Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
Read the popular literature of Britain in the '30's. Wot this country needs is a 'Itler had become a cliché by 1937. The working-class association was both misleading and unfair, but a certain Nazi-sympathetic element was pervasive at the time. Compare Wodehouse's hilarious Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts. Innocent that Wodehouse was, he expressed his distaste for fascism without realising the full import of the threat it represented. -D - Original Message From: Chris Burck [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Thursday, 18 October, 2007 7:44:00 AM Subject: Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill? did i sleep through a lecture back wien i was in school, or something? because i don't remenber about a loud outcry in favor of capitulation during the blitz. and where defeating nazi germany is concerned, the soviets deserve at least 50% of the credit, maybe even two thirds. On 10/17/07, Mike Weaver [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Good: Early in his political career he worked hard to implement a minimum wage in England. But probably the one thing he's rightly remembered well for is his refusal to capitualte to Hitler, although I think David Lloyd George probably got that ball rolling. His speeches rallied Britain during WWII. He, along with FDR, played in instumental role in defeating Nazi Germany. Despite his myriad flaws, he was a great source of quotes. Bad: Rotten policy on India. At least up until 1937, didn't seem to have much problem w/ Hitler OR Mussolini. Saw no problem with the concept of an Empire. Miseable views on race. Had a hand in any number of bad policies...the list goes on. Keith Addison wrote: I think Winnie was a pretty mixed bag myself. First you said good and bad, now you say mixed. If you can't remind me of something good about him, how about something that's not outright bad? A better question might be why the British were so anxious to go *back* into Iraq? I think it was Stanley Maude ? who went stomping into Mesopotamia around 1916 and I don't think the Brits were out until '56 or so. No guarantee on those dates. Try Geoff Simons' Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. Anyway, the League of Nations awarded Britain the new mandate of Iraq as part of secret deals made during World War I. Ho-hum. Lots of horse-trading with the French, and there was this stray king who needed a kingdom somewhere or other. Anyway, heavy application of Churchill's usual hamfist, with Bomber Harris delivering prototype terror bombing raids on tribal villages and so on. So what's new. Keith Keith Addison wrote: Hello Mike One can find Churchill's fingerprints on just about every Western historical artifact, both good and bad, for the roughly the past 120 years. Maybe, but that doesn't explain it away. Mishra makes some good points. Ugly racism aside, what excuse is there for sheer ignorance? According to his own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, Churchill knew as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies. Or as much as George W. Bush knew of Iraq? Iraq was also Churchill's doing, chucked together out of incompatible parts, despite warnings from people who knew better that it couldn't work. Famous Churchill quote: I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes (Iraqis). (Lawrence of Arabia agreed.) Good and bad? Maybe you can remind me of something good about Churchill, I forget. I wrote something similar to what you say about him about 25 years ago, not about Churchill though, it was about the British Empire - take just about any trouble-spot in the world and dig a little and you'll find something nasty the British Empire swept under the carpet long ago. Divide and conquer, force folks to compete for what's theirs, turn peaceful differences into vicious enmities that'll fester away forever. I guess one empire's much the same as another. Best Keith Keith Addison wrote: Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain's enemies, Hindustan, against Britain's friends, the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades. - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book s_mishra?printable=true Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker Books Exit Wounds The legacy of Indian partition. by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
In June and July 1940 there were plenty of practical-minded appeasers like Lord Halifax and Rab Butler at the top of the British Conservative Party who were thinking about asking Hitler for terms. We owe Churchill a lot. The Russians may have done most of the fighting and shed most of the Allied blood, but they would have been in deep trouble without American supplies. They would also have been in trouble without British codebreaking (which owed much to the Poles originally). It seems that Lucy and the Red Orchestra in Switzerland who transmitted to Moscow, were fed carefully with Ultra intercepts by the British, presented to Moscow as the result of Soviet espionage. The successful German counterattack at Kharkov after Stalingrad seems to have occurred because von Manstein was able for a while to make decisions on his own without consulting German headquarters by radio and being exposed to British eavesdropping, because of the temporarily poor state of German communications due to the rapid retreat. Stalin and the Soviet system were responsible for the miserable state of the Russian army in 1941, and for Hitler's ability to catch the Russians ill-prepared to resist in the early stages of his campaign. Doug Woodard St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada Chris Burck wrote: did i sleep through a lecture back wien i was in school, or something? because i don't remenber about a loud outcry in favor of capitulation during the blitz. and where defeating nazi germany is concerned, the soviets deserve at least 50% of the credit, maybe even two thirds. ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
