This is the key section that counters western claims that Syria used chemical weapons in Douma. It is testimony from a senior doctor in the clinic where the victims were treated:
“ There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night -- but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a ‘White Helmet’, shouted ‘Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”
Fisks adds that strangely no one he met in Douma appeared to know of a gas attack.
The US-led strikes would have been illegal even had there been a chemical weapons attack of unknown provenance. The strikes would have been illegal even had Assad personally ordered the use of chemical weapons. They were illegal without authorization from the UN Security Council. And that required an independent investigation. Until then, caution and restraint were needed. We now have a respected journalist saying there is good evidence chemical weapons weren't used.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
Stones of granite wrote:
Does he mention meeting the British Special Forces Amateur Dramtics Corps who were there to fabricate a CW attack?
Full report hasn't been released yet. But let's remember the permanent members of the UN security council (with NATO & EU members plus Kuwait amounting to almost half) voted down Russia's resolution to establish whether there had even been a chemical weapons attack. Now one of the foremost authorities on the region in the English language is casting serious doubt on the fact. Oops!
Russian resolution was voted down because they demanded editorial control.
Current investigation unable to enter Douma because the Assad regime and Russian forces are stopping them.
No, I believe they're underway already. They were delayed by the US-led strikes on the facilities they are apparently on their way to investigate, so I'm not sure what they'll find among the rubble.
That’s strange. The OPCW have stated they are to investigate claims of a CW attack, not the bombed facilities, which as you know, are a considerable distance from Douma. Apparently, British Special Forces and journalists like Peter Fisk have no problems accessing Douma, but OPCW nvestigators can’.
The Team has not yet deployed to Douma. The Syrian and the Russian officials who participated in the preparatory meetings in Damascus have informed the FFM Team that there were still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place.
In the meantime the Team was offered by the Syrian authorities that they could interview 22 witnesses who could be brought to Damascus.
The Russian and Syrian authorities have previously claimed that Douma is completely pacified, but are using a claim of “ongoing security issues”to frustrate the investigation, and cause misdirection by offering “witnesses” under controlled access.
For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.
As Dr Assim Rahaibani announces this extraordinary conclusion, it is worth observing that he is by his own admission not an eyewitness himself.....
By bad luck, too, the doctors who were on duty that night on 7 April were all in Damascus giving evidence to a chemical weapons enquiry,
I think you'll find his name is actually Robert Fisk, and he is certainly one of the foremost authorities on the region in the English language:
Robert Fisk, (born July 12, 1946, Maidstone, Kent, Eng.), British journalist and best-selling author known for his coverage of the Middle East.
Fisk earned a B.A. in English literature at Lancaster University in 1968 and a Ph.D. in political science from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1985. He began his journalism career in 1972 as the Belfast correspondent of The Times of London, covering political turmoil in Northern Ireland. As the paper’s Middle East correspondent from 1976 to 1987 he again reported on violent and tumultuous political events, such as the Lebanese civil war (1975–90), the Iranian Revolution (1978–79), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). In 1989 Fisk moved to The Independent, where he continued to cover the Middle East from Beirut. He was known for his passionate reporting, his ability to secure access to frequently inaccessible people and places, and his willingness to brave danger to further his work. He was one of the few Western reporters to have interviewed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a feat he accomplished three times during the 1990s. He also provided extensive coverage of the Persian Gulf War (1990–91), the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan (2001), and the Iraq War (2003), priding himself on his eyewitness accounts while criticizing what he called the “hotel journalism” of some of his colleagues, which often relied heavily on official sources. Fisk received numerous awards, including the British Press Awards International Journalist of the Year and Foreign Reporter of the Year. He wrote several books, including The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster (1975), In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939–1945 (1983), Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (2001), and The Great War for Civilisation—the Conquest of the Middle East (2005).
