and blood paid the cost of defending an Empire without seeing much of a return.”

I think that you are missing the central points about the nature of colonialism. The Empire did benefit:-

i) Financially.

ii) The infrastructure that was developed in Britain, from the Atlantic slave trade right through the period of the Empire, represents a huge stock of contributed wealth that inures to this day to the benefit of the British people.

iii) If you consider the structure of colonial arrangements for the purchase of say Ghanaian cocoa, or Jamaican coffee, you find that the base farmer was paid a pittance, and via a “Coffee Industry Board” or a ” Cocoa Industry Board” the value added was at the British end. It was deliberately structured that way to Britain’s financial advantage.

iv) If you want to trace the slave history of the development of Liverpool or Bristol, it makes extremely interesting reading how these cities grew and prospered out of that trade.

v) Many of the big name financial families have their origins in the period at iv) above.

The end game is that a lot of British infrastructure, raw material sources, profits from land ( consider the Kenyan situation of the theft of Kenyan land and the marginalization of the indigenous population), and financial accumulation did derive from the Empire.

I could go on, but the simple point is that while you make the point that the ordinary British people did not benefit, I seriously doubt that the national wealth, the infrastructure, the conferred overseas benefits of being afforded special privileges in coloured countries can all be discounted, as being insignificant . Free Black labour did build British wealth. The Irish and Scots had their role to play in this grand enterprise as it unfolded from the 1600s onwards in Caribbean.

One example ?” Jamaican sugar, exported as brown sugar, to be processed in London factories, to be resold as high priced refined white sugar. The benefit there was not only jobs provided in an English factory, but a higher priced inferior product ( i.e. brown sugar has the nutrients in it ?” not the processed white sugar) ?” all for the benefit of Britain.

I think that you are absolutely incorrect on the point you made, and there is a point about the collective benefit to the British treasury, that impacted the living standards, educational opportunities, and general wealth of Britain and by extension all those living in Britain.

I wonder what rightist Texans would do if they realized that they were behaving in the same way as a Russian dictator.

Bernard Lewis, like the grumpy old man has reached a point on his journey where historical reality has opened his mind to the bright light of truth shining through the devious attempts at mutating, distorting and deforming the history of Islam for Western gains.

In a widely acclaimed publication he has revealed the West’s attempt at carving an image of Muslims as barbarians, as that of a, “Saracen riding out of the desert on horseback with a sword in one hand and a Koran in the other offering their victims a choice between the two.”

Lewis has weaved the correct path between murdering Islamic suicide bombers and Islam as a religion of love and peace, “like the Quakers but without their aggressiveness.”

The wild conspiracies have been put to rest and Lewis has cemented the starting blocks for the expansion of Islam devoid of the terrorist organizations that represent a deformation of Islam in the same way as “Nazism is a deformation of German patriotism and Bolshevism is a deformation of the aspiration for social betterment.”

“We have observed such things in our lifetime now, and as with the Germans and the Russians, the Muslims themselves are the first and worst victims of this.”

@ Mark,

What really has Bernard Lewis said about the Middle East that is incisive, original or of significant academic worth.

When a writer says: “Due to the lack of reliable public opinion polls, authoritarian rule and media outlets that are trained what to say, it’s not surprising that the assessments of the man on the street are so incomprehensible and based merely on impressions and gut feelings.” – then is it suprising that his work and writings serve merely to re-enforce the prejudices that he has imbibed.

You guessed it – I have little regard for Lewis, and if he knew me – no doubt – sentiments would be mutually shared.

‘I’m less afraid of Russian nationalist tyrants with nukes than I am American Christian Dominionists with nukes. Nationalists want their nation to survive. Dominionists believe that they must enslave the entire planet or die trying to make Jesus return.’

super390

“This confrontation [between the forces of the Apocalypse and Israel]is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.

U.S. President George W. Bush (in a 2003 conversation with French President Jacques Chirac)

Courtenay, your analysis of empire is spot-on. Basically, as I suggested, the empire was built by looting black and brown people. The destruction of industries in India (eg. cotton in Kashmir in favour of Lancashire) and the stifling at birth of any attempt to industrialise (eg. Egypt in the early-to-mid-C19th) were cases in point, as were the excellent examples you gave.

there is also no question that the colonies were the places were ordinary Britons could feel bigger than they were, and was where the money was to be made.

However, it may be instructive to recall that at the very height of the British Empire, in the mid-C19th (the British Empire began to decline from around 1890, in spite of having just captured large portions of Africa, and by the mid-C20th, in spite of appearances, it was finished), the vast majority of the population of the UK lived in absolute squalor and mortality rates were no better than anywhere else.

Indeed, it could be argued – though it would not be evidence of causality – that the improvements in Britian’s ‘vital statistics’ (infant mortality, literacy, etc.) began to be implemented through improved sewage systems, nutrition and vaccination as empire began to decline.

So the argument that the ‘wealth of Britain’ trickled down is not the whole picture, by any means. It didn;t seem to trickle down very far – just read Dickens! The only reason the ruling classes in the UK allowed ordinary people to access a better overall standard of living was:

1) Because they needed efficient fighters and workers to help them rule their empire (post-Boer war, which had illustrated how poorly-fed and ill most British soldiers were); and

2) Because of continuous, bloody struggle; and

3) To stave off a full-blown revolution.

Most of the advances we now take for granted in the UK were won during and after the C19th. Most of the really concrete advances which affected people’s lives were won in the C20th, very gradually, from the Campbell-Bannerman govt. (took office in 1902)onwards.

Suhayl – “Indeed, it could be argued – though it would not be evidence of causality – that the improvements in Britian’s ‘vital statistics’ (infant mortality, literacy, etc.) began to be implemented through improved sewage systems, nutrition and vaccination as empire began to decline.”

I think the big one (prior to penicillin) was the understanding of cholera – separate the drinking water from the sewage systems. I’m not sure it had much to do with “empire” at all, just a penny dropping, could have happened whenever the times allowed it (vaccination, also great stuff and very helpful, and I’m not sure where/if empire came into it).

Which is not to dispute that “we” did well out of it. There are still a lot of “Georgian” buildings here in Lancaster, where I live. The 18C Atlantic Trade was the town’s great days.

Suhayl,

I am not at total variance with you. You have given a more nuanced analysis.

Your focal point and mine do not in conflict.

My points can be made as follows:-

Mid 1800s, British start the dope running into China and make vast sums off the addicted Chinese popularion. Britain forces payment of compensation for the lost opium market, and claim Hong Kong as that compensation. All this activity constituted wealth accumulation.

The Atlantic African Slave Trade, and the colonial exploits around the world also constituted wealth accumulation.

There is then the bed of affluence upon which the nation floated, and so now – make all your points – and – I accept them as perfectly valid, placed in this context.

Nothing really Courtenay – I have only seen in this man a realisation that the prophet Mohammad, much like the Jewish prophet Jesus Christ, was so concerned with man’s ability to deceive in his quest for wealth and power at the expense of all others, he collected, through teaching a band of growing followers that through strength of character and determination were able to resist attempts to destroy them in conflict.

Such was this inner strength the defeated were neither murdered or tortured and set free, in the same way today as witnessed by the British sailors, free to go with the gifts of leniency.

Today we again witness the struggle with a now certain strike on the centre of Islam. The devious ‘war on terror’ has failed to produce the results intended; fast global communication has rapidly spread a realisation that torture and illegals wars have undermined our very existence. There is now panic to shut down the Internet channels and prepare for another war.

A war that will decide our future.

Suhayl,

huyl,

Here is a brief extract from http://www.new-diaspora.com/Slave%20Trade/2.%20How%20Britain%20benefited.html

Making the point, but I have shortened, as the list is fairly long:-

“Slave Trade – 2. How Britain benefited

Spin-offs: 1. Industrial revolution

Slavery contributed vastly to Britain’s rise as an industrial powerhouse. Many slave-traders invested in manufacturing – canals, railways, new ships and new production technology. Inventions like James Watt’s steam engine of the 1760s were hardly thinkable without slave and colonial profits. The Boulton & Watt firm that made steam engines depended for a period on slave profits. Slavers needed ships, crews needed provisions; traders needed goods to barter for slaves -fetters, chains, padlocks, guns, pots, … Plantations needed machinery; rum making needed bottles. Cotton picked in America was turned into cloth in Lancashire and sold to the colonial market, mostly Africa.

2. Financial services

Investors loaned money to slavers, banking grew to invest the profits and insurance to insure ships and cargoes.

The Barclay brothers – Alexander and David – were among Quakers involved in the slave trade from 1756. they went to found Barclays Bank.

