Kandy Man with long name who fought the Brits.
Key fact: in Sri Lanka heroes were allowed to get fat, another reason to like the place.
You see some pretty sick stuff when you do my job, but I just read something sicker than any Congo cannibal buffet. It’s an article by a posh little limey named Jeremey Brown condemning the Sri Lankan government for being too messy in putting down the LTTE, and demanding that we stop buying the cheap textiles the poor Sinhalese make their living churning out.
What’s sick about this is that the British establishment destroyed the Sinhalese people completely. Completely and purposely, sadistically. Stole their land, humiliated and massacred their government, made it Imperial policy to erase every shred of self-respect the Sinhalese had left. You can talk about the Nazis all day long, but for my money nothing they did was as gross as what you find out when you actually look into the history of British-Sinhalese relations. If you can even call them “relations”; I guess a murder-rape is a relation, sort of.
But nobody knows about it. Weird, huh? Nothing weirds me out more than the total news blackout the Brits have managed to put on all the sick shit they did to brown and black people all over the world. They had a system, and it worked. They’d grab some paradise island in the tropics, use the Royal Navy to wall it off from the rest of the world, and crush the local tribe. If the locals resisted, the Brits would starve them to death, shoot them down, infect them with smallpox or get them addicted to opium–whatever they had to do to gang-rape the locals so bad that they’d lose the will to resist.
And to this day, they don’t catch even a little bit of Hell for it. Everybody thinks the Brits are all cute and harmless. You’re all a bunch of suckers for those suave accents, you suckers! The truth is that compared to the Brits, the Nazis you’re always yammering about were a gang of eighth-grade stoners who ran around spraypainting swastikas on school property. The Nazis lasted one decade; the Brits quietly ran their extermination programs for three hundred years, and to this day they wouldn’t even think of feeling guilty about it. Wouldn’t cross their minds.
That’s what made me want to puke battery acid when I read Mister Jeremy Brown’s sermon on the naughty Sinhalese: this pig Brown has no clue about why Sri Lanka is so fucked up, no hint at all that it’s the result of British Imperial policy. Not “mistakes” or “a few bad apples” or “regrettable excesses” but clear, cold, ruthless British policy.
One of the funniest bits in Brown’s little Anglican sermon to the Sinhalese is when he mentions Arthur C. Clarke, the Brit sci-fi writer who moved to Sri Lanka. The reason that’s funny is that a few years back, when he was too senile and drunk to watch his tongue, Clarke admitted in an interview that the whole reason he moved to Sri Lanka is “for the boys.” As in, he liked to rape little boys, and they were cheap and pretty in the dear old ex-colony. The fucking Brits wouldn’t stop raping the Sinhalese even after their troops were forced off the island.
Jeremy Brown wouldn’t know that, of course. To him, Clarke is a wonderful example of all the wonderful things British people have done for po’ little Sri Lanka:
“Britain has…helped to rebuild Sri Lanka’s tourist industry: Britons accounted for 18.5 per cent of the foreigners who visited the former colony’s famous beaches, wildlife parks, tea plantations and Buddhist temples last year. Only India sends more tourists. Many Britons also own property there, especially around the southern city of Galle, not far from where Arthur C.Clarke, the British science fiction writer who settled in Sri Lanka, used to love to scuba dive. [Is that what they’re callin’ it these days? GB]
So the question facing British shoppers and holidaymakers is this: should they continue to support Sri Lanka’s garment and tourist industries?
Don’t you love that last sentence: “Sadly, the answer must be no.” Anybody who can write a sentence like that without blowing his brains out at the monitor is a hopeless twit anyway, but let’s help Jeremy out a little bit, folks, let’s go back in time and take a quick look at all the wonderful things the Brits did for these rotten, ungrateful Sinhalese.
The pattern you see in the colonizing of Sri Lanka is a real familiar one, if you study the European naval empires: the Portugese, the greatest sailors and explorers, came to Sri Lanka long before the Brits, claimed the place, but couldn’t hold on to it. The Portugese lost the island to the Dutch, those up’n’coming Protestant go-getters, in the mid-1600s. That’s another pattern you see everywhere, the old Papist powers losing out to the Protestants, who were just faster and smarter.
The next stage was also totally by the book: the Brits, the canopy tree if you know what I mean, come along and force the Dutch out. There were times the Brits sort of liked the Dutch; they were Protestant, at least, and blonde/blue-eyed. But business was business, and the Brits realized, by the end of the 1700s, that Sri Lanka was worth taking. Of course they didn’t say that in public; the official reason was that they had to boot the Dutch to guard the island from the nasty radical Frenchies.
That way of stealing islands, making it sound like you had to take them for the greater good–that was classic Brit strategy. They always made it look like they were forced, against their will, to grab this or that colony. I dunno if y’all ever saw a movie called Erik the Viking, but it has a great scene with John Cleese playing this insane bloodthirsty warlord who orders people tortured to death in this tired, disappointed upper-class voice, and then whines, “It’s the stress that gets you”–all put upon and harrassed, like Attila the Hun meets The Office. That’s a perfect image for the way the Brits booted the Dutch out of Ceylon, tsk-tsking while they stole every shed, cannon and bale of tea on the island.
With the Dutch trade rivals gone, the Brits had only one problem left: the damned natives, the Sinhala, or “Kandyans” as they were called back then. That dumb name, “Kandyans,” came from the fact that their main city was Kandy, up in the highlands in the south of the island, the fat part of the teardrop. The Sinhala lived in the highlands for the simple reason that it was a little cooler, not as totally malarial, up there compared to the stinking coastal marshes.
By all accounts, the Sinhala/Kandyans were harmless slackers, who didn’t need or want much from the outside world. All they asked was for people to leave them alone up on their big rocky highlands to do their Buddhist thing. Unfortunately that wasn’t British policy. It irked the redcoats that Kandy still had a king, an army, all this impudent baggage that went with independence. The British decided to break the Sinhalese completely, crush the whole society.
You have to remember that by this time, the early 1800s, the Brits have perfected their techniques in little experiments all over the world. Those Clockwork Orange shrinks were amateurs compared to the Imperial Civil Service. They had dozens of ways of undermining native kingdoms.
British administrators were trained to do a kind of rough, quick sociological sketch of the natives, get a sense of the fault lines and then figure out how to exploit them. The Brits saw fast that the Kandyans were a sluggish bunch of people divided into rigid castes in the classic subcontinent pattern. That made it easy: the Brits made two big castes their official pets and shunned the others, setting up a violent hate between different parts of Sinhalese society. That guaranteed that if the diehard Sinhalese/Kandyan nationalists ever revolted, the teacher’s-pet castes would have a good selfish reason to help massacre them.
Then there was the Kandyan king himself. The Brits weren’t dumb in the way Paul Bremer was dumb, “de-Baathifying” Iraq. They loved corrupt local rulers. Much easier and cheaper to bribe one fat old degenerate on a throne than negotiate with all the commoners. So the Brits started playing with the nervous, dumb-ass Kandyan royals, scaring them with the threat of losing everything and then teasing them with the possibility of the safe, soft life of a Brit puppet.
This was the major leagues of Colonialism. To give you an idea of how important Ceylon/Sri Lanka was back then, try this on: in 1802, when French armies were kicking British and Prussian and Italian and Russian ass all over Europe (weird how nobody remembers that, huh?), the Brits were so terrified they tried to give Napoleon all their colonies except Sri Lanka and Trinidad. Those were the two they needed to keep.
The Kandy Men: no match for the Brit Vampire Lords
And this is where another standard Brit policy came into play–a real smart one that we ought to be imitating: use native auxiliaries, not homeland troops, as much as possible. For all kinds of reasons, but here are the main ones:
1. If you bring in troops from some remote part of the Empire to do your dirty work, it’s those troops, those faces and accents, the locals will remember, and hate, for generations. So you, the sly little pink Brit administrator, can stroll in later and commiserate with the locals as they show you around their burned huts, bayoneted kids, etc., and even say with a straight face, “Oh my, those auxiliaries from wherever, what ruddy heathens, eh? Outrageous, I shall certainly let Whitehall know about these abuses!” Then, of course, you get in your sedan chair, close the curtains and chuckle all the way home to where your little bum-boy is waiting.
2. Nobody back in London counts casualties as long as it’s Malay mercs dying. You can lose a lot of them–and a lot of Malays did die fighting the Sinhala, especially in the total rout of a malaria-sapped Brit/Malay force at the Mahaveli River in 1803–but nobody is going to make a fuss in the Times of London (Mister Jeremy Brown’s paper, as you may recall). If you’re lucky they’ll pop off before payday and you can keep their payroll for that estate in Shropshire.
3. Dropping hot-blooded feisty Malay muslims with guns far from home and making them fight Sinhalese bleeds Malay society as well as Sinhalese. Left in peace, Malays could be trouble–a proud, warlike people. So by sending them to die in Sri Lanka, you’re diverting all that young, angry Malay blood away from SE Asia and using it to bleed Kandy (bleed Kandy–I like that!). Two birds, one bloodsoaked stone.
You see why I get impatient with you gullible suckers yammering about the fucking Nazis? The Nazis were retards, a white-trash tantrum, an eighth-grade chem-class pipe bomb, a quick-fizzle flash in the pan, compared to the Brits, the scariest motherfuckers ever to butt-fuck the planet.
The mercenaries the Brits sent to crush the Kandyans were Malays, muslims from SE Asia who didn’t need a lot of pep talks to slaughter South Asian Buddhists (and steal their chickens). That was life for the Brits back then, at the top of their game: picking up pieces from one part of the world and dropping them where they’d do the most harm, half the world away. “Ah yes, let’s ferry some Malay mercs to Kandy, that should give the bloody idol-worshippers something to think about!”
Destroying Buddhism was a big part of Brit policy. The Buddhist routine, the temples, begging monks, long boring prayers–it was the glue that kept Kandy together. So the Brits decided to destroy it. They even said so, in private memos to each other. They weren’t shy in them days. Here’s the Brit governor in 1807: “Reliance on Buddhism must be destroyed. Make sure all [village] chiefs are Christian.”
Up to 1818, the Brits had a blast messing with doomed Sinhala rebellions, trying out CI recipes like Frankenstein guesting on Rachael Ray. A good time was had by all, except the Sinhalese. They had a very, very bad time, and it was about to get worse.
See, another constant you’ll find in Brit imperial policy is that although they’re very sly and patient, they have a very good sense of when to cut the crap and just wipe out a tribe that’s been annoying them for too long. They were getting sick of the Sinhalese, with all their bickering and intrigues; the redcoats just weren’t enjoying the Col. Kurtz game the way they used to. So boom: the “kill’em all” era begins.
But they did it smart, not like the idiot boastful Nazis y’all love to obsess on. I bet every one on the planet can name the Nazi death camps, but I’d be surprised if more than, say, a half dozen people outside Sri Lanka can name the policy the Brits used to destroy the Sinhala for good.