The Independent published his report, which is something, but within an article by their own editorial staff which has a predictably biased slant. The fact is, Fisk is there on the ground, an extremely experienced and highly respected journalist fluent in the local language, and the people he is talking to a clearly telling him there was no gas attack; that it was a false alarm triggered by a White Helmet.
As for the UN inspections, both sides are calling for them and I read a report in the local press last night which clearly implied they were underway already, while the BBC published this just 6 hours ago - Chemical weapons inspectors in Syria will be permitted to visit the site of an alleged chemical attack on Wednesday, Russia has said.
Last edited by rowan on Tue Apr 17, 2018 7:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
Meanwhile Fisk’s account has just been corroborated by another reporter there, Pearson Sharp of the conservative news network One America.
Israeli-based British journalist Jonathan Cook writes:
Fisk does not need to prove that his account is definitively true – just like a defendant in the dock does not need to prove their innocence. He has to show only that he reported accurately and honestly, and that the testimony he recounted was plausible and consistent with what he saw. Everything about Fisk’s record and about this particular report suggests there should be no doubt on that score.
Fisk’s report shows that there is a highly credible alternative explanation for what happened in Douma – one that needs to be investigated. Which means that an attack on Syria should never have taken place before inspectors were able to investigate and report their findings.
Instead, the US-UK-France launched air strikes hours before the UN inspectors were due to begin their work in Syria, thereby pre-empting it. At the time those air strikes took place, the aggressor states had neither legal nor evidential justification for their actions. They were were simply relying on the reports of parties, like the White Helmets, that have a vested interest in engineering the Syrian government’s downfall.
As is now known beyond doubt, our leaders lied to us about Iraq and about Libya. Some of us have been warning for some time that we should be highly sceptical of everything we are being told by our governments about Syria, until it is verified by independent evidence.
All of us have a moral responsibility to stop simply believing what our governments and their propagandists in the corporate media tell us, whether we do it out of a kneejerk authoritarian impulse or because we have some romantic notion that, despite the evidence, our leaders are always the good guys and their leaders are always the bad guys.
Just consider for a moment the UK’s support for, and involvement in, the horrifying Saudi war against Yemen, or US politicians’ blanket silence on Israel’s massacre of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza. Our leaders have no moral high ground to stand on. Their foreign policy decisions are about oil, defence contracts and geo-strategic interests, not about protecting civilians or fighting just wars.
However bad Assad is, and he is a dictator, he is responsible for far fewer deaths and much less suffering in the Middle East than either George W Bush or Tony Blair.
rowan wrote:
As for the UN inspections, both sides are calling for them and I read a report in the local press last night which clearly implied they were underway already, while the BBC published this just 6 hours ago - Chemical weapons inspectors in Syria will be permitted to visit the site of an alleged chemical attack on Wednesday, Russia has said.
Funny that the OPCW themselves say otherwise.
Yes, the BBC are indeed reporting that the inspectors will be allowed access on Wednesday. It's still not clear why they have to wait until Wednesday while the Syrian and Russian authorities are happy to shepherd reporters around now. How long does it take for chlorine to disperse?
Stones of granite wrote:
Does he mention meeting the British Special Forces Amateur Dramtics Corps who were there to fabricate a CW attack?
Full report hasn't been released yet. But let's remember the permanent members of the UN security council (with NATO & EU members plus Kuwait amounting to almost half) voted down Russia's resolution to establish whether there had even been a chemical weapons attack. Now one of the foremost authorities on the region in the English language is casting serious doubt on the fact. Oops!
Russian resolution was voted down because they demanded editorial control.
Current investigation unable to enter Douma because the Assad regime and Russian forces are stopping them.
No, I believe they're underway already. They were delayed by the US-led strikes on the facilities they are apparently on their way to investigate, so I'm not sure what they'll find among the rubble.
rowan wrote:
canta_brian wrote:
Stones of granite wrote:
Does he mention meeting the British Special Forces Amateur Dramtics Corps who were there to fabricate a CW attack?