what does that have to do with the blitz? but since you bring up the '30s. . . . churchill was one of those voices. he disagreed with opposing japanese conquest in manchuria. he had no shortage of complimentary things to say about hitler and especially mussolini. On 10/18/07, Dawie Coetzee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Read the popular literature of Britain in the '30's. Wot this country needs is a 'Itler had become a cliché by 1937. The working-class association was both misleading and unfair, but a certain Nazi-sympathetic element was pervasive at the time. Compare Wodehouse's hilarious Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts. Innocent that Wodehouse was, he expressed his distaste for fascism without realising the full import of the threat it represented. -D ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
On 10/18/07, Douglas Woodard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In June and July 1940 there were plenty of practical-minded appeasers like Lord Halifax and Rab Butler at the top of the British Conservative Party who were thinking about asking Hitler for terms. We owe Churchill a lot. of course there were voices in favor of capitulation. just as there were in the u.s. (though it was more of a neutrality/isolationist sentiment). this hardly amounted to a large outcry. i wouldn't even characterize it as a strong headwind. The Russians may have done most of the fighting and shed most of the Allied blood, but they would have been in deep trouble without American supplies. the brits would have been in even deeper trouble: nearly 80% of all lend-lease went to the uk. the importance of lend lease to the ussr, while not negligible, tends to be exaggerated. it really was small compared to the overall soviet output over the course of the war, and served mainly to complement soviet output which had not yet been put on a full war footing. they were able to mobilize a lot more people than they could supply with arms and equipment. had there been no lend lease, the outcome on the eastern front would not have been very different. They would also have been in trouble without British codebreaking (which owed much to the Poles originally). It seems that Lucy and the Red Orchestra in Switzerland who transmitted to Moscow, were fed carefully with Ultra intercepts by the British, presented to Moscow as the result of Soviet espionage. The successful German counterattack at Kharkov after Stalingrad seems to have occurred because von Manstein was able for a while to make decisions on his own without consulting German headquarters by radio and being exposed to British eavesdropping, because of the temporarily poor state of German communications due to the rapid retreat. yep, those russkies were just a bunch of bumbling idiots who would never have gotten anywhere without the secret, unseen hand of the brits' paternalistic guidance. look, i mean no disrespect, but three quarters of all german casualties were suffered on the eastern front at the hands of soviet forces. you can't just sweep that away with a simple reference to lend-lease and code-breaking. Stalin and the Soviet system were responsible for the miserable state of the Russian army in 1941, and for Hitler's ability to catch the Russians ill-prepared to resist in the early stages of his campaign. stalin's purges came at a cost, yes (but you err in conflating stalin with the soviet system). nevertheless, the red army was reorganising and re-equipping. and their foresight in relocating huge portions of their industrial capacity to the eastern hinterland proved decisive. the brits and pretty much all of europe were equally irresponsible and ill-prepared. Doug Woodard St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada Chris Burck wrote: did i sleep through a lecture back wien i was in school, or something? because i don't remenber about a loud outcry in favor of capitulation during the blitz. and where defeating nazi germany is concerned, the soviets deserve at least 50% of the credit, maybe even two thirds. ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain's enemies, Hindustan, against Britain's friends, the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades. - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book s_mishra?printable=true Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker Books Exit Wounds The legacy of Indian partition. by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Brunette. Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment. Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, had arrived in New Delhi in March, 1947, charged with an almost impossible task. Irrevocably enfeebled by the Second World War, the British belatedly realized that they had to leave the subcontinent, which had spiralled out of their control through the nineteen-forties. But plans for brisk disengagement ignored messy realities on the ground. Mountbatten had a clear remit to transfer power to the Indians within fifteen months. Leaving India to God, or anarchy, as Mohandas Gandhi, the foremost Indian leader, exhorted, wasn't a political option, however tempting. Mountbatten had to work hard to figure out how and to whom power was to be transferred. The dominant political party, the Congress Party, took inspiration from Gandhi in claiming to be a secular organization, representing all four hundred million Indians. But many Muslim politicians saw it as a party of upper-caste Hindus and demanded a separate homeland for their hundred million co-religionists, who were intermingled with non-Muslim populations across the subcontinent's villages, towns, and cities. Eventually, as in Palestine, the British saw partition along religious lines as the quickest way to the exit. But sectarian riots in Punjab and Bengal dimmed hopes for a quick and dignified British withdrawal, and boded ill for India's assumption of power. Not surprisingly, there were some notable absences at the Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi on August 15th. Gandhi, denouncing freedom from imperial rule as a wooden loaf, had remained in Calcutta, trying, with the force of his moral authority, to stop Hindus and Muslims from killing each other. His great rival Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who had fought bitterly for a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, was in Karachi, trying to hold together the precarious nation-state of Pakistan. Nevertheless, the significance of the occasion was not lost on many. While the Mountbattens were sitting down to their Bob Hope movie, India's constituent assembly was convening in New Delhi. The moment demanded grandiloquence, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's closest disciple and soon to be India's first Prime Minister, provided it. Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, he said. At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awaken to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. Posterity has enshrined this speech, as Nehru clearly intended. But today his quaint phrase tryst with destiny resonates ominously, so enduring have been the political and psychological scars of partition. The souls of the two new nation-states immediately found utterance in brutal enmity. In Punjab, armed vigilante groups, organized along religious lines and incited by local politicians, murdered countless people, abducting and raping thousands of women. Soon, India and Pakistan were fighting a war-the first of three-over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Gandhi, reduced to despair by the seemingly endless cycle of retaliatory mass murders and displacement, was shot dead in January, 1948, by a Hindu extremist who believed that the father of the Indian
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
One can find Churchill's fingerprints on just about every Western historical artifact, both good and bad, for the roughly the past 120 years. Keith Addison wrote: Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain's enemies, Hindustan, against Britain's friends, the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades. - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book s_mishra?printable=true Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker Books Exit Wounds The legacy of Indian partition. by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Brunette. Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment. Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, had arrived in New Delhi in March, 1947, charged with an almost impossible task. Irrevocably enfeebled by the Second World War, the British belatedly realized that they had to leave the subcontinent, which had spiralled out of their control through the nineteen-forties. But plans for brisk disengagement ignored messy realities on the ground. Mountbatten had a clear remit to transfer power to the Indians within fifteen months. Leaving India to God, or anarchy, as Mohandas Gandhi, the foremost Indian leader, exhorted, wasn't a political option, however tempting. Mountbatten had to work hard to figure out how and to whom power was to be transferred. The dominant political party, the Congress Party, took inspiration from Gandhi in claiming to be a secular organization, representing all four hundred million Indians. But many Muslim politicians saw it as a party of upper-caste Hindus and demanded a separate homeland for their hundred million co-religionists, who were intermingled with non-Muslim populations across the subcontinent's villages, towns, and cities. Eventually, as in Palestine, the British saw partition along religious lines as the quickest way to the exit. But sectarian riots in Punjab and Bengal dimmed hopes for a quick and dignified British withdrawal, and boded ill for India's assumption of power. Not surprisingly, there were some notable absences at the Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi on August 15th. Gandhi, denouncing freedom from imperial rule as a wooden loaf, had remained in Calcutta, trying, with the force of his moral authority, to stop Hindus and Muslims from killing each other. His great rival Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who had fought bitterly for a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, was in Karachi, trying to hold together the precarious nation-state of Pakistan. Nevertheless, the significance of the occasion was not lost on many. While the Mountbattens were sitting down to their Bob Hope movie, India's constituent assembly was convening in New Delhi. The moment demanded grandiloquence, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's closest disciple and soon to be India's first Prime Minister, provided it. Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, he said. At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awaken to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. Posterity has enshrined this speech, as Nehru clearly intended. But today his quaint phrase tryst with destiny resonates ominously, so enduring have been the political and psychological scars of partition. The souls of the two new nation-states immediately found utterance in brutal enmity. In Punjab, armed vigilante groups, organized along religious lines and incited by local politicians, murdered countless people, abducting and raping thousands of women. Soon, India and Pakistan were fighting a war-the first of three-over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Gandhi, reduced to despair by the
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