In 1773, the Heywood Brothers founded a bank in Liverpool to fund slave expeditions and deposit their profits. Today that firm is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Lloyds coffee house in London was the centre for slave merchants and financiers. It rose to be a global insurance house.”

That’s my point.

@Mark,

There is indeed a quest for resource domination and hegemony.

However, the old model won’t work – it is already broken and can’t be repaired.

We as a species have to weigh that the manner in which we historically exploited resources and people is not not sustainable. Additionally, with one example, if the US wants to try again in Iran the fuck up they have accomplised in Iraq – then brace for the start of World War 111.

We need decent and humane people running the world.

“Such was this inner strength the defeated were neither murdered or tortured and set free, in the same way today as witnessed by the British sailors, free to go with the gifts of leniency.”

It was a propaganda coup you starry-eyed moron. What about those who demonstrated against the election results and ended up raped and tortured in the flowery Islamic Republic’s dungeons?

Suhayl’ analysis of the British Empire is so inaccurate as to be essentially bollocks.

For example,

“Basically, … the empire was built by looting black and brown people. The destruction of industries in India (eg. cotton in Kashmir in favour of Lancashire)”

Actually, the Indian empire was built on trade. It was created by the British East India company. Initially, the company’s main business was the import to Britain of Indian-made cotton goods (calicos), which did much damage to the British textile industry.

Later, as Britain industrialized, the direction of trade in textiles began to flow the other way. But by the end of the nineteenth century, in the first great age of globalization, Britain again began to import manufactured goods from India, including textiles, where labor was vastly cheaper than in Britain.

“… there is also no question that the colonies were the places were ordinary Britons could feel bigger than they were”

A bit of gratuitous hate speech?

As for the colonies being “where the money was to be made” Read Winston Churchill’s “My African Journey.” In his view, there was little money to be made in most of the African colonies, which were actually run at a loss by the British Treasury. And what money was made in the East African colonies was mostly by Indian immigrants, people like Mohandas Gandhi, who, in Africa, maybe felt “bigger than he was.” In any case, in South Africa, Gandhi never objected to the way the British treated the Africans, but he was deeply angered that he and other Indian immigrants were not treated like white people!

“However, it may be instructive to recall that at the very height of the British Empire, in the mid-C19th (the British Empire began to decline from around 1890, in spite of having just captured large portions of Africa, and by the mid-C20th, in spite of appearances, it was finished), the vast majority of the population of the UK lived in absolute squalor and mortality rates were no better than anywhere else.”

This is nonsense. During the late 19th century Britain had the world’s largest economy, which accounted for about 10% of world GDP, but only 2.5% of the World’s population. Furthermore, industrial wages in Britain were higher than anywhere in Europe.

And the Empire was not “finished in 1890,” or even in 1939. At the beginning of the twentieth century the British Navy was twice as large as that of any two other countries combined. During WW1 Britain mobilized an army of millions and with France fought Germany, by then Europe’s largest industrial economy, to a standstill. Even in 1939, Britain had more and better military aircraft and tanks than Germany and a larger navy.

As for mortality rates, they were 46 and 50 for men and women, respectively: which was slightly better than in the US, which by then had the highest per capita income in the world.

Even today, many independent countries in Africa and Asia have lower life expectancies than Britain in 1900, before the discovery of antibiotics, which eliminated mass killers such as TB, and the use of mass innoculation against infectious diseases.

“Indeed, it could be argued – though it would not be evidence of causality – that the improvements in Britian’s ‘vital statistics’ (infant mortality, literacy, etc.) began to be implemented through improved sewage systems, nutrition and vaccination as empire began to decline.”

It could be argued! Don’t be daft, it’s a fact. The cholera bacillus was not discovered until 1876.

“The only reason the ruling classes in the UK allowed ordinary people to access a better overall standard of living was…”

Yeah, well, whatever the reason, the British working class had the highest standard of living in Europe. That is one reason that British navvies built canals and later railroads all over the world, because they were healthier and stronger than the workers in most, if not all other countries.

“Most of the advances we now take for granted in the UK were won during and after the C19th. …”

Obviously, the twentieth century was the age of technological revolutions. When many blades of grass were made to grow where only one grew before. Hence the five-fold increase in world population.

And as for British exploitation of the colonies, here’s what a Niall Ferguson has to say:

“if you want to look at the difference between Britain and her former colonies in economic terms, it’s worth asking yourself just how much independence achieved.

I did a simple calculation to show the ratio of British per capita income to Indian per capita income over the very long run. It reached its maximum extent in 1979. And in the case of more or less all of Britain’s African colonies, income and equality between Britain and the African countries has vastly increased since independence. You could conclude that if the British had really wanted to impoverish people in developing countries, they would have given them their independence long before, because nothing has impoverished people in sub-Saharan Africa quite like political independence.

The question of “in whose interests is the empire” is in some ways not quite the right question. Empire was in the interests of both rulers and ruled in that it channeled investment capital to poor countries at relatively low interest rates.

Courtenay,

Re: Slavery

Try to be a little even handed.

Remember that slavery is probably as old as mankind. That it was practiced in Africa my Moslems and others long before the British arrived and that it was British reformers who agitated to end the slave trade and it was the British government that outlawed slavery world-wide and employed the British Navy to enforce that law.

1) Alfred, are you denyng that Britain destroyed pre-existing industries in India in order to allow British (and/ or British-controlled) industry to achieve a monopoly?

2) “A bit of gratuitous hate speech?”

It’s not hate speech to suggest that people who would be despised within the class system in Britain could go out to India or Africa and be the ‘sahib’ or whatever. Have servants, etc. be treated with relative deference. I was not suggesting it in a malicious way but simply as a social fact.

3) So many Scots, for example, made their fortune in the empire. In the end it may have been unsustainable macroeconomically as I suggested, but for individuals, it was often what you did if you weren’t going to inherit everything back home. Imperial (Indian) elites imported into Africa also made loads of money. My arguments are not based on race, Alfred. Gandhi was definitely not the saint he is painted as by the Western media. Racism is still massive among many people in/ of South Asia. The caste system in India was reinforced by the British and it influenced the Victorian class system. Mutually ‘benificial’ to running both societies.

4) You contradict yourself, Alfred. Germany had indeed overtaken Britain by around 1890. The BE began – note the word, ‘begun’ – to decline in the 1890s; the decline had become terminal by the 1930s. Your arguments about the armed forces remind me of the current situtaion of the USA.

5) “As for mortality rates, they were 46 and 50 for men and women, respectively: which was slightly better than in the US, which by then had the highest per capita income in the world.”

For most people, the key was to attain the age of five. Many did not. My point, Alfred, was simply that wealth distribution in Britain during the C19th century was not to the benefit of most people. That the BE made massive amounts of money which largely went into a relatively few pockets. “Educate our masters” was a maxim, and also they needed people who could read and write to run such a vast empire. There was also a huge struggle on the part of organised labour – you seem to discount this altogether, as well as the multiple revolutions on the continent of Europe which was the backdrop to reform in the UK.

6) “It could be argued! Don’t be daft, it’s a fact. The cholera bacillus was not discovered until 1876.”

So, even when you agree with me, you can’t even say so.

7) “Yeah, well, whatever the reason, the British working class had the highest standard of living in Europe. That is one reason that British navvies built canals and later railroads all over the world, because they were healthier and stronger than the workers in most, if not all other countries.”

Likewise, Alfred.

8)”Obviously, the twentieth century was the age of technological revolutions. When many blades of grass were made to grow where only one grew before. Hence the five-fold increase in world population.”

Likewise, Alfred.

9) “And as for British exploitation of the colonies, here’s what a Niall Ferguson has to say…”

Niall Ferguson is a courtier of imperialism. He makes imperialists feel good about what they did then and about what they are doing now. He selects some information and ignores other information. I think it was clear from my various posts that I am not saying that everything about the BE was bad or that everything before or since was good. Clearly, that would be absurd. So why are you basing your rather emotional response on the premise that I did? I was addresing points made by Courtney Barnett and Roderick Russell. Are we not allowed nowadays even to evince modulated criticism of imperialism?

10)”The question of “in whose interests is the empire” is in some ways not quite the right question. Empire was in the interests of both rulers and ruled in that it channeled investment capital to poor countries at relatively low interest rates.”

No, Alfred, empire was not a philanthropic exercise, it was a bloody, 300 year-long economic adventure, run in the interests of the ruling classes of Britain and the colonial elites which they created/ co-opted in the colonies, whether white, yellow, brown or (less often) black. The people who had the wealth in Britain n then still have it now.

Courtney at 2:16am, yes, I agree with your point.