Anybody? Didn’t think so. See, here’s another little tip for up’n’coming genocidaires out there: always pick the most boring name possible. Those fucking Nazis, with their heavy-metal jewelry and titles! Dopes! You want extermination programs with names that put everybody to sleep.
And that’s why in 1818 Britain brought “the wasteland policy” to Kandy. They could have called it what that Liberian wacko called his campaign: “Operation No Living Thing.” That’s what it meant: Brit-led troops “draining the sea” the Sinhala irregulars swam in by burning every hut, every field, and killing every animal in every village they suspected of harboring “rebels.”
Hey, that’s another key Brit CI techniques: that word “rebels.” Blows me away: how can a Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, fighting for the country his people have owned for a hundred generations, be a “rebel”? And the pipsqueak redcoat officer hunting him down, who was born and raised in fucking London–he’s not the “rebel,” he’s the forces of law and order, the rightful authorities. Quite a racket if you have the sheer, sociopathic nerve to say it with a straight face. (I’m talking to you, Mister Jeremy Brown!)
What does “rebel” mean, anyway? I’ve noticed that in English press it’s a bad word. Here it’s different, because we were the rebels in 1775 and proud of it. But see, people who know the American revolution think that the Brit policy against the Yankees, where (give or take a Banastre Tarlteton or two), the redcoats tried to avoid killing civvies, was normal Imperial policy.
Bullshit. The reason the Brits let us go, didn’t try scorched-earth on us, was that we WERE Brits, as far as they could tell: white protestant English-speaking humans. If you weren’t all of the above, you weren’t human. The only other war where English troops had the same restraint was–take a guess. Right: the English Civil War. In England, they fought clean. But when Cromwell marched up to subdue the Scots, who were Protestant (good) but non-English (bad), a lot of POWs never made it back to the holding pens, and a lot of crofts were torched, and a lot of girls were raped. When he moved from Scotland to Ireland, where the filthy locals were filthy Papist as well as non-English, well, you don’t want to know what happened there.
So in places like Sri Lanka, full of brown heathens, Brit policy had nothing to do with fucking Yorktown. More like Dresden, only lower-tech.
The “Wasteland” policy was smart and mean at the same time–another sure mark of the Brit Imperial Touch. It was designed to deny the “rebels” support in the short term, but in the long term it was pure punishment, taking away the land, livestock and other assets of all the Sinhalese who were even suspected of being “rebel”-lovers.
And it worked. To this day, 200 years later, the Sinhalese castes who backed the rebels are dirt poor, and worse: they’re hated by everybody around them and they even hate themselves. And nobody even remembers who did it to them, poor lab rats. They think it’s their own fault, that there’s something wrong with them.
There’s more, and worse, but to tell the truth, this is making me sick. I’ve tried to tell this story a dozen times and nobody wants to know. You just end up vomiting battery acid all night, and pigs like Mister Jeremy Brown of the Times of London never lose one second of sleep over all those bodies, and all those lies and sheer nastiness. What’s the use? I’ll just fastforward through a couple of highlight shots. Take reprisals. You know, like those bad ol’ Nazis used to do after a “rebel” attack? The Brits were there way before the Nazis. They took revenge for a half-assed Kandyan revolt by killing one out of every hundred Sinhalese. Like, at random. To keep it fair, you know, not play favorites.
And then the nastiest CI weapon of all, the demographic bomb. This was a Brit specialty all over the world (see Fiji for a weirdly similar case). The Brits ran India, so they had total control over millions of obedient Tamil peasants who were starving, desperate, and ready to go anywhere, just pile into the hold of a ship and get out to cut cane or plant rice in some place that may as well have been on the Moon for all they knew.
So along with the massacre/reprisals, the Brits came up with one of their classic two-birds-one-stone plans: to neutralize the Sinhalese, let’s import huge hordes of Tamils from India! They’re cheap and docile and they’ll give the Sinhala something to keep them busy even after we have to leave the island, haw! And meanwhile they’ll drive the price of labor down even further! Brilliant, chaps, absolutely brilliant!
And they did it. Worked so well it’s still working today. And when they were done totally destroying the poor Sinhalese, the Brits did what they do best, better than any other murder gang on the planet: they took that amnesia zapper from Men in Black and zapped everyone in Sri Lanka, then turned it on themselves and were suddenly so innocent, so damn virtuous and clean, that a pig like Mister Jeremy Brown can actually sit down at a computer and boast about all the wonderful times England has raped Sri Lanka, from olden times right down to Arthur C. Clarke buggering every little boy on the island. Heckuva job, Brownie! Satan himself is shaking his head, muttering, “Gotta give it to the fuckin’ limeys, damn it….they got no shame at all, ya gotta admire that. Damn, even I wouldn’t have had the gall to talk like that Jeremy Brown. I’m putting him down for CEO of the Hell Propagandastaffel the minute his liver packs up and he lands down here.”
OK, done. Now you can all pass around that amnesia gun.
Gary Brecher is the author of the War Nerd. Send your comments to brecher@exiledonline.com.
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141 Comments
Add your own1. Osho Honjaku | May 22nd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Thank you War Nerd for that splendid entry of truth telling. It will be interesting to see how many comments this entry receives. Most likely not many: faced with an unpleasant truth Americans will do what they always do, tune out and pretend they didnt read this.
2. Ryunosuke | May 22nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Please try to report accurately. You have again mistakenly claimed that all the Tamils in Sri Lanka were brought over by the British. The facts are that the actual Sri Lankan Tamils have ruled over Northern Sri Lanka for a long long time (see Wikipedia entry for Sri Lankan Tamils)
The TAmils that were brought over by the British are called the ‘plantation Tamils’ since they were brought over to work in the tea plantations. These ‘plantation Tamils’ actually support the Sri Lankan govt.
3. John Jacob | May 22nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Osho, save the sanctimonious crap for someone who needs two crosses.
4. Henry Wolff | May 22nd, 2009 at 1:20 pm
From the Home Office:
-They moved to Kandy to get away from the lovely Portuguese, not malaria
-The Kandyans in part brought this on themselves by kidnapping a British sailor. He ran back and told everyone about them.
-We did introduce democracy to the island
-We sincerely regret the other atrocities we committed.
-Thanks for all the tea.
5. Geo8rge | May 22nd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
“And then the nastiest CI weapon of all, the demographic bomb.”
Please explain all those S Asians in Britain. An act of suicide, or after London lost its colonies, it decided to colonize Manchester.
“Sinhalese castes who backed the rebels are dirt poor” – Isn’t that why they call it the caste system? Anyway next life they will do better, if they behave.
Arthur C. Clarke buggering – Didn’t see that one coming. Maybe you should edit his Wikipedia page, it says he was awarded Sri Lanka’s highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya.
I still don’t get it. The LTTE seemed to be doing so good. Aerial bombardment, a first for a “non state actor”. How did it all fall apart? Common WN explain it to me.
BTW, during the American Revolutionary war, the war in the south was much nastier than the war in the north. A combination of the civil war and the desire to ally with Britain meant that most US high school histories concentrate on the war in the north.
See British Legion – Tarleton’s Raiders
6. Chema Pino Suarez | May 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3587168.ece
“Clarke had allegedly told a newspaper reporter that he did not know how old his sexual partners had been, but that “most of them had reached puberty”. Asked whether it was morally wrong, it is claimed that he replied: “No. I mean, it depends on the country. You can’t have absolute morality.”
7. Alok | May 22nd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
For those apopleptic about Gary’s outburst… I suggest you look up either “The Devil’s Wind” or any non-English writing on the Mau Mau Rebellion or the Boer War or just a bried history of the Boxer Rebellion or the history of…
Never mind.
8. napoleonkaramazov | May 22nd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
That would be the same Times of London owned by the American citizen Mr Rupert Murdoch, part of the world’s biggest and most powerful media organisation, including Fox news, which spreads lies, propaganda and misinformation.
A century ago Kipling told America to take up the white man’s burden. Looks like they have. Was not the whole Iraq war disaster related to Christian fundamentalists?
9. Miguel | May 22nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
The fucking zap gun is so impressive Brits manage to fool themselves all the time. Most of my Anglophile friends actually believe that theirs was an exemplary empire and if all other colonial nations (especially Portugal, who was actually barely a colonial nation at all) the world would be a much better place. Great article, Gary, you’re back in the game.
10. John | May 22nd, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Does anyone reading this feel really awful about how dumb the American empire is in comparison? Can’t even beat a sad little desert into submission and turn a profit from it.
11. Spotacus | May 22nd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Don’t like the Brits much I see. I disagree with some of your reporting, I don’t think the British ever had a plan. Like the Americans today they were successful because they had more money then anyone else. Shit just happened and then they made up excuses for it. Its far cheaper to have native auxiliaries do your fighting then ship boatloads of brit peasants over who probably will die of malaria anyway.
Remind me of how the Americans dealt with populations of indigenous people who got in the way of progress in the 19th century?
12. Allen | May 22nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I’ve been following Gary’s commentaries for five or six years now. It’s interesting to note that of late his his tone with respect to the “colonial past” has changed a fair bit.
I can recall at least one article where he slammed an old professor for blaming all the problems of the third world on “colonialism”, a liberal pc rallying call, and not on the native tribes themselves and ancient hatreds.
The truth (I think) is it depends where you look. Colonials didn’t do everything, but the truth is they manufactured a lot of problems here and there that do persist. It’s kind of what Empires do — hell I would put some of the Middle East’s current problems not just on European colonialism but on the Ottoman Empire as well, which loved little experiments in “political engineering” and pitting different peoples against each other.
With the Brits it’s a little worse, not only because they were so damn good at it, and ruthless, but because they are so pompous and self righteous about it to this day. There’s an interesting ambivalent tone going on in this article, balancing the slight admiration Gary has always had for the Brits (U.S.A. should be more “like” them) with a seemingly ever growing measure of disgust.
The thing is, there are few in history (since Tamerlane and Kublai Khan maybe) who can just be proud and open about being cold blooded assholes. It’s always about the “amnesia”. Winning on the battlefield is one thing; smugly self congratulating yourselves for actually being some-kind of humanitarian all along even if your victory occurred against a back drop of ethnic cleansing, rapes, and general rapacity and mass larceny … well that’s just gross hubris, which almost nobody can stand.
But it’s all part of the package most times.
13. rick | May 22nd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I wonder if “human hate history” could get off the ground as a literary genre. History’s so much simpler, more elegant and exciting if premises like “humans are scum” sit right under the surface. It’s practically scientific to laugh at human ideology and motivation, and break it down that way. Onto the future, and let us all remember Gary Brecher: the richest commentator in town. Amongst the really strange people who read his shit.
