Any real difference between Churchill & Blair ...?

[mickyv]

Book blames Churchill for Indian famine that killed millions

AFP - British prime minister Winston Churchill deliberately let millions of Indians starve to death, the author of a new book has claimed, alleging he was motivated in part by racial hatred.

As many as three million people died in the Bengal famine of 1943 after Japan captured neighbouring Burma -- a major source of rice imports -- and British colonial rulers in India stockpiled food for soldiers and war workers. Panic-buying of rice sent prices soaring, and distribution channels were wrecked when officials confiscated or destroyed most boats and bullock carts in Bengal to stop them falling into enemy hands if Japan invaded. Rice suddenly became scarce in markets and, as worsening hunger spread through villages, Churchill repeatedly refused pleas for emergency food shipments. Emaciated masses drifted into Kolkata, where eye-witnesses described men fighting over foul scraps and skeletal mothers dying in the streets as British and middle-class Indians ate large meals in their clubs or at home.

The "man-made" famine has long been one of the darkest chapters of the British Raj, but now Madhusree Mukerjee says she has uncovered evidence that Churchill was directly responsible for the appalling suffering. Her book, "Churchill's Secret War", quotes previously unused papers that disprove his claim that no ships could be spared from the war and that show him brushing aside increasingly desperate requests from British officials in India. Analysis of World War II cabinet meetings, forgotten ministry records and personal archives show that full grain ships from Australia were passing India on their way to the Mediterranean region, where huge stockpiles were building up.

"It wasn't a question of Churchill being inept: sending relief to Bengal was raised repeatedly and he and his close associates thwarted every effort," Mukerjee told AFP in a telephone interview. "The United States and Australia offered to send help but couldn't because the war cabinet was not willing to release ships. And when the US offered to send grain on its own ships, that offer was not followed up by the British."

Churchill's record as a war leader against Nazi Germany has secured his place in history, but his attitude towards Indians attracts less admiration. "He said awful things about Indians. He told his secretary he wished they could be bombed," Mukerjee said. "He was furious with Indians because he could see America would not let British rule in India continue." Churchill derided Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi as a lawyer posing as a "half-naked" holy man, and replied to British officials in India who pleaded for food supplies by asking why Gandhi had not yet died.

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion," he told Leo Amery, the secretary of state for India. Another time he accused Indians of effectively causing the famine by "breeding like rabbits." Amery once lost his temper after one rant by the prime minister, telling Churchill that he could not "see much difference between his outlook and Hitler's." Amery wrote in his diary: "I am by no means sure whether on this subject of India he is really quite sane."

Mukerjee believes Churchill's views on India, where he served as a young army officer, came from his Victorian upbringing. Like his father, he saw India as the fundamental jewel in the crown of the British empire. "Winston's racist hatred was due to his loving the empire in the way a jealous husband loves his trophy wife: he would rather destroy it than let it go," said Mukerjee. Mukerjee's book has been hailed as a ground-breaking achievement which unearths new information despite the hundreds of volumes already written on Churchill's life. Eminent British historian Max Hastings has described it as "significant -- and to British readers -- distressing." Author Ramachandra Guha said it provided "for the first time, definitive evidence of how a great man?s prejudices contributed to one of the most deadly famines in modern history."

Mukerjee attributes the book's revelations to her training as a physicist. "People suspected that something like this happened but no one really went through the evidence properly to find out what the ships were doing at the time, proving that grain could have been taken to India," she said. "I didn't set out to target Churchill. I set out to understand the famine and I slowly discovered his part in it. The famine, you could argue, was partly a deliberate act. India was forced to export grain in the early years of war and in 1943 was exporting rice at Churchill's personal insistence. Britain ruthlessly exploited India during war and didn't let up even when famine started."

Mukerjee, a 49-year-old Bengali who now lives in Frankfurt with her German husband, believes the Bengal famine has also been air-brushed from Indian history books. "I was never taught about it in school and my parents never mentioned it," she said. "There's middle-class guilt as they were employed in professions that meant they received rations. But villagers were considered dispensable."

Seven years of working on the book, and of hearing gruelling tales from famine survivors whom she tracked down in remote villages, have left Mukerjee with a harsh opinion of Churchill. "He is often criticised for bombing German cities but has never before been held directly responsible for the deaths of so many people as in the Bengal famine. It was the greatest stain on his career. I find it very hard to be open-minded about him now," she said. "After all, he would have thought that I am not worth the food I eat."
source

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... both nasty little racists who managed to get their hands on the levels of powers, and so managed to caused the deaths of countless brown-skin peoples;

Just lucky for Churchill, that a real enemy, the Nazis came along to secure his legacy, unlike Blair & his fantasy sexed-up "Saddam the new Hitler" enemy.

I wonder if GG realises that his hero Churchill was responsible for 3 million deaths as compared to Blair's 1 million in Iraq.

[faceless]

Very interesting post - it immediatel made me think of how the Irish holocaust in the 1840s was latterly described as the potato famine, when all along every death was a product of British power and greed.

