British Genocide /Winston Churchill

[packman]

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]



Was not aware of this episode of British actions in regard to India during WWII. A host of events leading to inflated rice prices and British acts , especially inaction, leading to a mass starvation .

https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ww2-bengali-holocaust

[rafeh1]

1. British were responsible for multiple Indian famine /genocides

Jill Richardson :: How the British Empire Starved Millions of Indians - And Why It Is Still Important Today
Famine in Pre-British India
An 1878 study published in the Journal of the Statistical Society found that there were 31 serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared to 17 famines in 2000 years of Indian rule. And that doesn't even count two more major famines, in 1888 and in the late 1890s. How can this be?

?w=990

Prior to British rule, Indians kept larger village-level grain reserves and they were generally free of grain price speculation.

According to the book, Mogul rulers saw protecting peasants as their obligation, and used 4 methods for relief:

Embargoes on grain exports
Anti-speculative price regulation
Tax relief
Distribution of free food without a forced labor component
...
A century earlier, Adam Smith said (during a terrible Bengal famine in 1770), "famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconvenience of death." In this frame of mind, the viceroy of India ordered "there is to be no interference of any kind on the part of the Government with the object of reducing the price of food." (p. 31) Quoting other great minds of the time like Thomas Malthus and ideologies like social Darwinism, the viceroy made the case that aid to the Indian people would practically hurt them more than it helped. He and others frequently parroted talking points we in modern day America have heard too many times, saying that the lazy Indians did not know how to work hard and if they were given aid in times of drought and famine, they would expect a free handout during the good times as well.

The Viceroy even banned Indians from other areas to send free food as they considered it interference with market forces..

http://www.lavidalocavore.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=2789


" target="_blank">

[bemildred]

2. Don't get me started. nt

[polly7]

3. Shocking, heartbreaking pictures and stories. :( nt.

[Igel]

4. The policy was consistent.

So it was for the Irish a few decades before, when action was easier.


This wasn't genocide, however. Genocide can't be accidental or through indifference; it requires deliberation and positive action. In that lay its heinousness. It's distinct from moral callousness, which is depraved in its own, different way.

Perhaps we can set up a new category, "negligent genocide" for instances of indifference in the face of famine. It can fit in next to "negligent occupation," where we're judged guilty of occupation because we didn't prevent one or "negligent theft" where we notice a neighbor's door is open and don't close and lock it, only to find that later somebody entered and robbed the place.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. "This wasn't genocide"

"The Viceroy even banned Indians from other areas to send free food as they considered it interference with market forces.. "


The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.

Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:

1) the mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and

2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide."


"Article II: 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:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm

[demigoddess]

5. apparently there was more food

going out of Ireland to England during the Potato Famine than was coming in for relief. The farmers grew crops to send to England and were not allowed to touch those crops as the blight killed off the potato crop which was what the farmers lived on. So this is not the first time England has acted like this. Also the British declared war on China when China wanted to shut down the opium trade because too many Chinese were getting hooked on opium and dying from it. The Chinese were forced to continue growing opium against their will.

[packman]

6. History does repeat itself

"the viceroy made the case that aid to the Indian people would practically hurt them more than it helped. He and others frequently parroted talking points we in modern day America have heard too many times, saying that the lazy Indians did not know how to work hard and if they were given aid in times of drought and famine, they would expect a free handout during the good times as well."

Jesus, where did we just hear that recently?

[mwooldri]

8. Do not get me started on English, later British empire building.

and yes for the record I am English. The English, British, the UK... have an awful lot to answer for over the past 500 years. India effectively amounted to a corporate takeover of the country by the East India Company, who then effectively got a government bailout or two and then nationalized.

You think Koch industries or Bain Capital is bad? They have nothing on the East India Company.

[polly7]

9. Didn't seem to have much fondness for the 'natives' at all ....

Last edited Mon Mar 10, 2014, 06:39 PM - Edit history (1)

Winston Churchill's Shocking Use Of Chemical Weapons

By The Guardian

Source: The Guardian

Friday, September 06, 2013

Secrecy was paramount. Britain's imperial general staff knew there would be outrage if it became known that the government was intending to use its secret stockpile of chemical weapons. But Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for war, brushed aside their concerns. As a long-term advocate of chemical warfare, he was determined to use them against the Russian Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1919, 94 years before the devastating strike in Syria, Churchill planned and executed a sustained chemical attack on northern Russia.

The British were no strangers to the use of chemical weapons. During the third battle of Gaza in 1917, General Edmund Allenby had fired 10,000 cans of asphyxiating gas at enemy positions, to limited effect. But in the final months of the first world war, scientists at the governmental laboratories at Porton in Wiltshire developed a far more devastating weapon: the top secret "M Device", an exploding shell containing a highly toxic gas called diphenylaminechloroarsine. The man in charge of developing it, Major General Charles Foulkes, called it "the most effective chemical weapon ever devised".

Trials at Porton suggested that it was indeed a terrible new weapon. Uncontrollable vomiting, coughing up blood and instant, crippling fatigue were the most common reactions. The overall head of chemical warfare production, Sir Keith Price, was convinced its use would lead to the rapid collapse of the Bolshevik regime. "If you got home only once with the gas you would find no more Bolshies this side of Vologda."The cabinet was hostile to the use of such weapons, much to Churchill's irritation. He also wanted to use M Devices against the rebellious tribes of northern India. "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes," he declared in one secret memorandum. He criticised his colleagues for their "squeamishness", declaring that "the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable. Gas is a more merciful weapon than high explosive shell, and compels an enemy to accept a decision with less loss of life than any other agency of war."

He ended his memo on a note of ill-placed black humour: "Why is it not fair for a British artilleryman to fire a shell which makes the said native sneeze?" he asked. "It is really too silly."

http://www.zcommunications.org/winston-churchills-shocking-use-of-chemical-weapons-by-the-guardian.html


Sorry, mwooldri ... I meant to reply to the OP.

[bemildred]

10. +1. nt

[Catherina]

11. Rec'd. n/t