Oh, and Alfred, the First World War is an excellent illustration of exactly the value which the rulers of the British Empire put on its own people. Millions of guys from working and middle-class backgrounds slaughtered (this applies to all the empires participating) in order to prevent Germany from attaining the mantle of top economic dog. You seem somewhat proud of this? Shouldn’t you be angry, instead? All those white-stone graves, every village cross… this was the true legacy of empire. Indeed, socio-politically, and for good reason, WW1 sounded the death-knell of the ancien regime.

Ah, Empire, empire, summed-up, was this:

“We’ll teach you how to read and write and how to fire a gun, how to build a bridge and how to drive across that bridge. And we’ll teach you how to kill and die, smiling!”

Alfred, you’re still smiling. Time to stop.

http://www.almanar.com.lb/...

19/06/2010 Eleven American battleships and an Israeli one crossed the Suez Canal Friday en route to the Red Sea, the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper reported.

According to the report, traffic in the canal was halted for several hours in order to allow US Navy vessels, which included an aircraft carrier and carried infantry troops, armored vehicles and ammunition, to pass from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.

It was further reported that eyewitnesses detected an Israeli warship among the vessels. No confirmation has been received from Egyptian authorities.

The report also noted that fishing activities in the area were stopped during the ships’ passage as well as traffic on the bridges above the canal.

Retired Egyptian General Amin Radi, chairman of the national security affairs committee, told the paper that “the decision to declare war on Iran is not easy, and Israel, due to its wild nature, may start a war just to remain the sole nuclear power in the region.”

Alfred:

“Actually, the Indian empire was built on trade.”

Yeah it was simply built on benign trade. There was no gunboat diplomacy and the British East India Company never plotted to overthrow existing rulers (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey#Company_policy). People are so stupid to think the situation in India was exploitative.

“A bit of gratuitous hate speech?”

I know it’s crazy right. Those poor colonial powers, carrying The White Man’s Burden, and people only criticise them.

“people like Mohandas Gandhi, who, in Africa, maybe felt “bigger than he was.”

Yeah I hate that Gandhi guy, nothing but a half-naked fakir. Just a wimp who’s only contribution to the world was Satyagraha (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha). It’s not like he invented something useful like a nuclear bomb or landmines.

“Even today, many independent countries in Africa and Asia have lower life expectancies than Britain in 1900″

I won’t comment on Africa, I’m ashamed how little I know about it. You’re absolutely right about Asia though. Malaysia is 70.8, Vietnam is 69.3, China 71.4, India 62.5 is India asian? =P Even Cambodia gets 56.5 and Myanmar 54.9 (geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa042000b.htm). All these are clearly lower than Britain’s 46 and 50.

Stupid liberals.

“Niall Ferguson is a courtier of imperialism. He makes imperialists feel good about what they did then and about what they are doing now. He selects some information and ignores other information.”

Well it is most certainly true that Ferguson selects some information and ignores other information (or at least that he leaves it out of his narrative). This, unfortunately, is a necessity of writing history. All historians have to leave out information or his books would be too bloody big to carry around in one’s bag and would be excruciatingly boring when it comes to the retelling of what Queen Victoria had for breakfast on January 21st 1901.

But surely the issue is WHAT he leaves out and whether he leaves out certain facts BECAUSE they contradict his argument about Empire. Manipulating the facts or ignoring them is generally considered to be a dereliction of duty for a historian (this is a charge frequently made about, say, David Irving’s work in that he uses his sources to create a false narrative).

What specifically does Ferguson distort or leave out that makes his work dishonest?

as – “retelling of what Queen Victoria had for breakfast on January 21st 1901″

Ah, but, now you mention it … enquiring minds, and all that. I don’t think you picked the date at random, either; it was a Sekrit Poison, right ?

“It was a propaganda coup you starry-eyed moron. What about those who demonstrated against the election results and ended up raped and tortured in the flowery Islamic Republic’s dungeons?”

Evidence? – or does that reside in the same black hole as your label?

“Ah, but, now you mention it … enquiring minds, and all that. I don’t think you picked the date at random, either; it was a Sekrit Poison, right ?”

Aha! And now we know why it has been scrubbed from the history books we read in schools!

“Aha! And now we know why it has been scrubbed from the history books we read in schools!”

Exactly !

And another thing … I just had a quick google looking for a story I bumped into a few years ago, about how someone going through the Balmoral estate records had found a set of bills from the local chemist’s shop, indicating a continuing demand for mind-boggling quantities of laudanum, cannabis, etc. Of course, any right-thinking person will instantly predict that this would have been covered up, thereby explaining why I can find no good evidence to support it at all … which is a pity, really, I rather like the thought of her, completely off her bonce and still determinedly unamused.

@ Roderick,

You say: “British people themselves who through taxes and blood paid the cost of defending an Empire without seeing much of a return.”

so -here is eye opener for those who want to open their eyes but not for the likes of you who know who the evil is but still defend that evil–

“Bharat, from the worlds richest and most literate, to the most poor and illiterate in 200 years.

Gross Domestic Product in Millions of Dollars

Year 1000 1500 1600 1700

India 33.8 60.5 74.3 90.8

China 26.6 61.8 96.0 82.8

WEurope 10.2 44.3 66.0 83.4

World 116.8 247.1 329.4 371.4

here is why and how it happend-due to pirate english bastards.

=————————————————————————————————————————

“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar or who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values & people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore I propose that we replace her Old and ancient education system, Her culture , for if the Indians think that all that if foreing and english is goodand greater than their own, they will lose thier self esteem, their native culture and and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”

- (Lord McCauley in his speech of

Feb 2, 1835, British Parliament)

”

napoleaon was wrong to attack Russia he should have finsihed the enlgish then and there -because itis this enlgish race which lives off as parasite by making two strongest euroepan pwoers fight amosnt them and then the enlgish come as heynas .

the english are still at their game -and they are not going to change unless forced to–

http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Conjuring_Hitler

Conjuring Hitler

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Conjuring Hitler is a seminar work of historical revision

The book effectively rewrites the history of the inter-war years and their inevitable cataclysmic result.

It’s author is Professor Guido Giacomo Preparata and it challenges the cosy, self satisfied official narrative of the World War II victors.

For the average UK/USA citizen schooled and brought up on a diet of a plucky little Island Nation battling against the odds and joined by its US ally just in time to defeat the Evil Empire, it makes very uncomfortable reading indeed. Most will close their minds to its meticulously researched, documented and footnoted contents. The Establishment will indulge the vicious calumnies that are its only defence against having it’s ‘victor’s justice’ narrative exposed for the arrogant self-serving series of lies that it very largely is. As is clear from Preparata’s Afterword (see below), written 4 years after publication of the book, this is already being attempted – thankfully with little success so far.

See Also

* File:IncubationOfNaziism.pdf – The Incubation of Nazism: The Critical Act of Britain’s Strategy for Keeping Empire, 1900-1941

* File:Conjuring Hitler Afterword.pdf – Afterword to ‘Conjuring Hitler 4 years after publication

* File:GibsonPreparata.pdf – Review by Professor Donald Gibson

* File:McGregor-preparata.pdf – Review by Professor David MacGregor

* File:ScottPreparata.pdf- Review by Peter Dale-Scott

==================================

Will We See The End Of Empire In Our Time?

By Richard C. Cook

5-28-8

The following is based on a talk given by the author at the “End of Empire” session of the “Building a New World” Conference of the Prout World Assembly at Radford University, Radford, Virginia, on May 22, 2008.

quote—

”

Hamilton and Jefferson split, and that split has defined U.S. politics ever since. Hamilton became the de facto head of the Federalist Party, the ancestor first of the Whigs and then of the Republicans. Jefferson called himself a Republican at first, then a Democratic-Republican, then finally his party became the Democratic Party that has lasted until today. Of course we know that the two parties have come more and more to resemble each other in recent decades in supporting policies of imperialism.

Jefferson was elected president in what was called the Civic Revolution of 1800. The first thing he did was cut military spending. He did what no one has done since, which was to balance the federal budget for eight consecutive years. Then he took an action which defined our nation to a considerable extent all the way into the 20th century. In 1803 he doubled the size of the nation overnight through the Louisiana Purchase.

So for the next century, instead of competing with the European nations for overseas colonies, our energies were devoted to settling the North American continent, to the detriment, of course, of the Native American peoples. We became, as did Russia in Eurasia and Brazil in South America, a continental land power. And we stayed that way for over a century.

But empire finally caught up with us. Across the sea in South Africa a man named Cecil Rhodes was devising a plan to make the British Empire the ruler of the globe. He created a secret society to accomplish this, called the Round Table, using money provided by the Rothschild family, who had controlled the British economy since the Napoleonic wars.

The U.S. was integral to their plans. Following is the relevant passage from Cecil Rhodes’ will of 1877. His aims, he wrote in the will, were:

The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise,the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may to tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the production of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.