I'm not sure about Blair being a racist - more someone who cares solely for his own class.

[luke]

sounds an interesting book. i did read some book on the british empire, and that covered the bengal famine, and the irish famine, and loads of other shocking stuff, and in that churchil definitely came over as racist, and a cunt.

i'd agree with faceless about blair not being racist, he'd have done everything he's done if the victims had been white

[mickyv]

I don’t think most people would disagree that Blair is certainly a bit of a “radical” Christian religious nut ? Yet he keeps telling everyone that “radical” Islam as the greatest threat facing the world. The very real dangers pose by the nuclear armed Zionist Nutters in the dysfunctional State of Israel, not do seem to concern him, as nor does the very real power that the American Christian Zionists exercise over the White House; so perhaps we can agree that Blair can be considered at least Islamophobic ?

According to one of Churchill’s biographers, although Churchill was not a “religious man.”, in the traditional sense, he did however have a profound sense of his own destiny and saw himself as defending Christian civilization from tyranny at a dramatic moment in the twentieth century”. In the darkest days of 1940, he wrote to Franklin Roosevelt that London was a “strong City of Refuge which enshrines the title deeds of human progress and is of deep consequence to Christian civilization”. So like as with Blair, there is this shared belief in the superiority of Christian civilization, which to my mind makes both men Christian and/or Cultural Bigots.

People sometimes point to the NATO attack on Serbia to make the point that Blair defended Muslims, and killed fellow white Christians, but they miss the point that there are Good Muslims & Bad Muslims, ie ones that are useful to the West & ones that aren’t, and miss the point that the Serbs are the wrong sort of Christians, being that strange Russia & Eastern European Orthodox religion, which has always been an attack target for Western Christian Zealots since the Middle Ages.

So the question is can somebody be considered racist if they believe that people of their own religion are superior to all others ? If it was superior in only religious terms, then maybe not, but what if because of this belief, it makes them regard all other people’s lives as of little or no consequence, especially as compared with their co-religionist’ lives ? You can substitute superiority of civilisation as opposed to religion, which Blair sometimes does, but the outcome is the same, which is the belief that some people’s lives are worth less than others, which to me is one clear definition of racism.

Blair actually admits to this in his book, when he writes about the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon. Whilst other world leaders demanded an immediate ceasefire, Blair refused to do so, and he now tells us why; ‘If I had condemned Israel, I would have been more than dishonest. It would have undermined my world view.’

In other word he is telling us that the saving of innocent lives & stopping massive death & destruction, are of little or no consequence, because of his “world view”, which is as he keeps repeating, Islam is a threat to Western Civilisation, and therefore to him Muslims lives demonstrably don't matter.

[faceless]

I don't think Blair's ever said that Islam itself was a threat to anything. In fact, in this piece, which he wrote in 2006, he says that

[mickyv]

Despite what he wrote there, his actions before & after speak damningly more loudly than those brief words.

You think he only cares about Power & Influence, but Power & Influence to do what ? The only answer must be to help action the prejudices of his “World-View”, and we know what that is;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11182225

[faceless]

Power and influence are the goal when you have an ego like his. He believes he's destined to these things - and why wouldn't he when he's been brought up with such privilege?

If Islam ever was a direct threat to the capitalist system I think he'd be against it - but that's a lot different from being against 'extremist Islam' which actually is a direct threat to it.

[mickyv]

Power & Influence are not goals, but means to achieve goals, otherwise what’s the point of them ?

I think that all Religions are essentially opposed to, and are therefore direct threats, to the Capitalist System, treating each other as brothers philosophy as opposed to screw the next person before he screws you, dog eat dog capitalist philosophy. If anything Islam is more directly in opposition to Capitalism, with its prohibition on the earning of monetary interest. This is why all religious beliefs have long been under attack, and are now virtually replaced with the Cult of Celebrity Culture, which includes the three S's, Sex, Soaps & Sports.

Coming back to Blair, I stand by my accusation that he is a racist, as I cannot see any other term to describe somebody who harps on about Western lives, be it 9/11, 7/7 or Israeli lives, but chooses both to lie into a bogus war in which a tremendous number of brown skin people would inevitable die, and later chooses not to ask Israel to stop it's five weeks long bombing & killing spree of Lebanon’s civilians, because brown skin civilian lives are not worth saving if it means that he must act against his Islamophobic World View.

The staggering hypocrisy of this religious radical warning against other religious radicals, and scaremongering that “they believed that whatever was done in the name of their cause was justified - including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons”, is breath taking when you know that he has already done exactly that himself. He is even calling for war on Iran, claiming that it's one of the biggest state sponsors of radical Islam, yet turns a blind eye to Saudi Arabia, the most active hotbed of Islamic extremism, and even defends that Country's barbaric Human Rights abuses on the grounds of “they are our friends”.

Blair is a both a religious & racist bigot, and a blood-soaked war criminal, which is exactly what you end up with when psychos get into positions of power.