I think Winnie was a pretty mixed bag myself. A better question might be why the British were so anxious to go *back* into Iraq? I think it was Stanley Maude ? who went stomping into Mesopotamia around 1916 and I don't think the Brits were out until '56 or so. No guarantee on those dates. Keith Addison wrote: Hello Mike One can find Churchill's fingerprints on just about every Western historical artifact, both good and bad, for the roughly the past 120 years. Maybe, but that doesn't explain it away. Mishra makes some good points. Ugly racism aside, what excuse is there for sheer ignorance? According to his own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, Churchill knew as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies. Or as much as George W. Bush knew of Iraq? Iraq was also Churchill's doing, chucked together out of incompatible parts, despite warnings from people who knew better that it couldn't work. Famous Churchill quote: I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes (Iraqis). (Lawrence of Arabia agreed.) Good and bad? Maybe you can remind me of something good about Churchill, I forget. I wrote something similar to what you say about him about 25 years ago, not about Churchill though, it was about the British Empire - take just about any trouble-spot in the world and dig a little and you'll find something nasty the British Empire swept under the carpet long ago. Divide and conquer, force folks to compete for what's theirs, turn peaceful differences into vicious enmities that'll fester away forever. I guess one empire's much the same as another. Best Keith Keith Addison wrote: Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain's enemies, Hindustan, against Britain's friends, the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades. - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book s_mishra?printable=true Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker Books Exit Wounds The legacy of Indian partition. by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Brunette. Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment. Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, had arrived in New Delhi in March, 1947, charged with an almost impossible task. Irrevocably enfeebled by the Second World War, the British belatedly realized that they had to leave the subcontinent, which had spiralled out of their control through the nineteen-forties. But plans for brisk disengagement ignored messy realities on the ground. Mountbatten had a clear remit to transfer power to the Indians within fifteen months. Leaving India to God, or anarchy, as Mohandas Gandhi, the foremost Indian leader, exhorted, wasn't a political option, however tempting. Mountbatten had to work hard to figure out how and to whom power was to be transferred. The dominant political party, the Congress Party, took inspiration from Gandhi in claiming to be a secular organization, representing all four hundred million Indians. But many Muslim politicians saw it as a party of upper-caste Hindus and demanded a separate homeland for their hundred million co-religionists, who were intermingled with non-Muslim populations across the subcontinent's villages, towns, and cities. Eventually, as in Palestine, the British saw partition along religious lines as the quickest way to the exit. But sectarian riots in Punjab and Bengal dimmed hopes for a quick and dignified British withdrawal, and boded ill for India's assumption of power. Not surprisingly, there were some notable absences at the Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi on August 15th. Gandhi, denouncing freedom from imperial rule as a wooden loaf, had remained in Calcutta, trying, with the force of his moral authority,
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
Hello Mike One can find Churchill's fingerprints on just about every Western historical artifact, both good and bad, for the roughly the past 120 years. Maybe, but that doesn't explain it away. Mishra makes some good points. Ugly racism aside, what excuse is there for sheer ignorance? According to his own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, Churchill knew as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies. Or as much as George W. Bush knew of Iraq? Iraq was also Churchill's doing, chucked together out of incompatible parts, despite warnings from people who knew better that it couldn't work. Famous Churchill quote: I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes (Iraqis). (Lawrence of Arabia agreed.) Good and bad? Maybe you can remind me of something good about Churchill, I forget. I wrote something similar to what you say about him about 25 years ago, not about Churchill though, it was about the British Empire - take just about any trouble-spot in the world and dig a little and you'll find something nasty the British Empire swept under the carpet long ago. Divide and conquer, force folks to compete for what's theirs, turn peaceful differences into vicious enmities that'll fester away forever. I guess one empire's much the same as another. Best Keith Keith Addison wrote: Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain's enemies, Hindustan, against Britain's friends, the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades. - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book s_mishra?printable=true Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker Books Exit Wounds The legacy of Indian partition. by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Brunette. Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment. Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, had arrived in New Delhi in March, 1947, charged with an almost impossible task. Irrevocably enfeebled by the Second World War, the British belatedly realized that they had to leave the subcontinent, which had spiralled out of their control through the nineteen-forties. But plans for brisk disengagement ignored messy realities on the ground. Mountbatten had a clear remit to transfer power to the Indians within fifteen months. Leaving India to God, or anarchy, as Mohandas Gandhi, the foremost Indian leader, exhorted, wasn't a political option, however tempting. Mountbatten had to work hard to figure out how and to whom power was to be transferred. The dominant political party, the Congress Party, took inspiration from Gandhi in claiming to be a secular organization, representing all four hundred million Indians. But many Muslim politicians saw it as a party of upper-caste Hindus and demanded a separate homeland for their hundred million co-religionists, who were intermingled with non-Muslim populations across the subcontinent's villages, towns, and cities. Eventually, as in Palestine, the British saw partition along religious lines as the quickest way to the exit. But sectarian riots in Punjab and Bengal dimmed hopes for a quick and dignified British withdrawal, and boded ill for India's assumption of power. Not surprisingly, there were some notable absences at the Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi on August 15th. Gandhi, denouncing freedom from imperial rule as a wooden loaf, had remained in Calcutta, trying, with the force of his moral authority, to stop Hindus and Muslims from killing each other. His great rival Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who had fought bitterly for a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, was in Karachi, trying to hold together the precarious nation-state of Pakistan. Nevertheless, the significance of the occasion was not
