On Tuesday 27 September 2005 00:14, Michael Foster wrote: > >>You can't make a phenomenon happen by popular vote, going on a march, > >>praying or endorsement by pop idol. It just isn't like that. > > John Fields wrote: > --- > > > Wrong. Take a look at Ghandi and what he forced the UK to do > > without his use of physical force. > > Sorry, I just can't let this one go, no matter how far off topic it > is. About ten years after Adolf von Baeyer first synthesized indigo > dye in 1883, it came into commercial production. This tipped the > balance for the British Raj. India as a colony was no longer a > profitable business. Further, India no longer had enough stategic > value to continue to subsidize the British presence there. > > The continued prestige of having India as a colony was wearing thin, > considering the expense. The British aristocracy and the army liked > having it around, but more practical minds were looking for a way out. > > Clearly, if the British had any real reason to stay, they would have. > And let's face it; it was the British. It wasn't the Russians or the > Spanish or the French, who probably would have just shot anybody acting > like Ghandi and been done with it. Ghandi knew this and took advantage > of it. Give the British themselves some credit.
About face. Ghandi was lucky! Just 80 years earlier a far different Britain in 1857 conducted mass executions of all who would stand in their way, especially if those waystanders were not white Anglo-Saxon protestants. One picture showed ranks of cannon, each with a Sepoy rebel prisoner tied across the muzzle, just before those guns were fired with grisly results. > > And ask yourself this. How many people died in the violence of the > partition of India and Pakistan following Ghandi's "success"? > Most of those deaths were caused by Moslem extremists rioting in uncontrollable bloodlust. Christians have had their pogroms as well. The million or so deaths then probably prevented a larger conflagration later......or maybe just let off some pressure and postponed the next bacchanal to a later date. That area has known religious war for thousands of years. > It seems we tend to make saints of people who accomplish a goal while > killing a lot of people, and at the same time we virtually ignore those > who accomplish an equally laudible goal with no killing at all. As an > example, take a look at the Lincoln Memorial. There sits Abraham Lincoln, > resembling for all the world a martyred saint. Yet, even though we agree > with what he did, he was responsible for the death of more Americans than > anyone else in our short history. I suspect if he had pulled the whole > thing off with some deft politics, people would still be arguing about what > a terrible president he was. > No amount of 'deft politics' were going to deter some of the most ruthless and vicious gangsters on the face of the planet at that time, southern 'plantation owners', from practicing their peculiar institution. The rape, murder, torture and enforced servitude held over from pre-colonial times could and would know only one solution. Those southerners and their culture only listened and understood force, the force of blood and iron that exterminated not only the slave holders, but also the records that could have been used for a later 'restoration' with its attendant wave of retribution killings. It took also the destruction of the whole culture and institution of slavery, concubinage and human degradation to change the old 'south'. Parts of this 'south' are unrepentant still, as many southerners yearned to become part of this idle rich gangster class and this 'hope' lives on in the peculiar habit of many 'southerners' to repeatedly watch pandering films like 'Gone With The Wind', over and over and over again. It lives on in 'southerners' 'standing up for 'Dixie' like it was a national anthem at school sports events. It yet lives on in small towns across the south where poor white people have been forced to take the place of freed and departed blacks at the bottom of the social scale. The 'south' is a class stratified society and only time and mass migration and self awareness and class action among those lower classes will mitigate that. If one doubts, then one should go to a local large university library and read the 1867 Congressional Report on the investigation of the Ku Klux Klan. This document is even larger than the Warren Report. It dealt with a serious moral and political issue, not a whitewash of a CIA/FBI action that eliminated a president that evidently philandered with gangsters molls. That issue was how to put a nation together that had not realized how far apart it had sectionally drifted, and more specifically how a chance organized social club among college students wanting a Greek letter fraternity grew into a murderous political tool for suppression of not only freed black people, but also poor white people. Oddly enough, most of the most racist people in the 'south' are those poor white people who would have more to gain from finding common cause with the black people for the mutual benefit of both. Mr Lincoln did what he had to do and did not shrink from it. People died! Such was the price of unity and the prevention of a larger, later conflagration. Suppose the nation divided then and there. Suppose later in World War II, the surviving 'south' would have found in Hitler its natural ally and ideological brother. How many would have died then. Especially if the 'south' also possessed nuclear weapons. Those southern upper classes were evil; no one ever said they were stupid. I grew up there and later left. I know those people as they were thirty years ago. Himmler and Eichmann would have loved them while Speer would have cursed them for laziness. Standing Bear