Think about that: “the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.” In fact, as Professor Carroll Quigley made clear in his celebrated book, The Anglo-American Establishment, the British planners, whose descendants still rule that nation, acknowledged that a time would come when the U.S. would be the senior partner in the empire, which is exactly what happened over the century that lay ahead.

The Russian writer P.D. Ouspensky said all the history you read about in the history books is “the history of crime.” This is what he was talking about.

The takeover of America was accomplished when the British, European, and American bankers created the Federal Reserve System in 1913. That year our nation was hijacked. Congressman Charles Lindbergh, father of the future aviator, called it “the legislative crime of the ages.”

The Federal Reserve is a privately-owned central banking system modeled on the Bank of England. >From that day onward we got all the accoutrements of empire which have burdened our nation ever since: an enormous national debt, a crushing tax burden, permanent inflation, constant warfare, a gigantic and overweening military-industrial complex, a national character marked by arrogance and violence, and today, the enmity of the world.

Our wealth has been based, first, of course, on our own industriousness and natural resources-a positive-but, when that has proved insufficient, on taking it from others. Until recently our businesses and industry have dominated the globe-ever since World War II. The American dollar has been the world’s reserve currency and the denominator of trade in the “black gold” known as oil.

Through the neocolonialist institution known as the International Monetary Fund, we dominated the economies of the developing world. And we backed up our hegemony with military might. Since the start of World War II in 1941 we have been at war with somebody, either overtly or covertly, continuously. This pattern of warfare accelerated with the Reagan Doctrine of fighting proxy wars starting in the 1980s.”

Chebacow cluelessly comparesg life expectancies in Britain in 1900 with life expectancies in other countries a hundred years later.

Suhayl neatly evades the fact that his facts were all wrong. For example, the British Empire was emphatically not “finished” in 1980 as he claims, so he then restates my position (his Point 2) as his own in order to refute me. Likewise with most of his other points. Ha ha.

His contempt for the British in India is that of the Indian elite. To the Indian masses, the British, were generally preferable to the ruling elite that preceded them. In the days of the Raj they were better educated, more honest and more seriously committed to the public interest. There were British scum in India too. So what? There are always scum everywhere.

The idea that the British rulers of India were “people who would be despised within the class system in Britain” is nuts, if you are talking of the later half of the Indian Empire. A mere 10,000 British civil servants and soldiers ruled India. These were among the most educated and civilized people in the world. Would that Britain had such a ruling elite for itself, today. Instead, she has five million socialist brainwashed bureaucratic dolts pissing away 52% of the GDP on – well what exactly (At least, thank God, the noble Cameron and his Liberal cohorts plan to reduce their ranks by some, no doubt, tiny percentage).

The British in India banned the hideously cruel practice of suttee, for which millions upon millions of Indian women should surely be grateful. They eradicated the Thugs. True they did not go far enough. They should have exterminated the cows and made caste discrimination illegal. Nevertheless, they sought to prepare India for independence and largely succeeded despite the objection of the Indian elite to British ideas about democracy and equality.

Suhayl’s idea that Britain’s class system derives anything from India’s caste system is a common but silly notion. Britain was no more class-ridden than other European states in the 19th century and was probably less so. During the age of empire, the British had avenues by which those of exceptional ability could rise socially and economically. Shakespeare, Newton, Sam Johnson, most of the great industrialists …

Re: Courtenay Barnett at June 20, 2010 4:51 PM ?” I don’t doubt that there were people in the establishment who usually benefited greatly from the Empire. But at whose cost? I also don’t doubt that people in the colonies paid part of the price. All I am suggesting is that all too often the average Briton also paid his share of the cost of Empire and saw few of its benefits.

Take myself (or yourself). When I was born (1946) I inherited a huge, absolutely humongous, national debt, that had been racked up in ww1 and ww2. This meant unduly high taxes (to service the debt) for you and I, thus reducing both our living standards and our economic opportunities. Now you will be delighted to hear that these humungous taxes were not evenly shared ?” making the debt burden even harder on the middle classes; our dear Queen made no contribution at all, and most of the establishment managed to find ways (using a combination of tax havens and offshore trusts) not to pay their share. Indeed my father’s opportunities had already been reduced since instead of earning money in Glasgow as a Chartered Accountant he spent most of the war as an Army Officer in the Far East (and like Suhay’s grandfather, one of my uncles was an Officer in the 14th Army) . I would have to suggest to you that the Empire was rather costly to me and most of my generation. Since the Empire was about to go independent, how then did it benefit me?

I like reading Niall Ferguson. I don’t agree with much of what he said about the Empire and certainly not his comments on the benefits on the Bond Market. But all good historians come with an inbuilt interpretive bias, and one gets balance by reading several.

Now your comment on Jamaican Sugar is rather interesting. I don’t doubt that sugar planters, slave traders, white Jamaicans, etc. drew some benefit from Jamaican slavery. But none of my ancestors did. The truth is that for a large part of the sugar and slavery period, the establishment managed things so that the British housewife (despite the fact that Britain was the world’s biggest sugar producer) paid more for her sugar than the continental housewife did. Now slavery was a horribly evil institution and it has an insidious affect even today on Central Africa and the Caribbean; yet I fail to see how the average British Citizen benefited from it. My ancestors simply paid more taxes to defend the colonies from which they drew no benefit, and a higher price at home for their sugar. ?” not to mention rotten teeth.

Now I have traveled widely on business throughout the Caribbean and Africa. I even lived in Jamaica for 2 years. I can see the devastating effect even today that slavery had on these societies. I do believe that some restitution is due; but let the restitution be from those who benefited so greatly ?” the Belgium royals as recompense for their ancestors murderous rampage in the Congo, our own and our establishment ?” and not from our working and middle classes.

“My ancestors simply paid … a higher price at home for their sugar”

Higher than they would have done if the sugar hadn’t been produced ?

People wanted sugar, that’s how it was made. I doubt if it would have been any cheaper if the plantations had paid more for the labour.

Richard Robinson at June 21, 2010 6:15 PM – I don’t doubt that people wanted sugar – that the demand was there. My point is that the powerful “Sugar and Slavery” lobby in Westminster managed things so that Britains paid more for their sugar than Continentals did. So presumably if we hadn’t had a sugar empire, our households would have paid the lower world market price for our suger. In short while planters, some bankers, london mill operators, slave traders benefited from sugar – the average British Citizen did not.

Hello! bdeebbd interesting bdeebbd site!

Very nice site!

Avatar Singh say:

“Gross Domestic Product in Millions of Dollars

Year 1000 1500 1600 1700

India 33.8 60.5 74.3 90.8

China 26.6 61.8 96.0 82.8

WEurope 10.2 44.3 66.0 83.4

World 116.8 247.1 329.4 371.4

here is why and how it happend-due to pirate english bastards.”

Here is how what happened? That Europe’s GDP increased eight-fold from 1000 to 1700, while India’s increased only threefold?

What have “english pirate bastards” to do with it? What happened was that the europeans underwent an industrial revolution and created a global trade system, whereas China, which had earlier led the world in math, science and technology, deliberately stiffled further technological innovation and international trade.

I think this website should be renamed

“Hating the feelthy English Pirate Bastards”

@ Roderick,

You sound like a reasonable and – for the most part – resoning bloke.

My point again is simply the place where capitial accumulated. It was not to the Jamaicans or other Caribbeans, of to Africa, but rather it was to the colonising power – England. It was that capital that built infrastructre. The Univerisities, hospitlas, supported research and development.

Man – is that so hard to understand.

The fact that you did not get a golden handshake from the plunder, does not negate the point. There are paved roads, universities, hospitals, banking and finacial institutions etc. dating back to those days, so there has been significant conferred benefits – collectively, even despite the fact that you did not personally receive the “golden hand shake” of Empire.

Look, the Ruling class has made bad decisions and squandered over time. This is not my point. I recall reading the history of Marconi, up to the point where the sleeaze boys took over, then started doing weird things with the money accummulated by ( up unitl then) a well run company. Thatcher, the free-for-all market, dervivatives, investments without regard for proper ratio distributions or consideration of risk spread factors, led to the huge downfall. This is a modern day example – so – back to our debate. Indeed the Ruling classes squandeered and wasted and made bad decisions having accumulated significantly from the Empire. But – acccumulatate they did – and benefit Britain did too.

Now, at the risk of repeating myself:-

“Financial services

Investors loaned money to slavers, banking grew to invest the profits and insurance to insure ships and cargoes.

The Barclay brothers – Alexander and David – were among Quakers involved in the slave trade from 1756. they went to found Barclays Bank.