14. Azr@el | May 22nd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
The Sri Lankabhimanya is the award the Sri Lankans hand out for the fellow that pops the most prepubescent rent-boy cherry in any given year. My only surprise is that the prolific Mr. Clarke only received it once for Buddha knows he was legion when it came to dishing it out. To clarify there were Tamils on Sri Lanka before the Brits and even Malays, the English didn’t create the Indian Ocean trade system. The Sri Lankan Tamils had a kingdom up in the north ’til the Guineas smashed it in the 1600’s. A couple hundred years later Tamils from India were shipped in to the highlands of the South by the Brits as a source of cheap politically reliable labour, remember spice, tea and what have you were the whole reasons for English rule of Ceylon. Note, the current conflict has nothing to do with this history and everything to do with ethnic and religious cleansing. The Sinhalese are jerks, much like the Fijians, they’ve been siting idly on their arses waiting for the return of the white man. The Tamils got off their bums and started to make a go of it, end result; the disgruntled Sinhalese want them to go bye-bye. Anticipate the detention camps in the north to become gulags, anticipate this “New Chapter” in Sri Lanka to be rather ugly, it seems that little boys are already disappearing from these camps…the U.N. will never find them but a Brit tourist for a few quid could probably sample them in a few months in the usual places in Colombo.
This doesn’t take away from the fact that the English are pricks who may one day get a thermonuclear return on their colonial investments when the barrier to entry for the nuclear club falls below the nation state level. But blaming them for everything seems to be the easy way out, the Tamils don’t have clean hands and neither do the Sinhalese. Hopefully India,the U.S., Russia and the PRC will get a coherent message across to Colombo to keep the carnage to a minimum.
15. Realist | May 22nd, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Hail to the Nerd!
Divide et impera. If you want to kill and plunder from horizon to horizen and still stay for breakfast, there is no way around the British technique. While their military absorbed its fair share of fools, the mercantilist operation was run by delightfully ruthless architects of the Cecil Rhodes variety.
16. sta6n | May 22nd, 2009 at 7:04 pm
And now all those poor brown people in Sri Lanka are drowning from rising ocean levels associated with climate change caused by (gasp) the descendants of those white, male protestants – and where’d the goddamn industrial revolution start?
17. Eren | May 22nd, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Good to read an article by an author who’s Western yet still has integrity. Western historians always dismiss the Mongols and their empire because their empire was built on the destruction and retardation of other civilizations. Yet the same historians will speak of Western civilization as though it is the pinnacle of human civilization itself, as though Western civilization has produced more good for humanity than any other civilisation. The reality is different: you Westerners are more locust-like than the any other civilization (such as the Turks and Mongols) who you judge so vehemently. To attain supremacy is surely a glorious thing, but to veil it with sanctimonious attitudes of goodwill, when your civilization is culpable for more destruction than any other civilization in human history, is shameful. Thank you, Brecher, for having the balls to acknowledge the truth. its thinkers like you who challenge common views that the world needs.
18. Eren | May 22nd, 2009 at 10:11 pm
By the way, congratulaions on finally giving an article a good title.
19. aleke | May 22nd, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Hahah I just posted a comment about how Samantha Powers and crew remind me of Imperial Brits on Ames’ article and this one got posted. Sweet! Good to see that the Americans really are appropriating British tricks, nearly verbatim.
20. eric | May 23rd, 2009 at 12:11 am
Nerd alert?
21. Asehpe | May 23rd, 2009 at 1:04 am
I agree with Allen above. It’s not as simple as Gary describes it.
Still, the British were ruthless. So were the French. So were the Portuguese (in their own low-tech, laid-back kind of way).
In that century, what the Brits did was perfectly OK. Other European powers copied them. And many of the ideas, you know, the Brits didn’t have themselves — they saw others doing it and decided to copy them.
Now, the current holier-than-thou attitude, as if the Brits had never dirtied their hands with unclean blood–that is really hard to defend. The Brits should someday take one good look at their own colonial history, and stop pretending to have been oh-so-civilized. If they mean something about morality today–if they really want to claim they’ve become a moral people who respects the rights of others to be different–then they should look at their own history and show where it is they deviated from this belief. It’s OK to do that: these are different times, if you criticize their past you’re not criticizing their present. The 19th century is not the 21t. Forgetting that, and thinking they have to defend themselves just because of being Brits… how different is that from trying to “defend the brave Russian liberators” in WWII as a pretext for censorship–the crime everybody is now accusing Russia’s President Medvedev of wanting to do with his new commission?
If the Brits (and other Europeans and Westerners in general for that matter) are serious about criticizing the Russians for changing their past to make the Red Army and Stalin look cool, they should do the same to their own past. Not facing the past means not really understanding where you are now and how you got to be where you are.
22. Realist | May 23rd, 2009 at 4:23 am
Sure, the pre 45 Europeans were ruthless bastards, all of them. Some of them still are, the methods have changed. What makes the British special is their cunnning and success is their methodology of conquest. How they managed to ruin the Spanish empire, how they kept continental Europe busy by financing megalomanics.
From the humanitarian point of view, of course, the world would be better off if we sprayed this cursed island with anthrax. But I cant help but admire them for raising the bar a little. The US does not even come close.
23. Expat in BY | May 23rd, 2009 at 5:58 am
In response to 8. napoleonkaramazov:
Yes, the same American citizen Rupert Murdoch that got his start in Melbourne, Australia (building his empire from a single newspaper in Adelaide), then moved to London where he obtained the nickname of “Dirty Digger” over his popularization of “Page 3 Girls” before defeating Robert Maxwell “The Bouncing Czech” in a battle for supremacy over European media, and then moved to America after first taking over TV Guide and then 20th Century Fox (thus the name Fox News). Note that he obtained US citizenship only because American media-ownership laws required it at the time he was trying to break into that market.
Murdoch may not be 100 percent British (I don’t imagine many of the descendents of the penal ancestors of Australia mixed much with other cultures), but he’s more British than American. And I’m sure Tarleton smiles from the grave over Fox News reporting and commentary (no matter his reported “hatred of aristocracy” and “love of meritocracy”).
24. Roquentin | May 23rd, 2009 at 6:37 am
There’s a definite underlying Irish nationalism under the Brecher’s loathing of the English….it’s hilarious. Mass murder is quite often passed off under the guise of “civilizing” a people or worse still philanthropy. I’d say it was shocking, but the real reason is all too obvious….the lie about civilizing just makes for good propaganda.
25. Disgusted, of Tunbridge Wells | May 23rd, 2009 at 8:36 am
While I thought the article in the Times was over the top and more than a little daft, your position on this is rather illogical.
Just because Britain did bad things a century ago does not mean that British citizens cannot criticise things happening NOW. This sort of false equivalence would prevent anything ever changing – what nation doesn’t have bloody hands?
26. aleke | May 23rd, 2009 at 11:34 am
25.
Britain can criticize all they want. And the world should ignore it. Unfortunately, Britain wields tremendous power for such a horrible rock of a nation. The equivalence of “criticism” basically means using an array of economic and political weapons (not to mention actual weapons, as we see time and time again in the global arms trade) in their moralizing quest to continue visiting pain and imperialism on their former domain.
27. Viking | May 23rd, 2009 at 11:58 am
From what most of the Brits I know say they barely know the whitewashed version of their history, have some vaughe idea about being less than gentelmanly in Ireland and to the Boers and nothing about what they did to the “wogs”. Having said that most Americans don’t recognize the irony of the endless condemnations of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega in the light of what we’re responsible for south of the border. I heard Turks talk about those awful lies the Armenians were telling, known Russians who can’t understand why every country on their borders hates and fears Russia. Alas the Germans, caught in the act.
28. Lighty | May 23rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
“You can talk about the Nazis all day long, but for my money nothing they did was as gross as what you find out when you actually look into the history of British-Sinhalese relations.”
Slack, Gary.
29. AIG | May 23rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
war nerd: good stuff.
Seriously, you need to write a column every week. So what if you don’t get paid, the war nerd is above money
30. thomzas | May 23rd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Disgusted, of Tunbridge Wells
Actually, as huge swathes of England are about to vote for the British National Party (a typical anti-immigration, Britain for the white man group), isn’t it time to dust off the history books about our colonial days?
Speaking as a UK resident, we like to believe history began with WWII, the one battle in which we were the plucky underdog, not the violent overload. Please Gary, tell us more.
31. Chris | May 23rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
This is the best War Nerd ever, I’m in ecstasy reading it.
32. Rob | May 23rd, 2009 at 3:59 pm
The British, along with the other colonial powers already paid in blood for the crimes of the 19th century. It was called the First World War, when the industrialized military machines that had been used by the western nations to oppress colonial peoples were turned back upon them.
The natives on Ceylon and at Omdurman were victims of a historical process. So were the Tommies at Passchendaele and the French at Verdun. Everyone’s been a a victim already. I just wish that now we understand the process we would do something to stop it.
33. rick | May 23rd, 2009 at 4:01 pm
@eren I remind you “Western Civilization” saved more lives than it ever destroyed by some nerds putting 2 and 2 together and entreating you filthy savages to wash your crusty, cum and filth-soaked hands. Dirty motherfuckers. Take a bath and reduce infant mortality. You still make me sick. And stop wiping your ass with your hand, here’s some paper we invented.
34. hydro-bomb | May 23rd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
And the English soccer team is a JOKE!! At their own national sport! Those poofters failed to qualify for the 2008 European Championships and couldn’t even beat Trinidad and Tobago at the 2006 World Cup without cheating! How humiliating! What is wrong with the English? ARE THEY ALL CLOSET GAY NAZIS?
Or am I missing the spirit of this article?
35. aleke | May 23rd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
@rick
Are you Chinese? Hmm `paper,` has kind of a Han ring to it, that word.
36. Asehpe | May 23rd, 2009 at 9:03 pm
@ rick
Yes, and these savages gave you potatoes, tomatoes and chocolate. And the spices, don’t forget the spices; and silk, and gold… And, uh, they had astronomy before you did. And, uh, the Europeans who went there were just as dirty as the natives (didn’t you know regular washing only became a feature of Western culture in the late 19th century?…)
37. 'Sup | May 23rd, 2009 at 11:50 pm
@rick
you better take your soap and wash your clogged brain before washing your mouth. don’t you know nothin’ ’bout how backwards your people were in the 13th century while Turks were writing medical books…take dat!
38. Hudson | May 24th, 2009 at 12:07 am
This has to be the first ward nerd article in a long while, that actually feels like a war nerd article
39. Carlito | May 24th, 2009 at 2:30 am
A lot of collectivism going on here. The Brits did this, the Brits did that. Strange how the articles says Nazis instead of Germans, but says the Brits instead of the British Empire.
As for the whole ruthless brilliance of the British Empire, it wasn`t really that. In reality they were constrained. Conscription was out of the question on the island due to the domestic situation (the whole problem of populace not being totally enslaved) so a large army was an impossibility meaning they had to “do more with less”, which usually turns out to be the best way going about building lasting empires.
40. Allen | May 24th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Asehpe:
Yeah before the 19th century the saying for Englishmen was that their bodies only touched water twice in a lifetime: Baptism and death.
