Putin’s Russia continues to move smartly in the wrong direction. Interesting article in the Guardian here:
Russia’s ruling political party is gathering academics to draw up a uniform textbook presenting a party-approved version of Russian history and seeking to downplay the horrors of the Soviet era.
“We understand that the school is a unique social institution that forms all citizens,” Irina Yarovaya, the deputy head of the Duma’s constitutional law committee, told a meeting of 20 party members and academics today.
“We need a united society. We need a united textbook.”
The move comes amid a mass ideological project, promoted by the United Russia party, seeking to build a national identity on the glories of its second world war victory, turning a blind eye to some of the crimes committed in the Soviet Union
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/17/united-russia-uniform-history-textbook
That is of course the Great Patriotic War that only started in 1941. It is already the case that the Stalin/Hitler pact and invasion of Poland in 1939 are not taught in Russian schools.
“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
From WikiSpooks
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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.
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?