In 1773, the Heywood Brothers founded a bank in Liverpool to fund slave expeditions and deposit their profits. Today that firm is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Lloyds coffee house in London was the centre for slave merchants and financiers. It rose to be a global insurance house”

Upon your line of reasoning, if you don’t get the lolly directly in your hand, you can’t appreicate that there are collectively conferred benefits from these finance houses and banking institutions. They may not pay you directly, but they pay into the Treausury which spends, and did spend money, from which all benefited.

Come on mate – and you call yourself a businessman.

Just teasing – you seem a reasoable man.

P.S. Well Alfred – what can I say to or for you mate?

@ Alfred,

Guess the Indians were left to develop their cloth industry, the Africans got top price for their produce, the slaves got oh so much for their labour, and the wealth they generated was plough right back into their commuinites to build thier schools – hosptials – and universities. My, my how generous was our Empire.

Alfred, you are from another planet, or must have been high when you wrote this:-

“The question of “in whose interests is the empire” is in some ways not quite the right question. Empire was in the interests of both rulers and ruled in that it channeled investment capital to poor countries at relatively low interest rates.”

Poppycock mate!

@ Alfred,

What “interest rates” when the people are being decimated, and dehumanised on plantations for centuries in the millions? Guesss the slaves were silly for not having gone to their local post office bank to cash in on the available loans at low interest rates – huh?

Courtenay Barnett at June 21, 2010 6:36 PM

Re: your comment – “It was that capital that built infrastructure.” The fact is that in the post ww2 period our capital infrastruture was worn out (largely Victorian), and our private sector capital was in even worse shape(the major reason for the eventual collapse of manufacturing). Other 1st world Countries that did not have an Empire were in better shape than we were vis a vis capital equipment. Indeed we had negative capital since we owed so much, and soon even the defeated countries were able to source capital whereas we had only debts to pay – There was clearly a dearth of capital in the British Isles (plenty I suspect owned by the establishment offshore) so how did the average British citizen benefit from empire?

Well, I am using a library and have to go.

Alfed, I quote from my post of 1149pm on June 20th:

“However, it may be instructive to recall that at the very height of the British Empire, in the mid-C19th (the British Empire began to decline from around 1890, in spite of having just captured large portions of Africa, and by the mid-C20th, in spite of appearances, it was finished), the vast majority of the population of the UK lived in absolute squalor and mortality rates were no better than anywhere else.”

In other words, I never wrote that the BE was ‘finished’ by 1890. I don’t know where you got that from. It was certainly ‘finished’ by 1980 though! A typo of yours, I realise.

Alfred, I never wrote that only the despised went to India. I simply said that the average Joe could go to the colonies and acquire a sense of heightened status. This is obvious. I don’t know why you’re having difficulty with it.

I think the truth, Alfred, is that some of my comments – which originally on this thread, if you had cared to search it out properly – were made in response to a set of comments about ‘the English’ made by avatar singh. Roderick Russell then made some comments in response to mine, and Courtney Barnett in reponse to Roderick’s.

What exactly are you trying to say, Alfred? That the BE was a philanthropic exercise, that it was essentially a good thing, that it did not exploit the resources and labour of the colonies, that it did not make a profit (you quoted Churchill, that well-known revolutionary) and yet that it somehow did enormously benefit working-class people back home in a manner equitable with the rich at home and that it was not over-stretched and in severe decline by the 1930s?

You criticise Cheeba, but it was you who deigned to compare life expectancies in the UK in 1900 with those in other countries now. She just provided you with some stats from Asia. Why does that upset you, Alfred?

You haul out all the old chestnuts to justift Britihs imperialism.

The BE gave the ruling elite in India a new lease of life. The older members of the ruling elites still love the British Empire and it seems to me, constantly complain that it’s gone!

..the truth, Alfred, is that I’ve upset your notion of what being ‘of British stock’ might be about and the manner in which in your perception that is tied-up with narratives of the grand old benevolent British Empire. It fits-in with your quaint views on some other matters which I will not mention lest you accuse me of “race-baiting”.

Courtenay,

“Well Alfred – what can I say to or for you mate?”

Call me a feelthy Enlgish Pirate Bastard, by all means.

The fact is that for several hundred years the Europeans dominated the world through their superiority in science, technology and finance. And among the Europeans, the British, from 1815 to 1915 were preeminently successful.

Now Britain has been eclipsed not only by her America colony but also by formerly backward Asian nations. Thus the long pent-up hatred of British success felt by those who were less successful can now be freely expressed.

What I find rather sad is that so many Britons are happy to trash their own country, as though somehow the Indians, with their wonderfully exploitive caste system, their use of slavery, their practice of burning widows alive, or the Africans who traded in slaves for centuries, or the Muslim oppressors of women, or the Chinese with there brutally authoritarian dictatorship, are somehow vastly superior to the British.

I suppose in one way, many of these people are superior to the British. They do what the British used to do, which was to strive relentlessly to succeed in the World, unlike so many of the British of today, who wallow in political correctness, self denigration and generally hopeless reliance on the “welfare” state.

Roderick – re: the price of sugar. Ok, now I see what you mean.

But they still benefitted ? in that they wanted sugar and got it, and that was one of the things that drove the whole business. And, if they’d bought from someone else’s sugar empire, there’d still have been a sugar empire, and presumably not much different ?

I don’t think I’m that bothered about who got to pocket what, really, just to note that pocketing was done – Courtenay’s general point. Some people did accumulate some money, which was then used to accumulate more elsewhere, and became part of the way things are. (I suppose Tate and Lyle would be the easy example ?)

Lancaster Uni. did some work a few years back, resulting in a book on the “small” slave ports of England (of which Lancaster was the biggest). Startling stuff. Looks like everybody wanted in on the Atlantic Trade, however they could – money was being made on it. Slaving doesn’t seem to have been the favourite, for those who were rich enough to pick and choose – too risky (and, just possibly the faint hint of a moral qualm here and there ? maybe. They don’t really explore that side, as I remember) – but there were lots of people hoping to get to that state …

Courtenay,

“Alfred, you are from another planet, or Re: must have been high when you wrote this:

“The question of ‘in whose interests is the empire” is in some ways not quite the right question. Empire was in the interests of both rulers and ruled in that it channeled investment capital to poor countries at relatively low interest rates.’”

I didn’t write that. That’s why it’s in quotes. It was, as I indicated, written by Niall Ferguson.

You might consider addressing his argument, which was that cheap British capital contributed to the development of India. Thus, as Ferguson notes, in 1945 India had an extensive rail network, unlike China which was not a safe place to invest.

But it’s more fun to hate the English and then, like Suhayl, call them racists for objecting.

Among the slavers, Richard, was Sir John Gladstone, father of the sainted William Ewart Gladstone.

When slavery was abolished Sir John received a very handy 80,000 quid in compensation from the Government.

And as for laudanum at Balmoral, there was nothing illegal about it in Victoria’s time. Winston Churchill, when visiting Balmoral sent out for laudanum. He was prone to depression, so it was the natural thing to take.

In the US, Beyer advertised Heroin as a cough suppressant suitable for babies. Bet it worked like a charm.

http://www.google.ca/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=beyer+heroin&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Okay, here is an account with which to contend. There is much more to empires than a list of atrocities, but this may render something of the flavour of the British Empire and presents the lie to those who claim liberal interventionism as a valid justification for imperial rape.

According to Piers Brendon in his new history of the empire, “British punitive expeditions in the Sudan were even more brutal than those in Kenya, at times amounting almost to genocide. Certainly, as one district officer acknowledged, they produced a crop of ‘regular Congo atrocities’.”

Brendon’s The Decline and Fall of the British Empire is to be welcomed. In a hefty 650 pages of text, he provides a narrative history of the empire since the 1780s, somewhat eccentrically dating its decline from the loss of the American colonies.

His account does not shrink from “dealing with the seamy side of the enterprise, especially as it is apt to be played down in the unhealthy neo-imperialist climate of today”. And this is, indeed, the book’s great strength. It provides a relentless catalogue of racist brutality, exploitation, aggression and massacre. Anyone needing evidence to counter the apologists of empire will find the book of enormous value.

His account of the crushing of the Great Rebellion in India in the 1850s brings out the full horror of British repression. The young officer Garnet Wolseley promised himself that he would shed “barrels and barrels of the filth which flows in these niggers’ veins”. This was not the raving of a lone psychopath, but a typical response, which was to be enthusiastically put into effect.

The fall of Delhi to the British, for example, was accompanied by the slaughter of thousands of civilians. One officer later confessed that his men “were very savage, treating those poor wretches like vermin. Some carried ropes on purpose to hang them with, which they did with great delight.” The killing was accompanied by an orgy of looting with many officers becoming rich men. Queen Victoria herself “acquired some prize articles, including the evanescent emperor’s jewelled hat and gilt chairs”.