Water was rightly feared as a source of disease until the 19th.
41. Russel | May 24th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Very Interesting OBSERVATIONS from Gary, the FRESNO MAN.
Fact is :
1. British politians are the cunniest basterds in the world.
2. The inventors of the Consentration camps wre not by NAZIS but Brits.
3. If the germans got into trouble b´cuse
of the NAZI & Co & paid a havy price, british ” ROYAL ” familiy got away with all the crimes they commited on this planet &
still pretend as nothing happend = If u let loose a bad smelling FART in middle of a crowd and behave as it was not me” kind of thing.
4. In present times despite all the fuckups & serious crimes they commited in IRAK, AFGAN they pretend to be like the GOOD GUYS & have the balls to say others like SLANS wht 2 do & even more funny
trying 2 take the SL Govt. for “war crimes”.
5. Its high time that the rest of the contries affected by Brits mistakes & sins demand some compensation like lets say:
100.000.- pound per head x 21 million inhabitants of SL
wopuld be a good starter, what D U say.
6. despite some little mistakes by Gary in this article tkx 4 writing the truth about the CIVILIZED BRITISH .
7. Believe it or not i am not a Brits hater
( Love those sexy BT chicks egar to get laid & hot as the SUMMER sun ).
But the the truth must be said.
The Brits acts over polite ” Pls & TKX ” thing.
Fact is they are the most ruthless basterds
who commited serious mass in the world & got away 4 now
And Gary U take the CREDIT for it
42. Geoduck | May 24th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
5:
The Wikipedia article does in fact mention the pedophilia charges leveled against Clarke, made when the UK was preparing to knight him. Whether or not said charges were true or just a bit of opportunistic scandal-mongering on the part of the Daily Mirror newspaper, I don’t know, and as much as I enjoy Gary Brecher’s work, I’m pretty certain he doesn’t either.
43. Birdy | May 24th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Mister Jeremy doesn’t realise that he is personally responsible for the things that the government of his country did a century before he existed. You should tell him Gary.
44. rick | May 24th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I’m all for airing out all of the disgusting dirty genocidal laundry ever, but I take offense when idiots start whipping out that Susan Sontag “the Europeans are the virus of the world and history” nonsense. The fact is, small Western innovations like “doctors washing their hands” and “here’s how you grow crops” made it possible for every sad, third world country to HAVE exploding, economically-dispossessed populations to begin with. Western Civilization is the population bomb of history: once they touch your culture, there’s ten times more hungry, unemployed, not dead in infancy motherfuckers. Fact.
45. LB | May 24th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Makes me proud to be British, honestly. At least we could run a fucking empire, not like those fucking idiot Americans. Two hundred years of Pax Britannia and the Americans managed to fucking rape their own country in ten years after winning the Cold War by default. Fucking amateurs.
46. denk | May 24th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
how could this turn into a flame war between the civilisations ?
rick is a troll
his mention of “paper we invented” is all too blatant an attempt to frame the chinese, funny people could fall for it so easily
i have seen such troll elsewhere, i have a fair idea where he hails from too
47. gary | May 25th, 2009 at 12:19 am
the american revolution was a nasty little war especially with the typical divide and conquer technique by setting brit loyalists against the aqmeirican rabble rebel traitors..thier own good old brit arrogance and the wide atlantic ocean and the french beat them
48. morphine500 | May 25th, 2009 at 12:34 am
first time comment after reading for a year or so.
Hey WN. Isn’t this the same ruthlessness you promote in every one of your articles about the middle-east, where nothing will be solved until one of the players starts playing like the brits did with the sinhalese? Of course, hypocrites the brits are, but come on, this same procedure described in this article has been already described by you in numerous others – only in good light! Like when you mention Ghegis Khan in relation to Palestine heads rolling……
So if you are a war nerd, then stop vomiting acid, and start admiring the british empire for what it was: the European variant of what you preach. And hypocrisy, and acting as nothing of that happened is part of the game, you know that.
Of course, this is all bad. But if it is, then please stop telling everyone this is how you solve the palestine conflict, or the iraq “insurgency” etc – otherwise you’ll seem like a hypocrite too.
I am central european btw. And we do learn of the brits ruthlessness in history classes, and our history books contain the info they devised the “concentration camp”, and how they dealt with the Boers – who btw. where protestant and white………. So the above is no news for me. Your hypocrisy about it though…..
49. SweetLeftFoot | May 25th, 2009 at 3:25 am
Some facts.
1) Murdoch despises the Brits. He’s happy to make money out of them but he’s a signed up, stuck on Australian republican who hates the monarchy and undermines it in Britain with his media, and funds political campaigns against it in Australia.
2) Britain is screwed now. The economic events of late last year were actually final savage twisting death of the British Empire. London is a financial centre no more. Its over. Gone. Britain is now what it was circa 1000 … a rainy, poor, windswept island off the north west coast of Europe. They had a good millenium, but now its gawn.
50. fajensen | May 25th, 2009 at 4:17 am
Please explain all those S Asians in Britain. An act of suicide, or after London lost its colonies, it decided to colonize Manchester.
Simple: The British administration have always been running colonies, pitting ethnics against each other and generally making life miserable for everyone else BUT themselves so when the colonies ran out, they just carried right on with fucking over their own country!
51. Kotek Besar | May 25th, 2009 at 8:50 am
rick, you dumb fuck. Paper was invented by the Chinese. Europeans were limited to using parchment to write on and their hands to wipe their dirty asses until well into the Middle Ages. Since I doubt that your ancestors are from China, you can piss off and die, you ignorant racist cunt.
52. Jack Boot | May 25th, 2009 at 10:30 am
In all fairness, the Brits gave the world the industrial revolution, vaccination, railways and literate porn – to name but a few innovations.
For good or ill, the modern world is largely their creation.
How ironic that Mr. Brecher damns the Limeys in their own language…
Speaking of more recent ruthlessness, consider British tactics during the “Malay Emergency”.
In ‘Nam, whenever the Yanks stumbled upon a VC arms cache, they blew it up with great fanfare.
Not so the Brits: They left the caches seemingly untouched – but only after stuffing 1 cartridge in 50 with TNT, and shortening the fuse of 1 grenade in 10. “Surprise, surprise!”
This tended to undermine the guerillas’ confidence in their equipment.
If a rice cache was found, the Good Guys slid bamboo slivers into a small fraction of the rice grains. Terminal tummy troubles awaited all who ate them. Cute…
The Pig-Dogs are neither patient nor ruthless enough to be Imperalists.
Pity; an Imperial Age is preferable to a Dark Age…
53. aleke | May 25th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
War Nerd’s style is not just to praise effective fighting, but to praise honesty in war. As in, the Mongolians were honest about their warfighting: they didn’t wrap it up in Anglican moralizing and sniffling lies. Whether or not that is the only effective way to run wars nowadays is irrelevant. Honesty is the War Nerd’s thing. If you’re going to slaughter a bunch of people, why constantly tell them it’s for their own good? That’s truly despicable.
54. chris m | May 25th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Going down hill ‘gary’ me ol’ muckah! first the backtracking on the whole ‘best guerilla’s anywhere bar hezbollah’ shi-ite now just bashing the brits. lol if only the yanks had the stones to actually run the world eh? maybe we’d all sleep a bit safer if they weren’t such touchyfeely fags. then again maybe i’ve just realised that the war nerd isn’t what i thought, maybe he’s just a vehicle to draw readers here and maybe charge them to read his stuff? that didn’t work? ahh well. wanna talk bout pakistan now? or N korea mebbe? i’m going out now, i may be some time, to quote a better man than ‘gary’. good luck peeps
55. Mar C | May 25th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Since when did the War Nerd start caring about mass-murder victims?
56. Terry Smith | May 25th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
You know what?
I don’t think that IS War Nerd. He always respected ruthless people, now he’s bitching about them.
I think this is fanfic.
57. rick | May 25th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Viewed from a macro perspective, Euro colonialism exploded populations, even with all the genocides factored in. That’s a fact.
I was initially responding to the glib Susan Sontag type by attempting to be maximally offensive, i.e., “funny.” I completely agree with Gary and Said-types that they were totally duplicitous, evil motherfuckers, who fucked up and exploited and raped everything they touched. Pointing that out is fun and instructive, but when you take a step back and try to frame Western Civilization a “virus” that “corroded” the world, you’re full of shit, because when you take the step back, all you get are exploding populations and grotesque infestations of multi-colored bipeds, while the asshole bits more or less vanish. If you enjoy focusing on the asshole bits, don’t take a step back, then.
Exploding populations erased ways of life and forced the bigger populations to live like Western assholes. That sucks, but that’s cause nature’s abortions, infant death and food supplies allowed populations to explode. I’m not sure why everything’s gotta be political with you people. Politics is a dirty business, and purging it from reasoning should be the ideal. The world’s really, really, really fucked up, which makes commentators like Brecher necessary. In this case, he’s correcting for a total lack of moral awareness, on the part of historians, but usually he’s offering analysis that doesn’t fit into these imbecile “political” models of world affairs and history. We need that.
58. porkers-at-the-trough | May 25th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
get a grip, people! the entire discussion here is SO Anglo/Western centric. Hello?
According to the wiki “List of wars & disasters by death toll”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll the first five entries are NOT even “modern Western” oriented!- (Except that is for WWII, ALL casualties, but the vast majority of which were in China; whether Japanese vs Chinese, or Chinese-on-Chinese (eg Mao’s Communist vs Chiangs KMT; and estimated 29 million died in China in WWII, eclpising both Russians, European Jews, and other Europeans put together.)
Not to say that Europeans were guiltless of China’s 1940’s carnage, or even that the wiki page is 100% correct
(Rudy Rummel’s “Democides” lists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
has Stalin, Hitler, and “colonialism” all leading for the 20th century… until Rummel revised his list, ‘crediting” Mao with the deaths of 77 million of his countrymen (after Mao allowed the “Great Leap Forward” economic flop to starve millions.))
None-the-less, if ‘Gary’ wants to bear the cross (of Western imperial genocide vs the natives); or nail someone else (the Brits) to to that cross, he, too needs to get off his high horse for a moment or two.
Indeed, what I find fascinating is William Sykes book, “Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland”
http://www.amazon.com/Saxons-Vikings-Celts-Genetic-Britain/dp/0393062686
which follows the authors genetic’s research to ask “who populated the British Isles of today?” and finds that, (contrary to popular belief) while the hunter-gatherers and early farmers probably co-existed on the islands to begin with (BCE), by the common era the islands could expect non-stop
invasions by Romans, Anglos, Saxons, Vikings, Norsemen, etc. (not to mention attempted invasions by Spanish, French, and Germans).