Full report hasn't been released yet. But let's remember the permanent members of the UN security council (with NATO & EU members plus Kuwait amounting to almost half) voted down Russia's resolution to establish whether there had even been a chemical weapons attack. Now one of the foremost authorities on the region in the English language is casting serious doubt on the fact. Oops!
Russian resolution was voted down because they demanded editorial control.
Current investigation unable to enter Douma because the Assad regime and Russian forces are stopping them.
No, I believe they're underway already. They were delayed by the US-led strikes on the facilities they are apparently on their way to investigate, so I'm not sure what they'll find among the rubble.
Oh look, all this time I've assumed you were an idiot. Turns out you're just a common garden troll.
Why would the OPCW's investigation into Douma by be delayed by US airstrikes that didn't target Douma?
To answer that, they wouldn't be. Controlling access to Douma can only ever encourage suspicion as to Assad's motives. If it's all down to the Nasty Americans and Brits then get the world in there to see.
rowan wrote:
How long does it take for chlorine to disperse?
Chlorine gas is heavier than air so it doesn't disperse very quickly at all. Dumping it on a city that has already had the crap bombed out of it could leave pockets of the stuff for several days.
Interestingly First World War gunners used to mix the high explosives of their pre-attack artillery bombardments with gas in order to incapacitate, degrade and disorientate the defenders. Once they started to get a little more sophisticated in its use, Chlorine gas was only used to bombard those areas to the flanks on in depth of those being attacked as if it was fired on the objective it would hang around in the bottom of the trenches and poison the attackers as they came through. The even denser, but more lethal phosgene also used to hang around, but neither were nearly as persistent as Mustard Gas, which was in fact a liquid.
More rapidly dispersed, but not normally lethal tear gas was the poison of choice for dousing any objectives ahead of an attack.
I'd say that if Chlorine was dumped on Douma, the longer the inspectors are kept away, the better the chances of it dispersing. 10 days should do it.
If it's all down to the Nasty Americans and Brits then get the world in there to see.
Amazing you would express sarcasm here. You're referring to the two nations which defied international law and world opinion and invaded Iraq on the basis of a pack of lies, resulting in up to 2.4 million deaths (according to latest estimates), during a war that lasted 15 years. These two nations followed that up by joining France in doing pretty much the same thing to Libya. Wikileaks has released cables proving this to also have been based on a pack of lies. No one questions the authenticity of those cables, btw, only the rights & wrongs of their being released at all. In addition to which these two nations are currently engaged in a 17-year long occupation of Afghanistan, a nation which was actually doing quite well under a socialist government, with equal rights for women among other things, until the usual suspects brought it down with the help of terrorist proxies (sound familiar). Meanwhile, they support the Saudi bombing of Yemen and Israel's ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians. & let's not even get into their past crimes because that would keep us busy for the next few months. Suffice to say they account for the two most murderous, evil, racist empires of the past few centuries. & it's extremely ironic that anyone could be sarcastic about their role in foreign wars and interventions. The problem is they have never been held accountable - as the Germans have for the Nazis, for example. But for me there is no difference at all in listening to Americans or Britons attempting to justify their nations' war crimes than there is in listening to some Neo Nazi skinhead defending Hitler.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
I wonder who the most murderous regimes of the last two centuries would be,the Soviet Union (under Stalin) would be one perhaps with the other being China under Zedong? It's not going to be the UK and the USA even if one doesn't like the imperial past of the UK and their current foreign policies, not even close, it's probably not even Hitler's Third Reich, nor the supposed Commies in North Korea, Cambodia or Ethiopia
Digby wrote:I wonder who the most murderous regimes of the last two centuries would be,the Soviet Union (under Stalin) would be one perhaps with the other being China under Zedong? It's not going to be the UK and the USA even if one doesn't like the imperial past of the UK and their current foreign policies, not even close, it's probably not even Hitler's Third Reich, nor the supposed Commies in North Korea, Cambodia or Ethiopia
Well, Stalin was Georgian, and I've met plenty of Russians who have a different view of it. But even if we accept the Western narrative, the crimes against humanity in the USSR and China were committed mostly against their own people by tyrannical dictators, obviously backed by the army. But the victims were the Soviet & Chinese people themselves. So is that the same thing as nations like the US & UK waging wars around the world and plundering nations of every continent of their resources? I'm not sure. Both America and the UK have undisputed genocides to their credit on more than one count, and these continued right up until fairly recent times. Whether Iraq II constituted a genocide depends on your interpretation of the term, but the body count is certainly on that scale.