Similarly, with his account of the suppression of the 1952-1960 Mau Mau Rebellion, Brendon pulls no punches. The white settlers “took the emergency as a licence to kill. They hunted down ‘Kikuyu trouble-makers’ like wild animals. They tortured them at will, sometimes castrating men and raping women. They exterminated them without mercy.”

The colony’s governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, “effectively legalised torture by approving his attorney general’s spurious distinction between ‘punitive force’ officially banned, and ‘compelling force’, which was permitted”. One police officer admitted to Labour MP Barbara Castle that conditions in the internment camps in Kenya “were worse than anything I experienced in my four and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese”. Her efforts at uncovering atrocities led the attorney general, Eric Griffith-Jones, to dismiss her as “that Castellated Bitch”.

John Newsinger, ‘The Socialist Review’ (now if that’s not a red rag to a bull(dog), I don’t know what is!

Now, I really liked Barbara Castle, I thought she was a great woman who could have blown away the current crop of politicians with a glance. So good on her for this!

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=10149

Alfred, get yourself over to America and become a teabagger – I’m sure they will pay you well to write paeans to white Christian entrepreneurship and the infallibility of Ronald Reagan. You will be in great demand when our extremists begin the process of repealing the 13th Amendment and taking the vote away from lazy, ungrateful non-whites.

You are proof that when America is finished and all its wealth and capital has been moved by its great corporations to China, America will simply wallow in self-justification and racist nostalgia. You want it both ways – the British Empire was efficient in producing wealth, but completely non-exploitative and truly altruistic on the part of your plucky forebears since they didn’t get much benefit.

Actually, Al, we Americans took all your money. In fact, the City of London was in on the deal.

Why didn’t you mention opium? Oh, is that because your beloved Queen Victoria couldn’t have owed her wealth to the most violent drug cartel the world has ever seen, the British East India Company? Is it a coincidence that after extracting all that gold from addicted Chinese, Britain became the world’s biggest creditor?

And America became the world’s biggest debtor. Britain was the #1 financer of American railroads. Seems your moral and Christian entrepreneurs already were looking for a new host body to parasitize once Britain was used up.

From 1914 to 1918 the position of those two countries as creditor and debtor were reversed. So all that British debt from two world wars was simply paid to America, completing the transfer of empire.

And as a half-Japanese person, I am glad you bastards never got a hand on Japan. When the US occupied Japan it was under the principles of the international law of occupation, principles it has since abandoned as it has been corrupted by empire. Note that the wealthiest nations in Asia today either avoided Western colonial rule or were ruled by the Japanese empire, which was cruel but at least could not be accused of instilling submission towards whites in the minds of the captured population. That leaves the Western- (and Christian and capitalist) exploited disaster areas of Indochina, Burma, Indonesia, Malaya and the Philippines. Indonesia took many coups and genocides to get on track, so Malaya is the only place you empire-lovers can point to, just as it is the only place lovers of counter-insurgency warfare point to. Except that Malaysia became successful under Dr. Mahathir, the last of the old-time West-bashing populists. You probably don’t want to hear what either Mahathir or Lee Kwan Yew have to say about the British Empire, and God knows they made too good use of their time on Earth to waste any of it on an angry old man in the abandoned husk of the capitalist empire.

“But it’s more fun to hate the English and then, like Suhayl, call them racists for objecting.” Alfred

No, Alfred, I said that every time I or anyone else suggests that you enjoy engaging, one way or another, in a little bit of race theory, you scream that we are “race-baiting”. We’re not. We’re just stating the obvious.

I really believe that you are not racist, Alfred, and I sense that you are a good and kind person, but you do express ideas which (as a pal of mine, right-wing libertarian, Lila Rajiva might say) might be termed, ‘racialist’, i.e. ideas based on the centrality of ‘race’ in human societies. You may explode at me for saying this, but when I say this to you, I do not intend the statement to be in any way pejorative.

I don’t hate the English. I am English. As I explained in detail on one of the earlier posts (which I don’t think you bothered to read), one way or another we are all products of empire. And accordingly, Alfred, if I am not mistaken, you now are Canadian.

Ah, the ironies of history!

Furthermore, Alfred, my initial irruption into this thread was prompted by one of avatar singh’s posts in which, in my view, he seemed to be attacking ‘the English’ because of what he saw as qualities inherenet to their being rather than because of what one state or another had actually done. He subsequently qualified and explained his meaning in a series of posts.

However, it really is doubly ironic that you accuse me now of ‘hating the English’. On what basis, Alfred? You know, some of the people I have loved most in my life have been English. So perhaps it’s best to avoid making assumptions. Anyway, for those interested, and those who didn’t catch it before, here is a story set in deepest England, ‘The Saelig Tales’. ‘Saelig’ is the old English word for ‘Holy’.

http://textualities.net/suhayl-saadi/saelig-tales-part-1/

@ Alfred and Roderick,

Maybe a bit unfair of me putting both of you in the same tea bag, but the cuppa seems much the same coming from you both when I consider what’s in it.

You guys are stuck in pre-1945 mind-set. You are in esssence wedded to a sanitised version of what the British Empire truly represented. You want this loving , benign, concerned, non-exploitative version of events. Tell you a couple ones on that score:-

1. In the 1970s I watched a documentary on Apartheid, and the human side of the Aparheid project was being examined. I don’t recall whether it was shown on the BBC or ITV, anyway. There was a young white couple out of the East End that had migrated to South Africa. The bloke was a mechanic and his missus a housewife. The film showed the council house they left and the manision with swimming pool they occupied where they lived in South Africa. He had been made manager of a garage. The interviewer asked him whether he did not thing something wrong with him being given the job above black blokes who had worked as much as 26 years at the garage and knew the work a lot better than him. He justified his job on the baisis of race and entitlement, as did his wife with her new life of comfort with swimming pool and servants.

2. A Jewish mate of mine left for Jamaica as a young academic in the 1950s and having graduated from London University got a job lecturing at the Jamaican branch of the University of the West Indies. I asked him once, why he had migrated, and he said that although he had good academic credentials, there were those at London who were much better than he was, and he thought that he would have a better career out in the West Indies. Well he did, his students resepcted him, he published some good papers, and he retired as a full Professor.

Now, what does 1 an 2 above have to do with Empire? Well, Empire is a bit like 1 above, it was racist and exploitative and bequeated a mass of problems to be resolved once the exploitative rule ended. The books in Jamaica, or Ghana, or India, or anywhere, were not such that in short shift the “natives” did not have to go running cap in hand to beg from the IMF. The Empire bled them and left precious little to build the independent nation(s) on.

With 2 above, well there you have the Irish, Scots, English and others making their way Loridng it over the natives with a view down the line for retirement in Blighty.

One contrasting fact. The English, for over 300 years did not build even one(1) University in Asia, Africa or the Caribbean. The Universty of Havana is now over 400 years old – because, this was a settler colony. “New Spain” had to be built, and there was no going back, they came to stay. The English ran “exploitation colonies”. The Empire was falling apart before World War 11, but Hitler had to be fought. After the Second World War, the project of decolonisatio moved a pace. Enter my friend, the retired science professor.

Isn’t it shameful, that it took that long, to bulid the Universtiy, because HMG woke up one day and suddently relised – we were too busy slotting whites above the coloureds and blacks and really had no one with the administrative skills to run the country – so – guess what? – we need to build a University to get the hell out of their country and leave it with a little education and broke.

Tell me I am wrong – Alfred and Roderick.

You blokes would make a good case study for the work by Eward Said entitled “Orientalism”.

@ Alfred and Roderick,

Maybe a bit unfair of me putting both of you in the same tea bag, but the cuppa seems much the same coming from you both when I consider what’s in it.

You guys are stuck in pre-1945 mind-set. You are in essence wedded to a sanitised version of what the British Empire truly represented. You want this loving , benign, concerned, non-exploitative version of events. Tell you a couple ones on that score:-

1. In the 1970s I watched a documentary on Apartheid, and the human side of the Apartheid project was being examined. I don’t recall whether it was shown on the BBC or ITV, anyway. There was a young white couple out of the East End that had migrated to South Africa. The bloke was a mechanic and his missus a housewife. The film showed the council house they left and the mansion with swimming pool they occupied where they lived in South Africa. He had been made manager of a garage. The interviewer asked him whether he did not thing something wrong with him being given the job above black blokes who had worked as much as 26 years at the garage and knew the work a lot better than he did. He justified his job on the basis of race and entitlement, as did his wife with her new life of comfort with swimming pool and servants.