What is REALLY whacky, is that Brits INVERTED the Arthurian/Camelot legend… instead of the native (Celtic) Arthur representing all that was good & holy & pure about the English, it was the Anglo, Saxons, & Jute GERMANIC stock INVADERS that represented British qualities (complete with their imported Hanovarian royals, at that) – and that the Brits had the same _genocidal_ scorn for their Celtic neighbors, that the (Celtic) Scots & Irish who made it to America had for natives and Africans enslaved there!
Ironically, Sykes discovers that Celtic genes dominate _throughout_ the Isles; so even as Brits thought they were of Germanic stock in legitimizing their Ethnic Cleansing in Scotland, Ireland, & Wales, they were actually being fratricidal (!).
The proof of English fratricide (genocidal occupations) – (i.e. Breher’s whole “English/Anglos are evil imperialists!” thing) is easy enough to prove: just recall that Jonathan Swift wrote his “Modest Proposal” satire (“how to prevent starvation in Ireland by eating babies”) to lampoon the ruthless English occupation of Ireland… in 1729…
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
which ruthlessness didn’t climax until WELL OVER A CENTURY LATER, with the GREAT FAMINE of 1845 itself, over 1.5 MILLION Irish died of famine or related diseases, AS English landlords exported grain from their “enclosed” “plantation” estates!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantations_of_Ireland
So, in sum: #1. for a good chunk of their imperial glory, the English actually fancied themselves as GERMANIC Anglo/Saxons
(and to this day, the great English and US banking houses are dominated by GERMAN names)
#2. the proof of English genocidal ruthlessness is right there in the history of the Irish “Plantations,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantations_of_Ireland
culminating in the (Ireland) “GREAT FAMINE,”
#3. even so, the Brits, and ALL of western imperial atrocities put together, have to fight for spots on the “top 10 wars & disasters” death-toll list, most of which preceded Western influence.
59. Alan | May 26th, 2009 at 3:16 am
Nobody else reading this and thinking, “WHAT BALLS!” There is something awe inspiring about the way the British stole half the planet and did it with a smile and a swagger. Something so impressive about the methodology of colonialism and the justification of atrocities through claims of bringing civilisation to the savages. It makes me proud to be British. God save the Queen, Rule Brittania and all that.
60. richard | May 26th, 2009 at 5:14 am
“I don’t think that IS War Nerd. He always respected ruthless people, now he’s bitching about them.” Terry Smith
If you read the anti-British Exiled articles by Mark Dolan, you’ll notice some interesting similarities. Bring back the real War Nerd!
61. isamu | May 26th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Genocide is a fact of life. No sense in getting all huffy bout it, unless its your people being extincted.
yours in Christ,
isamu.
62. Realist | May 26th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
There is cause to respect the Brits, and I hardly see this article as particulary anti-British. Brecher simply provides an honest narrative. Given the depressing perspective of actually spending their mortality on this hellhole of an island with all their ugly women, their colonial ambitions are excusable.
And dont think the Belgians, Portugese, Spanish or Dutch were any less genocidal.
63. denk | May 26th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
porker [58]
the most conservative estimate of anglo “collacteral damage” add up to 40m,
http://tinyurl.com/4rwr4q
http://tinyurl.com/22asx2
unlike the figures 77m, 29m from wiki [gimme a break], the cases of anglo atrocities were pretty well documented.
also, victims of japanese invasions and the failed glf experiment in china could hardly be compared to the industrial scale slaughter meted out to third world peasants by the anglos, no moral equivalence.
but here lies the greatest difference, mao n stalin are long gone now, whereas anglo’s carnage is still counting.
so there you are, you win hands down.
64. o | May 26th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
the article is not about uk colonial power but more uk arrogance,hyposcrisy and intentional amnesia
ie:attacking italys conquest of ethipoia for example
65. LB | May 26th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Denk, what a load of bollocks, ironically unsupported by the links you produce. You can not just lump ‘Anglos’ together anymore than you can lump in human rights abuses in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia under ‘Muslims’. Britain may be culpable (not responsible, there is a difference) for 10 million deaths since WWII, but that is countries like Russia (not a Wwstern country) or China have killed in the past century.
Mongols still lead the way in genocide I’m afraid, 40 million dead out of a world population of around 450 million compared to WWII with 72 million dead in a population of a couple of 2.3 billion. Yet we do not hear calls for Mongolia to pay reparations and bow its head in shame do we. Why? Because they aren’t Anglo. All this is fuelled by anti Anglo xenobphobia and envy rather than any real desire for justice.
66. Trainer | May 27th, 2009 at 12:40 am
The only power that can protect us against the Brits is Robert Dalton Gates and U.S. Army.
67. Tarmak | May 27th, 2009 at 12:45 am
As a personal note my bride was raped by a Germanic tribe.
68. truthseeker | May 27th, 2009 at 3:56 am
@ Azr@el – maybe if you pull your head out of your ass you might see how misguided you are. you say “The Sinhalese are jerks, much like the Fijians, they’ve been siting idly on their arses waiting for the return of the white man. The Tamils got off their bums and started to make a go of it, end result; the disgruntled Sinhalese want them to go bye-bye”. the sinhalese were lazy or idle. they just didnt want to do the bidding of some white man. the tamils on the otherhand were more than willing to crawl all over white people and do their bidding like the good colonial lapdogs they are – just look atg all the ex british colonies of fiji, mauritious, southafrica, the westindies. nice subserviant tamils taken to work in the plantations whether it be tea or sugar cane.
69. BTraven | May 27th, 2009 at 11:03 am
‘WAR NERD’ COMMENT AWARD
45
Oh the humanity! And the award for “Most ‘War Nerd’-like Disgustingly Pro-slaughter and Violence, 2009 (So Far) Award” … goes to LB – good job.
Britain – not so Great –
From the election of keep-’em laughing-while-implementing-reich-wing-policies Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson’ — the truck unfortunately missed – ‘We could have had Ken Livingstone back’ —
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/23/boris-cycling
To the rise of the British N@z1 Party. – http://www.freewebs.com/srs8ctd/Nick_Griffin_BNP.jpg
70. alibi | May 27th, 2009 at 11:38 am
The Nazis fought against equal nations which could and should defend themselves. The Brits slaughtered little locals who had no way to fight back. It’s like if you get a baseball bat and start bashing a kid over the head so he would stop wandering around smiling like an idiot and start doing something useful.
71. war-and- peace | May 28th, 2009 at 3:55 am
A hilarious yet a historically accurate article! Very nicely written… Thanks Gary. Keep them coming Please.
72. war-and- peace | May 28th, 2009 at 3:55 am
Ryunosuke, you said :
“You have again mistakenly claimed that all the Tamils in Sri Lanka were brought over by the British. The facts are that the actual Sri Lankan Tamils have ruled over Northern Sri Lanka for a long long time”
You need to improve your history. A very large number of even Northern tamils started migrating first under Dutch rule and then Brits accelerated it. Plantation tamils were the ones brought in to Hill Country to grow Coffee and the tea on the lands robbed from the natives. Northern tamils were brought in to plant Tobbaco and also to create a class of privileged local bureaucrats to help rule the natives who will always ‘rebel’ against Brits.
It is true there were south indian invasions in Norther parts of the country from time to time in the 2500 long recorded history of the island, and some invaders ruled those parts for even 30-40 years at times. However, Sinhala Kings eventually defeated all those invasions.
Portugese also conquered coastal areas for over 100 years before driven back and so did Dutch but that doesn’t make those areas their ancestral lands.
Get over it friend! it’s over. the great lie was shattered. Try to get your Tamil kingdom from TN if you so desire… Sri Lanka has no part in it.
73. Thameera | May 28th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Thanks so much, War Nerd, for speaking out the truth. The Brits would never accept the hell they have put these countries into, and as somebody has said, will walk away pretending they didn’t see this…
74. Thusitha | May 28th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Thanks for a great article. It is really good that you have exposed Jeremey Brown for who he is. Also red your previous articles on SL, which were great as well.
I think most of the SL community loves your columns. Please keep them coming.
75. Sinhalese | May 28th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Tamils were not ruled northern areas from long time…..
Ryunosuke may didn’t know Wikipedia is not always correct…… Mercy on him
‘plantation Tamils’ will be next burden if we didn’t manage the matter.
I don’t know about the history, GB had to vote on SL’s proposal @ UN. last week. But They didn’t………..
Why? coz even no longer GB but just England, with people who doesn’t wash their ass after shit, still need to emperor the world……… SHIT HEADS
76. RPG Cunthair | May 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Rick
Next time you give your dad a rusty trombone wipe his crap off your mouth and his cum off your hand with the paper your ancestors didn’t invent.
77. avd | May 28th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Viking wrote:
>Russians who can’t understand why every country on their borders hates and fears Russia
What Russians can’t understand is where people take this BS.
As if the 5-day war of Aug 2008 was not enough for idiots eating that Anglo-Saxon propaganda crap to learn that even Georgians don’t fear Russians. Georgia went to war with Russia thinking that they could win!
The fact is every country that borders Russia believes that Russians are weak dumb lazy drunken backward nation of slaves. You cannot fear such people. You rather despise them. That is what all the former Russian colonies do. And they just cannot understand how it happens that over and over again these dumb drunkards beat shit out of them the brave advanced freedom-loving pro-western proud hard-working people.
And they hate that. Not Russians as such. They hate that inexplicable twist of history of barbarians colonizing civilized (how they deem themselves) nations.
78. Kandy Man with long name | May 28th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Gary, old boy, I am a man from Kandy and the bad-ass dude with the long sword in the picture is General Kappitipolla. He was a noble man, alas naive in his belief in honor and decency. He was in charge of the Sinhala army under Pommie twits before he had enough and started the revolution. However he sent back the weapons the Brits had given the Sinhalese and went against the bastards using swords and spears. Bad mistake. Looking for honor and decency among Pommie bastards is like looking for Virgin Mary in a Texas whorehouse.
79. Kalumagic | May 28th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Excellent artical, one of the best I’ve ever read with accurate facts!
On Clarke: Yes, he was a true pommy keeping a army of Bum-boys…..But the Sinhalese were
zapped with the amnesia zapper….how true it is.
Well done mate…..
80. Happy Heathen | May 28th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
@rick,
Sri Lankan civilization had stone urinals and filter systems even before Jesus was born!!!!! Go to Anuradhapura and see it yourself and keep your condescending colonialism at home when you go there.
And you dare to call us Savages, when you guys where living under a rock – How Ironic!!!
– Happy Heathen
81. LB | May 28th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
The British Empire spread democracy and rule of law to a quarter of the worlds population. Yes, some of it was nasty, but today there are a billion Indians better off because of it. Do you think that country would amount to anything today if the British has not swept away the dozens of feudal states at constant war with each other, embarked upon mammoth infrastructure projects still vital to India today and given India the second language (English) it relies on to dominate IT support and coding industries? So a few million people may have died here and there, look at the benefits.
God Save the Queen, God Bless the Empire and God* protect the Commonwealth.