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
I think Winnie was a pretty mixed bag myself. First you said good and bad, now you say mixed. If you can't remind me of something good about him, how about something that's not outright bad? A better question might be why the British were so anxious to go *back* into Iraq? I think it was Stanley Maude ? who went stomping into Mesopotamia around 1916 and I don't think the Brits were out until '56 or so. No guarantee on those dates. Try Geoff Simons' Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. Anyway, the League of Nations awarded Britain the new mandate of Iraq as part of secret deals made during World War I. Ho-hum. Lots of horse-trading with the French, and there was this stray king who needed a kingdom somewhere or other. Anyway, heavy application of Churchill's usual hamfist, with Bomber Harris delivering prototype terror bombing raids on tribal villages and so on. So what's new. Keith Keith Addison wrote: Hello Mike One can find Churchill's fingerprints on just about every Western historical artifact, both good and bad, for the roughly the past 120 years. Maybe, but that doesn't explain it away. Mishra makes some good points. Ugly racism aside, what excuse is there for sheer ignorance? According to his own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, Churchill knew as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies. Or as much as George W. Bush knew of Iraq? Iraq was also Churchill's doing, chucked together out of incompatible parts, despite warnings from people who knew better that it couldn't work. Famous Churchill quote: I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes (Iraqis). (Lawrence of Arabia agreed.) Good and bad? Maybe you can remind me of something good about Churchill, I forget. I wrote something similar to what you say about him about 25 years ago, not about Churchill though, it was about the British Empire - take just about any trouble-spot in the world and dig a little and you'll find something nasty the British Empire swept under the carpet long ago. Divide and conquer, force folks to compete for what's theirs, turn peaceful differences into vicious enmities that'll fester away forever. I guess one empire's much the same as another. Best Keith Keith Addison wrote: Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain's enemies, Hindustan, against Britain's friends, the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades. - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book s_mishra?printable=true Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker Books Exit Wounds The legacy of Indian partition. by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Brunette. Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment. Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, had arrived in New Delhi in March, 1947, charged with an almost impossible task. Irrevocably enfeebled by the Second World War, the British belatedly realized that they had to leave the subcontinent, which had spiralled out of their control through the nineteen-forties. But plans for brisk disengagement ignored messy realities on the ground. Mountbatten had a clear remit to transfer power to the Indians within fifteen months. Leaving India to God, or anarchy, as Mohandas Gandhi, the foremost Indian leader, exhorted, wasn't a political option, however tempting. Mountbatten had to work hard to figure out how and to whom power was to be transferred. The dominant political party, the Congress Party, took inspiration from Gandhi in claiming to be a secular organization, representing all four hundred million Indians. But many Muslim politicians saw it as a party of upper-caste Hindus and demanded a
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
Good: Early in his political career he worked hard to implement a minimum wage in England. But probably the one thing he's rightly remembered well for is his refusal to capitualte to Hitler, although I think David Lloyd George probably got that ball rolling. His speeches rallied Britain during WWII. He, along with FDR, played in instumental role in defeating Nazi Germany. Despite his myriad flaws, he was a great source of quotes. Bad: Rotten policy on India. At least up until 1937, didn't seem to have much problem w/ Hitler OR Mussolini. Saw no problem with the concept of an Empire. Miseable views on race. Had a hand in any number of bad policies...the list goes on. Keith Addison wrote: I think Winnie was a pretty mixed bag myself. First you said good and bad, now you say mixed. If you can't remind me of something good about him, how about something that's not outright bad? A better question might be why the British were so anxious to go *back* into Iraq? I think it was Stanley Maude ? who went stomping into Mesopotamia around 1916 and I don't think the Brits were out until '56 or so. No guarantee on those dates. Try Geoff Simons' Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. Anyway, the League of Nations awarded Britain the new mandate of Iraq as part of secret deals made during World War I. Ho-hum. Lots of horse-trading with the French, and there was this stray king who needed a kingdom somewhere or other. Anyway, heavy