2. A Jewish mate of mine left for Jamaica as a young academic in the 1950s and having graduated from London University got a job lecturing at the Jamaican branch of the University of the West Indies. I asked him once, why he had migrated, and he said that although he had good academic credentials, there were those at London who were much better than he was, and he thought that he would have a better career out in the West Indies. Well he did, his students respected him, he published some good papers, and he retired as a full Professor.

Now, what does 1 an 2 above have to do with Empire? Well, Empire is a bit like 1 above, it was racist and exploitative and bequeathed a mass of problems to be resolved once the exploitative rule ended. The books in Jamaica, or Ghana, or India, or anywhere, were such that in short shift the “natives” did not have surplus finances to move their countries forward. The lolly had long since made its way back to England. So, guess what ?” they did what they could – running cap in hand to beg from the IMF. The Empire bled them and left precious little for building the independent nation(s) .

With 2 above, well there you have the Irish, Scots, English and others making their way Lording it over the natives with a view down the line for retirement to Blighty.

One contrasting fact. The English, for over 300 years did not build even one(1) University in Asia, Africa or the Caribbean. The University of Havana is now over 400 years old – because, this was a settler colony. “New Spain” had to be built, and there was no going back, they came to stay. The English ran “exploitation colonies”. The Empire was falling apart before World War 11, but Hitler had to be fought. After the Second World War, the project of decolonisation moved a pace.Now, enter my friend, the retired science professor.

Isn’t it shameful, that it took that long, to build the University, because HMG woke up one day and suddenly realised – we were too busy slotting whites above the coloureds and blacks and really had no one with the administrative skills to run the country – so – guess what? – we need to build a University to get the hell out of their country and leave it with a little education and broke.

Tell me I am wrong – Alfred and Roderick.

You blokes would make a good case study for the work by Edward Said entitled “Orientalism”. You want to make exploitation into benevolence, the criminality of slavery into a humanitarian mission, and ongoing imperialism into a humanitarian contribution to humankind.

Suhayl,

Avatar Singh referred to “English pirate bastards”, which seemed pretty much a general assertion of anti-English sentiment. That following a good deal of British bashing over slavery notwithstanding that slavery has been engaged in throughout the World throughout recorded history and notwithstanding that it was the British who outlawed and suppressed the international slave trade.

But, when I objected to this, you brought up the race issue. So no, I didn’t intend to imply that you hate the English. But I cannot understand why you should bring up the issue of race. What’s more, the English race does not exist, remember? At least that’s what Craig says, although in saying that he is either disingenuous or ignorant of the meaning of the word race (I’ve given the dictionary definition here before so I won’t repeat it, and anyway to those with no real understanding of biology, it will likely mean nothing). (Interestingly, in the Australian press, Craig cheerfully condemns Stalin for mixing up the Central Asian ethnicities. Apparently, its OK to be ethnic if you’re anything but English.)

And then some half Japanese person with the unlikely name of super390, maybe half Japanese half robot, accuses me of being a white Christian for God’s sake. How dare anyone accuse me of Christianity. And I’m not white, I’m pink with green stripes.

Then robot 390 offers a comparison of the humanity of Japan’s Imperialists with Britain’s. I love his complete lack of any sense of irony. It helps one understand why those who survived the Japanese slave labor camps usually had a drinking problem that ended in suicide.

All empires are evil from the point of view of those who are conquered, but some empires are more evil than others. The weakness of the British Empire was that during the 20th century it was run by people who were too civilized to hang on to what they had got. If Britain had done what Hitler advised, which was to shoot Gandhi and 50 other Congress members, who knows, the empire might still be in existence.

The challenge to the empire was the dawning of the age of democracy. Democracy and empire don’t mix. The only hope was either to trash democracy, as the United States is doing now, or democratise the entire empire. The latter might have worked, with an imperial parliament in, say, Sri Lanka with Prime Minister Mugabe, perhaps, presiding over a parliament of 500 Indians, 500 Africans and 50 Brits.

As for Robot 390′s rant about the way the west is destroying itself through outsourcing, he’s not saying anything that any competent economist doesn’t know. What we are seeing is vindication of the Marxist analysis of the crisis of capitalism. Collapse was staved off first by the tech bubble, then the housing bubble. There seems to be nothing else that will do, unless it is a war with Iran.

More likely we are faced with a catastrophic depression from which there will be no escape route for the West. Once the technology, the engineering and workforce skills have gone to Asia, they are unlikely ever to be revived in Britain. The Brits will be like the Africans relative to the Europeans in the 19th century. Robot 390 provides a glimpse of the attitude of racial contempt with which westerners will then be regarded by the new imperial masters.

That is why I believe it is insanely self-destructive to continually harp on the moral failings of our ancestors. They were no worse than any other ruling elite, except possibly in lacking the will and the ruthlessness necessary for survival. We will now have to fight for our survival from a position of rapidly growing weakness.

You are either with us or you are with those who seek to destroy us — to borrow an idiom.

@ all – my apology for the repost. My computer was telling me that it did not go. So – with Alfred and Roderick in my cross- hairs, I did not want to miss – so shot again. Hope I hit in the head to get them thinking. Note, on this topic – I did not aim for the heart – Al – Rod – when it comes on to colonialism and imperialism – tell us – do you have one. Sorry – two – or are you sharing one mind, one heart on this topic. Come on now – speak the truth.

“English pirate bastards”

Just because we arrrrrr.

Courtenay,

Your capacity to discern what others are thinking without them giving the slightest verbal hint is truly breath-taking.

But why don’t you think about this: Imagine that not Britain but Japan, or Germany or Russia or an Independent India with its caste system, its holy cows and its burning alive of widows had been the greatest power on earth in the 100 years to 1939. Now tell us whether that would have made for a better world than the British-dominated world we actually had.

And bear in mind Simone Weil’s dictum, “there is no force in the world but force…” so don’t cop out by saying the Indians or the Japanese or whoever would not have created an empire. Power, where it exists, is always exercised.

What is remarkable about British Imperialism is that although it was often brutal, it was not always so. And in the end it failed because it sought unrealistically to apply to the business of government the Christian message of the Sermon on the Mount. It encouraged the idea of, and then granted, self-government to the colonies, and in doing so attempted to create a commonwealth of nations sharing a common heritage of parliamentary democracy, due process and individual freedom.

Now tell us, do you really believe that a Hitlerian empire or a Hirohito empire would have been so benign?

Alfred,

it is a subtle form of trolling that you repeatedly indulge in, and I wish that you wouldn’t. It demeans you and wastes time.

Regarding your post of June 21, 2010 11:00 PM, where you finally get around to making your actual point rather than merely inciting argument, has it not occurred to you that human evolution (biological, social, technological and spiritual) is an ongoing process, and maybe, just maybe, enough progress has recently been made to avert a futile fight over diminishing resources, and that enough ordinary humans will see that their best options for their future can be secured by simply ignoring the ‘elites’ and cooperating with each other?

Alfred,

your trouble is that you like a fight. Not everyone does.

@ Clark ( let’s give ‘ol Alfred a good one)

@ Alfred,

Judge: You are charged with support of colonialism, imperialism and the concomitant exploitation that goes along with same.

Alfred: Well belligerence is as old as the Bible itself ?” didn’t Cain kill Able, so what’s wrong if Britain did it?

Judge: Are you saying that two wrongs make right? Because someone else did something exploitative or inhumane, are you positing that as justification for British colonialism and imperialism?

Alfred: Oh no, I am just saying that I know that we are a Christian nation, are truly humane, and the way we used our force was so much more humane, regardless of how we acted ?” we simply are. As I said, “There is no force in the world but force… ”

Judge: Are you seriously arguing that the only way for humankind is force, wars, and belligerence? Well?

Alfred: Duh… huh… . We are British and better than all the others who ever used force! Well, what is remarkable about British Imperialism is that although it was often brutal, it was not always so.

Judge: And so by your logic I am to assume some form of exceptionalism here, in that for all the others who used force, they too did not always act brutally? Well…

Alfred: Duh… .huh.

Judge: Guilty as charged – next case.

Guess you are just the UK equivalent of the tea baggers in the US, and you like your old cuppa too don’t you Alfred ?” even if it comes from India… huh?

Courtenay Barnett,

ol’ Alfred’s really not that bad. He just makes out that he supports the BNP, winds everyone up for a dozen or so comments, and then reveals that really he’s asking why the BNP advertise some of the policies that other parties should be offering. Or he poses as a racist, winds everyone up for however many comments, and then points out that he isn’t racist in such a clever manner that I couldn’t work out what he’d said. Look at his latest: “The British Empire was good! Yes it was! It really was quite good! No what I mean is that it wasn’t as bad as some arbitrary alternative. Look, would you like to be killed, or would you rather kill someone else?”

Gentlemen – Just to bring my contribution to this topic to a close, may I say that I have mixed feelings about the Empire. My view is that that Britain would have been better off had we concentrated on developing our manufacturing sector rather than trying to run the world, and had we kept our capital at home rather than exporting it abroad, The problem with Empire for Britain is that once a colony showed signs of becoming profitable it went independent. Yes, there were those in the UK who profited greatly from Empire, but I doubt that the average British citizen got much out of it at all, except wars and taxes.

But Courtenay I think you are being a little unfair to me. Did I not say that by enlarge I thought the Empire unfair (as well as unprofitable)? It encouraged racism and was ridden with class issues (still the British disease today); two very foolish and inefficient ways to run anything? Imperial rule operated on the “who you know” not “what you know” principle, so it didn’t need universities anyway. Yes, Havana (the oldest European city in the Americas) is quite magnificent and well worth a visit.

Re: trolling

If you look at Suhayl’s comments that prompted mine you will see that he accuses me, entirely without justification that I can understand, of engaging in “a little bit of race theory”. He then calls me a “racialist.”

I am quite sincere in rejecting both claims. And I do think it silly to accuse someone of being a British racist when it is also asserted that there is no such thing as race and certainly not a British race.

As for my comment in response to super390, his tone was offensive and his comments wild. He calls me bastard and sneers at my being a Christian, although there is no justification for calling me either.

The idea of ordinary people ignoring the elites and settling international differences in a fair and reasonable way is appealing but naive. The elite have means, like guns, tear gas, Homeland Security detention centers, assassination units, and tanks to ensure that ordinary people have no role in determining the affairs of state. If it were otherwise, WW1 would have ended on Christmas day with German and British soldiers singing carols together and playing football.

No doubt people here would like to see a better world; a fairer world, a world in which justice trumps wealth and power. Hence the readiness to admit Britain’s alleged past sins. Or at any rate the readiness to accuse me and other realists of past sins or of approving past sins. However, I fear that like the pacifism so fervently promoted in Britain and France in the aftermath of WW1, such attitudes will be understood as signs of Western decay and feebleness, and thus make future conflict all the more certain.

Alfred, people do remember your comments on previous posts. I did not call you a ‘racialist’. I said that one might term some of the ideas which you had put forward (on other threads) as ‘racialist’. I am really pleased that you now appear to accept that “there is no such thing as a British race”. I was suggesting that perhaps some of your arguments re. the British Empire arose from these premises. I accept that I may have been wrong on this particular point of linkage and that you were simply arguing from a fresh perspective on this thread.

I accept your comments about all empires being polyvalent and in fact I made the point earlier that rule by the Japanese empire would not have been good for India. It’s unfortunate that Indians had to choose between two imperial rulers at that point. There is no question that French, Belgian, Dutch Empires were consistently and systemically more brutal than the British Empire – we’re talking in relative terms here, of course. Britain ought to have granted independence to India in the early 1920s, after WW1. But it was the jewel in the Crown.

Anyway, as Roderick says, I do think we’ve expended this discourse and thanks for engaging in it.

Thanks, Roderick, for your nuanced and measured views which prudently also encompass social class analysis.

Courtney, good on you – keep on pushing!

Richard, I do see you as a pirate, with, of course, one of the pirate-flutes. Bluebeard, possibly… (!) He had more fun.

And avatar, thanks for introducing the subject in a suitably explosive manner from out of a discourse on the Russian ‘Empire’.

@ Abe Rene

Cheers

Alfred,

please don’t be too upset; I did write “*subtle* trolling”, mainly for want of a more appropriate linguistic label. I see that you’ve made more references to past conflicts. Remember that human action over time is showing a tendency to become more moral, empathic and inclusive. You have rightly criticised ‘globalisation’, but it has this positive aspect too, as people discover how much they have in common; this web site is a fine example, with contributions from all over the world. Look for evolution in action; there is more to it than the slow sifting and mutation of the genes. The Internet has introduced something new. It may prove to be the physical substrate of an emerging global consciousness.

Suhayl – the Captain Pugwash tune is a well-known session favourite. Killing people & nicking their stuff, not so much.

How about International Talk Like A Human Day ?

Fuck off Suhayl.

You expound a farrago of anti-British historical rubbish and then, when I refute it, you call me a racialist. Now you allege that I deny the existence of the British race.

Craig Murray’s hate the English web site with its bodyguard of fanatics is a strange and futile place indeed.

Alfred – calm down, huh ?

Thank you, Alfred.

Are these your true colours, I wonder? Scratch away the veneer and what lies underneath?

You seem to want everyone to simply salute and fly the flag, fanatically, one might say, unquestioningly. Sorry, that’s not going to happen. If you can’t take criticism of your views, perhaps you ought to avoid dishing it out.

I think I’ve made very clear my view that the British Empire had good and bad points, that the impact of imperialism is polyvalent. Yes, I am against imperialism in general.

For that, and for reminding you of some views you expounded recently on other threads, I am addressed by you as though you were a spam ad for tumescence.

It reflects on you, Alfred. I am sorry that you have resorted to this kind of thing. There’s no need.

“a spam ad for tumescence”

Good grief, Suhayl, you *read* them ?

Ahrrr, Bluebeard, me hearty, you have no need of such things, me reckons…

“Ahrrr, Bluebeard, me hearty”

Eeeek ! He’s stereotyping me ! I’m a _northern_ English pirate bastard, tha knows. (How do they talk ? I’ve no idea, I’ve not heard the stereotypes. Boom boo… I’ll get me coat).

Blackbeard ?? Bluebeard was a different style of bastard, and a fictional French landlubber to boot.

I know, but Blackbeard didn’t get the wenches like Bluebeard did. So I’ve launched Bluebeard, with a bottle of rum and a yo-ho-ho, in a man ‘o’ war, see? The lusty pirate ship. Don’t forget the flute and the tunes!

Then there were several Redbeards.

But there wasn’t a Yellowbeard. There was a Yellowman, but he was a reggae singer.

What was it about beards?

In any case, me hearty, you’re a Lancastrian – pah! And don’t give me talk about the Wars of the Roses. Richard III got a bad name. That bard, William Somethingorother… Tudor propaganda!

Colonel Custer, notorious land pirate: Yellowbeard.

I thought only the enlgish (not all ofcourse)were from Neaanderthalls-seeing from their behaviour not from genses.!

Interesting article -if out of topic -sorry. that explains many nanderthalls attributes in so called humans.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/291798

Evidence for interbreeding with Neanderthals, only Africans pure

By R. C. Camphausen.

+

Leipzig – An international team of scientists have successfully sequenced the Neanderthal genome, and the evidence shows that humans in Europe, Asia and Papua New Guinea carry Neanderthal genes – while African peoples are 100 percent human.

An international team led by scientists from the respected Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have successfully sequenced 65 percent of the Neanderthal genome. It is the first time that the genetic code of an extinct human relative has been decoded, and the present announcement cam after 4 years of diligent study.

Wannakillamammoth?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e-I88xz4oI&feature=related

Avatar, that obviously explains Mick Jagger.

I don’t think many of them actually had anything much to do with Lancaster. Accordingto the local museum, John of Gaunt only ever came here once, for 2 or 3 days. Anyway, he was French …

Whitebeard, me. Living on the last of a pile of empirical Loot and muttering Vile Imprecations and Unspeakable Oaths against Scurvy Dogs and Whippersnappers.

Rum, did you say ? Now you’re talking.

“Hand me down my telescope, and a bullet I can chew,

I’ll be walking down the streets of Paradise …”

Oh, and there are whistles with finger holes found buried in Neanderthal graves. They got a bad press, me hearties, bloody human stitchup …

Alfred’s thrown his stone and run away again, then ?

Yeah, the usual.

I notice that Britain, reeling from the ferocity of unprecedented budget cuts, can still find funds for the really important things in life: see ‘UK government appoints first-ever envoy for Holocaust-related issues’ at http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/main/showNews/id/9385

For a moment, I thought the old country might really be broke. What a relief! A nation that can afford ambassadors to history clearly has money to spare.

This is worth reading for a sense the current state of justice in Russia.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2602300905&topic=7055

(a page from the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Facebook site)

It is just not universally true that Russian schools don’t teach about the Hitler/Stalin pact of the invasion of Poland some do. The real problem about all teaching in Russia is that it is very patchy – teachers, textbooks, buildings and other resources still vary widely from place to place. Private/semi private schools are now pretty common in Moscow and other big cities.

Reverting to a standard history text may not be an entirely bad thing

We should always be vary wary of black/white views about anything to do with Russia – there is increasing interest in the general public in the work of organisations that look at what happened in the Stalin years and Putin’s stance isn’t always pro-stalinist e.g recognition of Katyn/showing of the film. Still a riddle wrapped in an enigma or was it the other way around.