Telling it like it is:
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
Russia and/or the Soviet Union would easily join in with us on the genocide front, and I'm not sure what the point was of noting Stalin is Georgian. Further, no, I wouldn't consider Iraq a war of genocide, whereas I would consider the Amritsar massacre a genocide
Digby wrote:I wonder who the most murderous regimes of the last two centuries would be,the Soviet Union (under Stalin) would be one perhaps with the other being China under Zedong? It's not going to be the UK and the USA even if one doesn't like the imperial past of the UK and their current foreign policies, not even close, it's probably not even Hitler's Third Reich, nor the supposed Commies in North Korea, Cambodia or Ethiopia
But even if we accept the Western narrative, the crimes against humanity in the USSR and China were committed mostly against their own people by tyrannical dictators, obviously backed by the army. But the victims were the Soviet & Chinese people themselves. So is that the same thing as nations like the US & UK waging wars around the world and plundering nations of every continent of their resources?
Well that certainly explains your support of Assad. Seems you don't consider the killing of a countries own citizens as an issue.
rowan wrote:Both America and the UK have undisputed genocides to their credit on more than one count
No they don't. The UK may have by your definition, but that is far from undisputed. The Americans might, by modern definition, have need to check the small print over their 19th Century behaviour towards some of the indigenous American peoples, but try to peg anything else with a genocide label and you will fall foul of the Internationally accepted definition of the term as writ under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Hads to get my head around it before going looking for Genocidaires in eastern Congo).
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Digby wrote:... I would consider the Amritsar massacre a genocide
It's certainly an atrocity, and I've no issue with anyone wanting to call it genocide. I've also no issue with anyone not happy calling it a genocide as there was no wider starting intent to kill/main , there was an unhealthy desire to rule over India but wanting rule over clearly isn't the same as wanting to kill them all
If you want a British genocide, look no further than how the English behaved during famines in Ireland and India. Not fundamentally different to how the USSR commited genocide in Ukraine.
Zhivago wrote:If you want a British genocide, look no further than how the English behaved during famines in Ireland and India. Not fundamentally different to how the USSR commited genocide in Ukraine.
Straight up it's the case that in both instances Britain should have done more, but India was a mess of its own making or at least far from being able to put it all on the Brits. And Ireland had enough food not to have a famine, but many Irish landowners chose to sell their produce to the growing USA and ignore the problem in Ireland, and if Irish controllers of food production/distribution are going to ignore the problem it's more than a little perverse to then try to but more blame on the Brits than the Irish, and barking mad to call it a genocide.
The British carried out genocide in Australia and New Zealand, reducing the native populations to a fraction of their original numbers. US author Jared Diamond estimates the figure got as low as 15,000 in NZ from a pre-European population of two or three hundred thousand, while John Pilger's documentaries tell us all about the Aborigines and similar declines, as the natives were hunted down for sport, castrated and murdered for amusement, and were actually classified as flora & fauna until the previous century. Oh course, the British like to point out many of these atrocities were carried out after the national governments were established, but the perpetrators were British in all but name, many born in the UK, of course. A similar argument could be made about the extermination of the North Americans, while Britain's atrocities in Ireland, Bengal and Kenya (where they operated brutal concentration camps) certainly were genocidal in scale. Americas wars in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia were also genocidal in scale, and we know that they have certainly supported genocidal dictatorships in Central America, Indonesia, Africa, and elsewhere, along with Israel's ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians..