application of Churchill's usual hamfist, with Bomber Harris delivering prototype terror bombing raids on tribal villages and so on. So what's new. Keith Keith Addison wrote: Hello Mike One can find Churchill's fingerprints on just about every Western historical artifact, both good and bad, for the roughly the past 120 years. Maybe, but that doesn't explain it away. Mishra makes some good points. Ugly racism aside, what excuse is there for sheer ignorance? According to his own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, Churchill knew as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies. Or as much as George W. Bush knew of Iraq? Iraq was also Churchill's doing, chucked together out of incompatible parts, despite warnings from people who knew better that it couldn't work. Famous Churchill quote: I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes (Iraqis). (Lawrence of Arabia agreed.) Good and bad? Maybe you can remind me of something good about Churchill, I forget. I wrote something similar to what you say about him about 25 years ago, not about Churchill though, it was about the British Empire - take just about any trouble-spot in the world and dig a little and you'll find something nasty the British Empire swept under the carpet long ago. Divide and conquer, force folks to compete for what's theirs, turn peaceful differences into vicious enmities that'll fester away forever. I guess one empire's much the same as another. Best Keith Keith Addison wrote: Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain's enemies, Hindustan, against Britain's friends, the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades. - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book s_mishra?printable=true Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker Books Exit Wounds The legacy of Indian partition. by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Brunette. Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment. Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, had arrived in New Delhi in March, 1947, charged with an almost impossible task. Irrevocably enfeebled by the Second World War, the British belatedly realized that they had to leave the subcontinent, which had spiralled out of
Re: [Biofuel] The real 9/11 culprit - Winston Churchill?
did i sleep through a lecture back wien i was in school, or something? because i don't remenber about a loud outcry in favor of capitulation during the blitz. and where defeating nazi germany is concerned, the soviets deserve at least 50% of the credit, maybe even two thirds. On 10/17/07, Mike Weaver [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Good: Early in his political career he worked hard to implement a minimum wage in England. But probably the one thing he's rightly remembered well for is his refusal to capitualte to Hitler, although I think David Lloyd George probably got that ball rolling. His speeches rallied Britain during WWII. He, along with FDR, played in instumental role in defeating Nazi Germany. Despite his myriad flaws, he was a great source of quotes. Bad: Rotten policy on India. At least up until 1937, didn't seem to have much problem w/ Hitler OR Mussolini. Saw no problem with the concept of an Empire. Miseable views on race. Had a hand in any number of bad policies...the list goes on. Keith Addison wrote: I think Winnie was a pretty mixed bag myself. First you said good and bad, now you say mixed. If you can't remind me of something good about him, how about something that's not outright bad? A better question might be why the British were so anxious to go *back* into Iraq? I think it was Stanley Maude ? who went stomping into Mesopotamia around 1916 and I don't think the Brits were out until '56 or so. No guarantee on those dates. Try Geoff Simons' Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. Anyway, the League of Nations awarded Britain the new mandate of Iraq as part of secret deals made during World War I. Ho-hum. Lots of horse-trading with the French, and there was this stray king who needed a kingdom somewhere or other. Anyway, heavy application of Churchill's usual hamfist, with Bomber Harris delivering prototype terror bombing raids on tribal villages and so on. So what's new. Keith Keith Addison wrote: Hello Mike One can find Churchill's fingerprints on just about every Western historical artifact, both good and bad, for the roughly the past 120 years. Maybe, but that doesn't explain it away. Mishra makes some good points. Ugly racism aside, what excuse is there for sheer ignorance? According to his own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, Churchill knew as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies. Or as much as George W. Bush knew of Iraq? Iraq was also Churchill's doing, chucked together out of incompatible parts, despite warnings from people who knew better that it couldn't work. Famous Churchill quote: I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes (Iraqis). (Lawrence of Arabia agreed.) Good and bad? Maybe you can remind me of something good about Churchill, I forget. I wrote something similar to what you say about him about 25 years ago, not about Churchill though, it was about the British Empire - take just about any trouble-spot in the world and dig a little and you'll find something nasty the British Empire swept under the carpet long ago. Divide and conquer, force folks to compete for what's theirs, turn peaceful differences into vicious enmities that'll fester away forever. I guess one empire's much the same as another. Best Keith Keith Addison wrote: Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain's enemies, Hindustan, against Britain's friends, the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades. - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book s_mishra?printable=true Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker Books Exit Wounds The legacy of Indian partition. by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, My Favorite Brunette. Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller