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
Zhivago wrote:If you want a British genocide, look no further than how the English behaved during famines in Ireland and India. Not fundamentally different to how the USSR commited genocide in Ukraine.
Straight up it's the case that in both instances Britain should have done more, but India was a mess of its own makingor at least far from being able to put it all on the Brits. And Ireland had enough food not to have a famine, but many people ce to the growing USA and ignore the problem in Ireland, and if Irish controllers of food production/distribution are going to ignore the problem it's more than a little perverse to then try to but more blame on the Brits than the Irish, and barking mad to call it a genocide.
The reality is that there were deliberate government policies prioritising food supplies for one group over another group resulting in millions of deaths. In this sense it is not unreasonable to compare them to similar atrocities caused by deliberate resource allocation and prioritisation policies, such as those by Maoist China and Leninist/Stalinist USSR.
The main difference is that you're a British imperialist apologist. Not really different to any other imperialist apologist. Your victim blaming, highlighted in red is disgusting.
Zhivago wrote:If you want a British genocide, look no further than how the English behaved during famines in Ireland and India. Not fundamentally different to how the USSR commited genocide in Ukraine.
Straight up it's the case that in both instances Britain should have done more, but India was a mess of its own makingor at least far from being able to put it all on the Brits. And Ireland had enough food not to have a famine, but many people ce to the growing USA and ignore the problem in Ireland, and if Irish controllers of food production/distribution are going to ignore the problem it's more than a little perverse to then try to but more blame on the Brits than the Irish, and barking mad to call it a genocide.
The reality is that there were deliberate government policies prioritising food supplies for one group over another group resulting in millions of deaths. In this sense it is not unreasonable to compare them to similar atrocities caused by deliberate resource allocation and prioritisation policies, such as those by Maoist China and Leninist/Stalinist USSR.
The main difference is that you're a British imperialist apologist. Not really different to any other imperialist apologist. Your victim blaming, highlighted in red is disgusting.
I'm not apologising for Britain with regards to these situations, in both instances I think our actions deplorable. But, and it's a big but, it's not like India and Ireland couldn't have solved the problem without even vaguely needing us, and that shifts it away from being anything akin to a genocide.
Republican John Mitchell: ‘How families, when all eaten up and no hope left, took their last look at the sun, built up their cottage doors, that none might see them die or her their groans, and were found weeks afterwards skeletons on their hearths. How every one of those years, ’46, ’47 and ’48, Ireland was exporting to England food to the value of 15 million pounds sterling.’
He accused the British government of deliberately starving the Irish people, of making use of the potato blight to ‘thin out these multitudinous Celts.’ While the potato crop might have failed, there was, Mitchell insisted, still more than enough grain, cereals and live-stock in the country to have fed the population, but it was exported to England.
‘Insane mothers began to eat their young who died of famine before them; and still fleets of ships were sailing with every tide, carrying Irish cattle and corn to England.’
British involvement in the West Indies slave trade is estimated to have killed upward of 2 million - by the most conservative estimates. A manual for slave-owners advocated 'terror' tactics to combat rebellion, with slow-burning a favorite method of execution - ensuring plenty of screaming to traumatize the other slaves.
Opium Wars: By the 1830s the scale of problems caused by the trade forced the government to respond. China was being drained of silver to pay for the opium, its administration was being corrupted and the extent of addiction (estimates of the number of addicts go as high as 12 million) was seen as a threat to both state and society.
India: The English threw aside the mask of civilization and engaged in a war of such ferocity that a reasonable parallel can be seen in our times with the Nazi occupation of Europe”- writers John Newsinger in The Blood Never Dried.
“You will find that we have been incomparably the most sanguinary (bloodthirsty) nation on earth.” Whether it was in “China, in Burma, in India, New Zealand, the Cape, Syria, Spain, Portugal, Greece, etc.” The Burmese had no chance against our 64 pound red-shot shot and other infernal improvements in the art of war.
“Searing with hot irons . . . dipping in wells and rivers till the victim half suffocated . . . squeezing testicles . . . putting peppers and red chillies in the eyes or introducing them into the private parts of men and women . . . prevention of sleep . . . nipping the flesh with pincers . . . suspension from the branches of a tree . . . imprisonment in a room used for storing lime . . . ” This everyday abuse and violence continued until the end of the British Raj.
Sudan, Battle of Omdurman, September 1898: On this occasion the Sudanese conveniently launched a frontal assault on the invading army and were massacred in a display of overwhelming firepower. Modern rifles, machine guns and artillery destroyed the Sudanese army before it even got close enough to the British to begin inflicting casualties. One NCO described the slaughter as ‘dreadful.’ The troops were ordered to ‘bayonet and shoot everyone we saw.’ The young Winston Churchill, a participant in the battle, wrote home that the victory was ‘disgraced by the inhuman slaughter of the wounded.'
World War I: The most terrible conflict in human history had been fought not for democracy, liberty or freedom, but to protect the British Empire from its powerful German rival. To this end, millions of lives had been sacrificed.
Egypt: Crowds were machine gunned and bombed from the air and heavily armed mobile columns were despatched to ‘pacify’ the countryside, shooting anyone who resisted, burning villages and flogging suspects (in one village every man was publically flogged). By the end of April the revolt had been put down with 1000 Egyptians killed, over 1500 imprisoned and hanged.
India: Protesters decided to proceed with an anti-Rowlatt rally on the afternoon of 13 April at the Jalianwalla Bagh, an enclosed space. The meeting was banned but they decided to defy it. General Reginald Dwyer decided to make an example of them. He marched a detachment of Gurkhas to the rally any without any warning opened fire on 20 to 25 thousand people peacefully listening to speeches. The troops continued firing for over ten minutes. By the time they finished the bodies were piled ten to 12 deep around the exits.
Iraq: Punitive columns were despatched throughout the countryside, burning villages, shooting rebels and seizing livestock, and rebel strongholds and concentrations were shelled and bombed from the air. The British used gas shells in quantity. Rebel fatalities were official 8,450, but a figure of over 10,000 is more realistic. Bombing had played an important part in the suppression of the revolt with the RAF dropping 1000 tons of bombs.
Palestine: The British with the help of Zionist death squads brutally defeated the Great Revolt in the spring of 1939. By the end of the conflict some 5000 rebels had been killed. The Zionists proceeded to establish the state of Israel, driving out some 700,000 Palestinians in the process. .
India still had to face the greatest disaster to befall the country in the 20th century, the Bengal famine of 1943-44. The British administration responded with ‘a callous disregard of its duties in handling the famine.’ The result was a terrible death toll from starvation and disease in 1943-44 that totalled more than 3.5 million men, women and children.
Churchill’s attitude was quite explicitly racist. He told Amery, ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ Amery, on one occasion said, ‘I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.’
The coup d’etat that finally overthrew Iran's first democratic government in August 1953 was organised by the CIA with Britain’s M16 very much in a supporting role. The Shah’s brutal dictatorship rewarded its American sponsors with a renegotiated division of the oil spoils. The government received 50% of the profits. The AIOC had a 40% share in this consortium. Royal Shell had 14% and the French state oil company a 6% share.
Mau Mau Revolt: The official British figure for rebels killed in action was 11,503, but the real number was much higher. Some estimates go as high as 50,000, and this is much closer to the truth. 160,000 people were interned during the course of the emergency, even more were imprisoned for emergency offences. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire. Women were choked and held under water, gun barrels, beer bottles and even knives were thrust into their vaginas. Men had beer bottles thrust up their rectums, were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted.
Anyone thought suspicious could be flooged, tortured and, if necessary, killed with virtual impunity. They described the torture they had carried out with as much concern as they talked about the weather: ‘By the time I cut his balls off he had no ears and his eyeball, the right one, I think was hanging out of its socket. He died before we got much out of him.’
Zimbabwe: On 24 October 1893 a Ndebele attack was routed by machine gun and artillery fire and a few days later at Imbembesi another attack was beaten off. As Frederick Courtney Selous observed, the Ndebele ‘were in each case driven off with heavy loss by the fire of the Maxim guns.’ The conquest ‘will ever be remembered as one of the most brilliant episodes in the history of British colonisation in Southern Africa.’
‘Wipe them all out . . . everything black,’ urged Rhodes. Robert Baden-Powell, the future founder of the Boy Scouts, acknowledged the ‘extraordinary bloodthirsty rage of our men.’[/i]
Indonesia: The battle for Surabaya had cost the natives at least 10,000 casualties. It unleashed a nationalist uprising that spread throughout Java and threatened to engulf the British. The battle of Surabaya is still celebrated in Indonesia every year on ‘Heroes Day.’ Indonesian casualties have been estimated as some 20,000 killed.
General Suharto effectively took power and launched a general massacre of the left. Even while the Confrontation was still under way, the British collaborated with the generals in a massacre that cost the lives of over 500,000 men, women and children, many of them slaughtered with the utmost bruality.
British participation in the Korean War made the Labour government and its Conservative successor party to a terrible conflict that left Korea effectively laid waste. The war cost the lives of between 500,000 and 1 million South Korean civilians and of 1.5 million North Korean soldiers and civilians. British governments stood ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with their American ally throughout the slaughter.
Iraq: In December 1998 when Clinton launched the punitive air raids against Iraq, British aircraft took part in the attacks that hit 250 targets. The government supported UN sanctions that by 1996 were estimated to have killed some half a million Iraqi children. Iraq, which had had no involvement with the 11 September attacks whatsoever, was to be invaded again and occupied as part of the war on terror. The invasion of Iraq began on March 2003. Its catastrophic consequences for the Middle East have been well documented.
Greg Dyke wrote of how Campbell had ‘turned Downing Street into a place similar to Nixon’s White House. You were either for them or against them. I was quite shocked by these similarities between the Nixon White House and Blair’s Downing Street.’ The American political system, however reluctantly and belatedly, called Nixon to account. The British political system has signally failed with regard to Blair.
Libya: In 2011 NATO invaded Africa's most prosperous nation to seize control of the lucrative oil industry, allowing its leader to be tortured to death in the streets, and bringing about civil war and widespread terrorism.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
Digby wrote:
Straight up it's the case that in both instances Britain should have done more, but India was a mess of its own makingor at least far from being able to put it all on the Brits. And Ireland had enough food not to have a famine, but many people ce to the growing USA and ignore the problem in Ireland, and if Irish controllers of food production/distribution are going to ignore the problem it's more than a little perverse to then try to but more blame on the Brits than the Irish, and barking mad to call it a genocide.
The reality is that there were deliberate government policies prioritising food supplies for one group over another group resulting in millions of deaths. In this sense it is not unreasonable to compare them to similar atrocities caused by deliberate resource allocation and prioritisation policies, such as those by Maoist China and Leninist/Stalinist USSR.
The main difference is that you're a British imperialist apologist. Not really different to any other imperialist apologist. Your victim blaming, highlighted in red is disgusting.
I'm not apologising for Britain with regards to these situations, in both instances I think our actions deplorable. But, and it's a big but, it's not like India and Ireland couldn't have solved the problem without even vaguely needing us, and that shifts it away from being anything akin to a genocide.
You are absurd. They were colonies. They had no autonomy. They didn't need us, we deprived and denied them their own agricultural produce.