82. LB | May 28th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
By the by, I am a loyal subject of Her Britannic Majesty and would fight those scum in the BNP to my dying breath.
83. Malshan peiris | May 29th, 2009 at 2:12 am
1. Both dutch and Portugease were never able to gain atleast 50% of the land of ceylon
2.An english assault (without divide and rule plan) on kandy in 1803 was foiled by a massacre of all the english army. Infact, even english wasn’t able to capture kandy, they were “given” it by sinhalease with conditions including “Buddhism should be royal religion ++” as they thought english can rule better!
3. english started by giving minority tamils almost everything; after about 100 years tamils really started to think this is because they really are superior! When in 1948 brits left, the democratic government started giving jobs in random order (hence usually distributed among public by ratio of population)… as tamils started to loose their unfair share, they started a war
4. Sri lankan tamils origin from around 1600 AD in ceylon, the nothern kingdom (after 1200 AD) they talk about was a part of chola empire and later the vijayanagar empire… both are indian origin. But the people still were native sinhalease.
84. Malshan peiris | May 29th, 2009 at 2:14 am
read this
http://www.squidoo.com/tamil_tiger_terrorists_Srilanka
85. sinhalaya | May 29th, 2009 at 2:16 am
Brits got there asses rammed by the nazis in the right way — but wasnt enough!! article was written on may 22th may be because those days people talked more about Sri Lanka defeating terrorism. Yeah we rammed their asses straight, ~22000 terrorists dead. Army suffered ~6500 deaths and thousands of casualties. The first thing that the sinhalese go wrong was that other colonies are as peaceful as us! there were attacks from south asian countries then but they werent big armies and the existing small armies were able to defeat them. when portugese, brits came there wasnt a good enough army and the king was no better either. lol
it took us 30years to defeat terrorism because (we) are not taking brutality measures to were its due! even LTTE leaders were released because they “behaved better” sometimes. This time it wasnt like that the whole country fought, even tamils fought against LTTE(not with weapons but with their help for GOSL, not all though)
This time no LTTE leader got out alive, those were abroad are alive but if they come here for any reason its the end for them. Brits messed because they can but will not mess again, its better that even a few people like you get the right picture. Brutality should be defeated by brutality before peace!
-sinhalayaa
86. Plamen Petkov | May 29th, 2009 at 3:58 am
Where is the article about
the hatred by the natives
againts the
fading US empire?
87. Mahamaharaja | May 30th, 2009 at 4:48 am
Great article, thanks a lot for taking the time to research the brutal past of the British colonialists. Their Tamil terrorist proxy has been resoundly defeated, and now they act all santimonious. Ridiculous.
Jeremy Bowen loves sucking up to terrorists, so I’m not surprised by any of the crap he comes out. In any case he’s just some washed up idiot Tamil terrorist blood-money taker, so I don’t think anyone really takes him seriously except the Tamil supremacists living all over London.
A couple of historical points. 1) picture there is of Kappetipolle leader of the anti-British revolution of 1815-1818. Finally he was betrayed and was beheaded by the British invaders, along with his entire family and even his FOUR YEAR OLD son. The entire nobility was also executed. All civilians in the central province were executed numbering about 30,000 directly killed. All the ancient irrigation networks that ancient Sinhalese Kings had built were destroyed, creating malaria infested marshes that the Sri Lankans are still trying to clean up now; and that along with the destruction of crops, poisoning of wells, killing of livestock, cutting of fruit trees cost another 300,000 or more lives over the following century. There was also the spate of killing all males of every town and village which occured every so often to remind the Sinhalas who was in charge. These were targetted, brutal crimes against humanity.
2) Tamils never had any kingdom in Sri Lanka – northern based remnants of earlier vanquished invading armies of south Indian tamil despots were subjects of the Sinhalese King at Kandy. There had not been a single invasion of Tamils for the 600 years prior to the arrival of the portugese in 1505. At this time, Tamils betrayed the army that was sent to defeat them, by cornering and killing the leader of this task force, Bandara. This treachery led to the 500 years of occupation of the Sinhalese homeland – and Tamils gained a lot of power and privilege through this period. In fact in both Sri Lanka and the Tamil homeland of Tamil Nadu, the Tamils begged the British not to grant independence in the 1940s because without being able to lick the boots of foreign colonialists, they would revert to being the useless wretched insignificant bunch of inferiority complex laden idiots that they always were in the past.
3) The attack on Buddhism failed – except for a few treacherous leaders and a fanatical anti Sinhalese anti-Buddhist media and “civil society” Buddhism amongst the vat vast majority is going strong, with over 80% active adherents in the Sinhalese population. The only major group to convert were the Tamils (surprise surprise) since they got a lot of benefits from that such as admission to schools – something denied to Buddhists.
4)Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese Buddhists, have now wiped out Tamil terrorism and set a great example for the whole world and other small countries trying to fight against suicide bomb wearing coward thug invaders.
88. Russell | May 30th, 2009 at 4:49 am
Thanks for telling the truth.
Garry excellent werk 4 a fresno man like U.
Fact is U have done lots of reserch & done a good job.
UK shall be held responsible 4 the crimes they commited all over the world.
They shall either pay compensation or UK shall be divided into parts & handed over
to those nations who sufferd their terror.
Gary we are still missing a SEXY articly by U
about the SL forces + General Fonseka ( the best General in the world = results )+ SL
Defence sec, how they achieved the VICTORY against most feard Terras the LieTTE, with limited resources compared to lets say
UK armed frAces
89. denk | May 30th, 2009 at 8:53 am
65. LB
**. Britain may be culpable (not responsible, there is a difference) **
all this hair splitting wont do any good to the 1-2m victims of the 1965 genocide in indon,
“British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so they could take part in the terrible holocaust”
http://tinyurl.com/cvtp9n
this is just one example
culpable or responsible, you decide ?
**Mongols still lead the way in genocide I’m afraid, 40 million dead out of a world population of around 450 million compared to WWII with 72 million dead in a population of a couple of 2.3 billion. Yet we do not hear calls for Mongolia to pay reparations and bow its head in shame do we. Why? Because they aren’t Anglo. All this is fuelled by anti Anglo xenobphobia and envy rather than any real desire for justice.**
mongols did all that at a time when nobody talked about hr and all that jazz.
this is 21 century, the era of “hr” and “democrazy” .
why are anglos carnage still going on,there’s no moral equivalence old chap.
90. Dr Kasun Ubayasiri | May 30th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
For starters the ‘Kandyan man with the long name’ fought for the British and played a vital role in enabling the British capture of the last Sinhala kingdom, before fighting against the British. Have a look at the Kandyan convention, and in addition to Kappaettipola’s signature you will also see that many chieftains have signed in Tamil. This doesn’t mean they were Tamil in a contemporary sense of the meaning it just suggest the chieftains followed the lead of their Tamil speaking king. Yes the last king of ‘Sinhala’ kingdom in Kandy spoke ‘Tamil’ – a result of intermarriage between royal families of Sinhala speaking Kandy and Dravidian language speaking South India. This one of many examples that suggest the complexity of national identity even in early 1800’s. Yes Britain did divide and rule but the locals are not blameless, upcountry Sinhala chiefs said at the turn of the last century had has more in common with the Jaffna vellala gentry than the lowland Sinhala. That is just one instance of this type of mindset. It is stupid to try and understand historic disputes of ethnicity from contemporary points of view. It seems your ill-informed contemporary political position has clouded your narrative of history. Just a few more thoughts in a paper I wrote http://ejournalist.com.au/v5n2/ubayasiri2521.pdf, the story or the analysis is far from complete but we need to remember both contemporary Sinhala and Tamil political discussions of nationality are simply not historically accurate.
91. LB | May 31st, 2009 at 4:11 am
“mongols did all that at a time when nobody talked about hr and all that jazz.
this is 21 century, the era of “hr” and “democrazy” .
why are anglos carnage still going on,there’s no moral equivalence old chap.”
Bask in the idiocy people, bask in it.
92. madura | June 1st, 2009 at 12:35 am
@Dr Kasun Ubayasiri,
Helloo, time to wake up!! the sinhalayas did it again! true that mahavamsa isnt 100% correct sinhala origin is not from india there was civilisation here before the indians(vijaya) came and sinhala race is made up of 4 of those tribes the true natives of the land vijaya was the attacker, he killed the natives trying to get the land, it was an indian invasion. nothing more or less! The author has not claimed that he is quoting mahavamsa.
There was no bloody separate kingdom in the north. and there will not be, history has spoken itself.
The article is about the bloody brits and their invasion of sri lanka and the separatist tamils were funded by brits on purpose to take out the natives and now they failed big time. You can keep “quoting” honorable(my ass) velupillai prabakaran as much as you want but the ground situation isnt changed. and the article isnt clouded your brain is.
93. Anton Lucii | June 1st, 2009 at 9:37 am
I heard in the early 1800s the majority of U.S. population spoke German and there was a vote what language to choose as the official.
English of course won but with a narrow margin.
So here histories of US and India are a bit similiar: Brits enriched their inhabitants linguistically.
Btw Brecher was not a Jewish name back then, was still German and meant ‘The Disruptor’.
94. benj | June 1st, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Disappointing, War nerd.
I am now convinced that the “war nerd” is actually several people, such are the inconsistencies of his articles in regards to various people and themes.
And whoever wrote this article has a severe case of Liberal guilt syndrome.
95. Art Institute | June 1st, 2009 at 8:14 pm
The British fucked up a lot of places and peoples, even those beyond their direct reach. Just look at the fate of the numerous native Christian peoples of the Asia Minor. All effectively wiped out by Turks during WWI. Russians attempted several times to liberate those peoples from Turkish yoke during the 19th century. If it was not for constant British pressure, Russians would have actually liberated the ancient Armenian and Greek lands of Asia Minor several times. Russians had the the only army that could consistently fight well against the Turks in this part of the world. Russians kicked the Ottomans’ ass in 1829, 1855, and 1878, only to give back most of territorial gains after intense lobbying and bullying by the British. During WWI, Russians fought their way again deep into much of Turkish Armenia and the Greek city of Trabzond, but alas Russian empire then exploded from within and we all know what followed. But when the British reversed their policy and fought Turks themselves in Asia Minor during the WWI, they got their ass kicked so badly that to this day they don’t like to talk about it. In the end, Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks got royally fucked as a result.
96. Chris Von Doom | June 2nd, 2009 at 4:28 am
“why every country on their borders hates and fears Russia.”
Complete nonsense. Most countries bordering or near Russia are pro-Russian. Armenia, Belarus, all of Ukraine except the western part that dominates that country’s insane politics, Kazakhstan, etc. etc. etc. The only countries bordering Russia that aren’t pro-Russian are the Baltic States and Georgia. Actually, not even the Baltic States hate and fear Russia, given that lots of them ARE RUSSIANS, as in, half the population of Riga.
97. Simon Whelan | June 2nd, 2009 at 10:37 am
Although I think Gary Brecher is a world class anal aperture his positive qualities (i.e. : NOT politically correct, brutally honest, incisive, sometimes brilliant, extremely knowledgeable and often very, very funny) significantly outweigh his negative ones … He’s my favorite Fat Guy (er … ah … I meant that in a non sexual way …).If his mother was like Gerry Seinfeld’s mother she’d be telling all and sundry : “What’s not to like ?”
I
98. flangey | June 2nd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Well this article for a start…
There is no Brecher, there is only the exile writers, its obvious. So many inconsistencies in regards to various peoples and themes.
I’d also bet a 100 that this article was written by mark Ames.
99. Jacob | June 2nd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Actually, even Georgia is not an inherently anti-Russian country. It took an anti-Russian stance only after it perceived that Russia took the side of ethnic secessionists in Abkhazia and Ossetia in the 90s (sore losers always need to place the blame on someone for their own military defeat). The current President continued developing this theme further by kicking out Russian military bases first, and then making his country America’s client state.
100. CB | June 2nd, 2009 at 8:38 pm
“I’ve been following Gary’s commentaries for five or six years now. It’s interesting to note that of late his his tone with respect to the “colonial past” has changed a fair bit.
I can recall at least one article where he slammed an old professor for blaming all the problems of the third world on “colonialism”, a liberal pc rallying call, and not on the native tribes themselves and ancient hatreds.”
Whether it’s the nasty high-school-esque tribal mentality that dominates much of humanity, the brutality of British colonialists, or the war-making prowess of the French, Gary stands up for the truth as he sees it.
I see what you’re saying about there being a change. I think it’s external, though. War Nerd has before fought misconceptions by talking about how brutal and fascist colonial pre-WWII Britain was, but it was often tangential to some other historical point, often involving people with tribal conflicts the British were mucking with.
When the retro-active polishing of history reaches the level of the PM of Britain, I can understand why the War Nerd goes off on them as much as he would any liberal professor with a “noble savage” fetish.
101. Pizza de Oveja | June 3rd, 2009 at 6:46 am
I loved this post. It really captures my impresion about the anglo-saxons and their outright tendency to germanophobia and total distorsion of their history and others. In past years we have being suffering their books from public-funds-hungry anglo saxons that make alternate history about the spanish civil war, the II republic and the Spanish Empire. They write for powerfull media groups and many times they get paid to write what public institutions pay them to write using money shyponed from taxes. Great things like that the popular front was democratic or my favourite, that the spanish empire never really existed.
We yet saw another nazi the badguys movie to appear on cinemas, like if we really needed one more.
From Jewish studio owners back in the old days to arm-chair-limo-marxists today, Im really tired of watching the same thing over and over again, movies about how bad the nazi’s were extending that to anything rightwing. I would recomend reading a bit about the anglo-american terrorist bombing of europe(full of memos from people in the air forces like: “well ‘if it has to be total war’ we might as well make it as horrible as posible”), or the great pyre that the comunists turned eastern europe into (read Gotterdammerung 1945: German’s Last Stand in the East by Russ Schneider, hard to get but it is really a must read).
Would definetly like to see one movie, just one about that!..or the concentration camps that the brits had in the boers war, the “liberation” of cuba and the philiphines from the opresive spanish rule by the USA, the opium war, the “comerce interdiction” they did for centuries stealing Spain comerce many time without even the excuse of being at war (they even took the candle holders from churches the last time they visited cadiz), the fact that we often found british in otoman galleys in the mediterranean, the way they financed whoever country would fight against france and/or spain to maintain the “balance of power”…and a big-big-big etc…A movie about Cecil Rhodes comes to mind.
But I guess as long as those guys pay for movies we’ll continue seeing pirates of the caribean or any other pirate movies, in which the pirates are robin hoods and sexy ex-underwear models, the spanish are either aristocrat ruthless or demi-monkeys (like in Ryan books which doesnt at all try to hide the racial prejudice characteristic of them), and the east india company is run by a ruthless bad guy that acted unilateraly and that in the end gets what he deserved(that not being made the top dog in India and knighood).
I remember Gary’s glorious words that apply: “the victors only look barbaric to the guys they defeat while they see them slaughtering their village”.
Although I aknoledge the extra-huge power of propaganda and history-fiction books that pass as history books, I think that it really deserves a study how they did manage to hide the truth that they were most of the times the bad guys (to use a retard term)even to the people they stole from and massacre.
Goebels is really an aprendice compared with these guys.
102. Big Orange | June 4th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
If we Brits have it easy, how come English people are disproportionately the villains in the majority of fiction? If not English then New English or of course German.
And it is piss easy to demonize the Nazis as supervillains if they systematically murdered 11 million at the stroke of a pen, while having skulls/eagles/lightning bolts/swastikas/crosses/bars/targets on their grey/black uniforms with high caps or hooded helmets and black leather boots with black leather gloves. It makes a lasting impression.
And if Britain didn’t fuck up Sri Lanka, it would’ve been another set of imperial bad guys operating out of either India, China, Korea, or Japan. And not to exonorate the British/Austrialins of mistreating indiginous Australians, I doubt they would be around now if East Asians landed on their shores.
103. Well Duh! | June 4th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
This article brilliantly points out that the probelm with the British isn’t merely that the Brits did bad stuff in the past, but that they continue to do so TODAY! Same exact tactics. Under the guise of “Democracy” the Brits promote blatant racism. It’s interesting how in every country where “Democracy” enters, riots and cessions take place. When the Soviet Union fell and became “Democratic” – the USSR split into several countries, and then countries within countries, be it Transnistria within Moldova or South Ossetia within Georgia. Exact same case with Yugoslavia. Attention Brits and Anglos: please take your fucking “Democracy” and shove it up your ass. And keep shoving it till it hurts.
Let’s take a look at the Troubled Spots. Well there’s Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Al Qaeda came from the Taliban that was CIA equipped and Pakistan was part of British India. Trouble in the Middle East over the Balfour Declaration, yup that’s the one with Israel and Pakistan – want to guess who made that one? The Brits. “But the Jews had to go somewhere!” True. But how hard is it to draw straight lines? Take a look at how the Brits divided up the area – it was done in a manner to provoke warfare.
Basically what the Brits used to do, and what the Neocons are doing, is you make two tribes fight and then ridicule the winning tribe, (unless it’s the tribe you like) for “Barbarism” – as in “those poor, poor Albanians in Kosovo, getting massacred by the Serbs, let’s use Uranium and bomb Serbia into submission!”
Here’s an example: “Damn you Russians! I mean the Georgians fired at you, and you fired back! Bastards!” That’s pretty much the line of all the articles written on the Ossetian War. Also, most of them say “Russia broke International Law” – without pointing which part Russia broke. It’s really convient to charge someone of a crime, without saying what the crime is! Snap, Russia’s busted!
Or take Kosovo. You really think the Brits are dumb enough to realize that it wouldn’t set a precedence? Of course they did, but they wanted the dumb Russians to take the fall. Too bad the Russians turned out to be not so dumb, and actually won the war, scoring a Total Victory.
Another case of “Democracy” – the Ukraine vs. Belarus. Both had an equal standard of living when the USSR fell, Ukraine’s was slightly higher. So “Democracy” was introduced in Ukraine, but not in Belarus. Standard of living in Ukraine went down, but the standard of living in Belarus went up. And that’s according to Western Data. Now Ukraine the “Democracy” has more whores per capita then the rest of the World, cause young women cannot find jobs and they gotta eat.
And that’s why Putin is hated. He kicked “Democracy” out of Russia, stabilized the country, improved the lives of citizens, (Russians love Putin cause he gave them the highest living standard they’ve ever had) and invested in infrastructure and culture of Russia. Gorbachev and Yeltsin each comitted at least twice as much atrocities as Putin. But they wrecked the country, turning it into subsistent slave camp, enabling certain people to get rich, so they’re loved.
It’s interesting how in every single place that “Democracy” enters, racial hatreds and wars erupt. So to end my post: LB and the rest of Anglos, take your “Democracy” and shove it, and keep on shoving it till it hurts and then shove it some more.
104. Russell | June 5th, 2009 at 11:05 am
The fact is the brits are the
1.The worst offenders of human rights in our recent history
2. They are the only ones who got away 4 the moment without paying the DUE
3. The Nazis compared to Brits & the queen +
co are rather like ” mis behaved bunch of kids, in a summer school, despite the crimes they commited
4. British media mafia has so far manage to
hide the truth & keep on a low profile
5. Brits are 1st ever country OFFICIAL DRUG traffickers in the world ( selling Opium to chinese, hense “opium war”
5. Brits are the inventers of the Concentration camps & use it extensivly in South africa & in other countries they went to “develop”.
6. Brits are only suckers to go to africa & get racist bcuse there are lots of negros!!!
Its like me going 2 UK & wonder why so many English or pail fuckers in UK !!!!
7. And the Millband & co has the balls to
mass with SL about HR,while selling their ” rubbish of Arms & the shit
LAND ROVERS otherweise no man with a brain
would buy.
8. Got beaten ” hands down” in Irak & Afgan
and running like hell, saying ” we are in over watch positioN”
9. GB Forigen policy:Say yes 2 any thing what US says
10. Last but not least insted of Great Britain , the lot has become a GREAT JOKE.
But its time 2 pay your crimes or shut the fuck up talking NONSENSE ….. U suckers
105. Big Orange | June 5th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
This form of psuedo-Democracy being pushed by Britain and America in recent decades throughout the Second and Third Worlds is really a thin cover for the spread of toxic Neoliberalism (aka Turbo Capitalism) a form of anarchic feudal extortion that has now backfired spectacularily and economically broke the backs of Britain and America as well.
Democracy is not bad in of itself, but it has been subverted by decidely undemocratic Western billionaires who’ve turned China and India into giant sweatshops while robbing their fellow Westerners blind.
106. Chris | June 6th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Amen Big Orange.
One more thing…
Has there not always been shit – everywhere? Fuck Gary, smoke some hash; crack one off…
107. Jon | June 9th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Interesting that you believe imperialism was a well thought out thing – it wasn’t. In fact, the preferred model by far was to exploit a country for it’s resources without having to use any of our resources to get them – the real reason we colonised many places was to keep up with the other colonial powers economically, and we just turned out to be “better” at it than the rest.
I don’t know why you think we don’t know about the injustices done by our country – we do.
108. Jon | June 9th, 2009 at 7:26 am
“Well Duh! | June 4th, 2009 at 11:44 pm” –
you realise of course that the British did NOT want to partition india – it was in-fighting inside india itself that caused that to happen
109. G. Tingey | June 10th, 2009 at 2:23 am
WHat a collection of spiteful and end-of-the 19th Century jealous whining.
Also untrue.
First and only example I can be bothered with:
the Brits were so terrified they tried to give Napoleon all their colonies except Sri Lanka and Trinidad.
Don’t believe you.
Again.
110. Nacha | June 10th, 2009 at 4:57 am
Very true.
About the “genocide” everybody is so worried about-Open your eyes and look; Tamils live among Sinhalese and Muslims in the rest of the country, sometimes openly supporting the LTTE. When they couldn’t live in the North because LTTE kidnaped children and youth for their baby brigade, Tamils ran away to south-to live among the Sinhalese.
On the other hand, LTTE terrorists killed Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils who went against them. Villages of Sinhalese were killed. Now that’s what I call genocide; ethnic cleansing.
Living in a rich western country is the dream of many Asians, specially those who have lived under imperialists. That’s why many Tamils used this civil war as an excuse and got citizenship in western countries. Not because they couldn’t live here. If they really cared for their race and believed the northern part of the island was rightly theirs, they should have remained back in Sri Lanka, joined LTTE and fought. Now they are worried that they may be sent back from their luxury lives.
People like to believe that minority suffers under majority. It doesn’t happen always. Buddhists have been peaceful and even more than that, lazy. They knew better than illtreating other races. The proof is right here-Tamils and Muslims are among the richest people in the South, in Colombo.
111. Ilona | June 10th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Plain and simple: classic stuff!
We all have been missing you!
BTW. If you ever decide to write another book this very subject could be THE one!
Thanks.
112. Ilona | June 10th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Lemme articulalate a bit more more specifically what I ment by THE subject.
The britts. And their little hobbies here and there and …ing everywhere around the globe.
That could THE subject.
113. G. Tingey | June 10th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
I repeat, this is spiteful and wrong whining by a very innaccurate reporter …..
Let’s investigate US colonialism shall we?
And its cruel and exploitative model.
I don’t mean straightforward “owning” as in Panama, or the Philippines, where some semblance of a rule of law usually obtained, but those colonies where the US guvmint backed up corrupt and cruel companies.
Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicuragua, Costa Rica, plus large swathes of S. America.
AND, it is STILL happening, as recently in Bhopal, or right now in Peru (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8081907.stm)
Oh, and how many times has the US interfered in and corrupted Cuba? Which makes one realise just how Fidel, dictator and tyrant that he is, had some large measure of support from a population thoroughly distressed by decades of US-backed oppression – does no-one remember just how nasty the Batista regime was, really?
There, and all across Central America, criminal hit-squads were sent in to torture and kill and oppress any who dared to resist, with no appeal to laws.
I call hypocrite upon the author.
114. aleke | June 11th, 2009 at 4:16 am
@G. Tingey
Awwwwww, did someone strike a nerve? The Brits were the most murderous bunch of scum on earth and you know it. The Americans are just trying to (half-assedly) follow their model. Hell, they even use the same economic weapons the Brits did in their heyday, except now they’re more formal institutions and have catchy names (WTO, World Bank, IMF). Or does this all hurt too much? Hurt enough to make you misuse a simple word like “hypocrite”. Here here, have a nice little movie to dry those tears! http://www.amazon.com/Notting-Hill-Collectors-Hugh-Grant/dp/B000023VTP/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1244722466&sr=8-6
115. slaqdog | June 13th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I think Gary you are a fresno fool if you think that the brits believe their own bullshit, well some do but most simply don’t care ; the brits know full well how the empire was won and kept:the tactic they are using is the classic magicians trick of “look over there!”.With the UK mired in recession its good to point at other people and point out their bad habits; its a classic distraction-“you think we are bad-look at those guys!”
This tactic to whip up indignation over someone else’s wrong doing worked very well in the US; while the banks were busy stealing everyones money the media was quite happy to chorus “look over there its osama bin laden” (he has simply gotta still be on the cia payroll) while selling ridiculously overpriced houses and shares.
The hypocracy of the brits? Yes worth pointing out ALL empires do the same “this is gonna hurt but we are doing it for your own good” The US are peddling the same old line in Iraq.
“bullshit you can believe in” to misquote the man in the white house.
I also love the fact that the times of london still has this ability to make nerds splutter indignantly into their cheerios-bullshit you can believe in indeed.
116. Expat in BY | June 13th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Regarding comment…
103. Well Duh!
Sorry I didn’t read your comment sooner. I’m very familiar with both the standard of living in both Ukraine and Belarus, and I really have to correct you – Belarus’ standard of living, at least in this day and age, sucks compared to Ukraine’s.
Granted, the living is more peaceful in Belarus than in Ukraine (whenever someone asks me how I like living here, that is the polite answer I give them). I wouldn’t expect to be robbed here as I was in Kiev. But consumer goods are vastly better in Kiev than in Minsk. Entertainment options are more numerous (though that could be a function of population: 2 million in Minsk vs. 3 million in Kiev). And healthcare is at least trying to go post-Soviet south of the border; I fear ever having to use the local hospital here in Belarus, Belgostrakh coverage or not.
The comparison between the number of whores from Ukraine and from Belarus I have no reliable statistics on. Granted Ukraine has a greater reputation for providing “paid companionship” but they also have five times the amount of population. Despite Belarus being a police state, it still surprises me when leaving Minsk to see the eye-candy hitchhikers searching for “a ride”; they seem to vanish about 30 minutes out of the city.
So as to the argument that democracy messes up a standard of living based on the results of Belarus and Ukraine, I’d say that there is a gross problem with your “Western Data”. Also you ignore the fact that Ukraine will continue to get Western attention and investors (whenever it is the economy will recover) in part because of the open non-visa regime it has with the EU and western countries (most of this openness and resulting Western support is post-Kuchma/Orange Revolution). Belarus might get the same, but only if it follows the EU’s standards for an “open” society. And the way Lukashenko has been playing this in the press, it’s hard to say whether he will allow that to happen, ever (Russian milk boycott or not).
As with any of the former Soviet states, in both Ukraine and Belarus it’s not really about whether you are pro-Moscow or pro-West. It’s about keeping your turf intact. That’s the way it is in Georgia, in Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, or any of the whole lot.
That Russia (more specifically Putin) hasn’t learned to play with this any better than it has shows it to be a rank amateur compared to the British in India about 150 years ago. But maybe I’m being unfair – Russia has only had sober leadership for the past nine years. What was the length of time between the Battle of Plessy and the advent of the British Raj?
117. Athammaus | June 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 am
“History’s so much simpler, more elegant and exciting if premises like “humans are scum” sit right under the surface. ”
Like much of H. P. Lovecraft’s writing
118. MD | June 29th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
America should never forget that in a fight they should always have a Brit or Colonial on their side – especially Brits who are just tough, for them a good night out is 10 pints, a curry and a fight – not necessarily in that order!
119. Random Englander | September 1st, 2009 at 5:56 am
Who says the English don’t know about our murderous past? Who says we go around acting all high and mighty? I’ve always found England to be very apologetic about our past. So you found one asshole in denial who says otherwise, big deal. Most are aware of what we did. If we criticize America now, that makes sense, as you are going around killing people (though hopefully with a president swap that will change).
120. CrazySetting | September 3rd, 2009 at 2:11 am
Random Englander | September 1st, 2009 at 5:56 am
The people who suffered and still suffer do.
Hmz, like lecturing Sri Lanka? Milliband and Brown trying to save your Tamil terrorist pets? (He flew in personally to have the whole leadership flown to safety). After all Tamils have been your loyal hit force against those nasty Buddhists who refuse to bow to the Queen.
Their terrorist networks and money for their war campaign against the Sinhalese comes right out of Her Majesties Government (and subsidiaries e.g. Canada, Australia etc). Every suicide bomb, train bomb, bus bomb, destruction of Buddhist temples and people since the 70s has been planned and materials provided for by Tamils given shelter in Britain.
Continuing the policy of oppression mentioned in this article, while pretending to be “Mr. Neutral”!!
When the Sinhalese defend themselves from the violence you are perpetrating against them you lecture them on Human Rights!
Then why do you lecture Sri Lanka still?
Hypocrisy again! How can you citizen them when you tag along with them ever they go? Trying to “re-live” the good ‘ole days of ruining er “running” the world and have every one bow at your feet again? Must feel good.
121. CrazySetting | September 3rd, 2009 at 2:14 am
119. Random Englander | September 1st, 2009 at 5:56 am
“Who says the English don’t know about our murderous past? ”
The people who suffered and still suffer do.
“Who says we go around acting all high and mighty? ”
Hmz, like lecturing Sri Lanka? Milliband and Brown trying to save your Tamil terrorist pets? (He flew in personally to have the whole leadership flown to safety). After all Tamils have been your loyal hit force against those nasty Buddhists who refuse to bow to the Queen.
Their terrorist networks and money for their war campaign against the Sinhalese comes right out of Her Majesties Government (and subsidiaries e.g. Canada, Australia etc). Every suicide bomb, train bomb, bus bomb, destruction of Buddhist temples and people since the 70s has been planned and materials provided for by Tamils given shelter in Britain.
Continuing the policy of oppression mentioned in this article, while pretending to be “Mr. Neutral”!!
When the Sinhalese defend themselves from the violence you are perpetrating against them you lecture them on Human Rights!
“I’ve always found England to be very apologetic about our past. So you found one asshole in denial who says otherwise, big deal. Most are aware of what we did.”
Then why do you lecture Sri Lanka still?
“If we criticize America now, that makes sense, as you are going around killing people (though hopefully with a president swap that will change).
”
Hypocrisy again! How can you citizen them when you tag along with them ever they go? Trying to “re-live” the good ‘ole days of ruining er “running” the world and have every one bow at your feet again? Must feel good.
122. Ram2009 | October 11th, 2009 at 12:12 am
You are no doubt referring to Jeremy Page, who writes articles from somewhere in SE Asia after having been ejected unceremoniously from the airport. The British behaviour in Kandy from 1815 – 1818 is not something that is taught to the British kids. Jeremy and some politicians in Britain are of the same mindset as the 1815 crowd, and would be well advised to read about that bit of history.
123. p6867 | December 12th, 2009 at 9:56 am
researching this kind of topic is very hard, as the brits made a very serious effort to wipe it all out.
124. Eren | January 24th, 2010 at 11:04 am
OK Rick, here we go. Brace yourself, I’m about to see if your thickly armoured skull can be penetrated.
1. Paper was invented by the Chinese. Not by any Western civilization. Way to embarass yourself there.
2. You say I make you sick. I’m assuming by this you mean that all non-westerners are so uncivilized and savage that they nausiate the highly intellectual, civilized beings that all undoubtedly Westerners are. Well, let me tell you something: you Westerners LITERALLY make people from other civilizations sick. Did you even read the above article? As Brecher said, one method you Westerners used to destroy a population was to infect their population with smallpox. Just ask the Aztecs. So if you don’t like being sick, well tough luck bitch. Once again, you’ve managed to embarass yourself completely with your moronic arrogance.
3. You make insults such as ‘take a bath and reduce infant mortality’ as well as other idiotic statements in an attempt to insult me by referring to the fact that non-western civilizations are generally third-world. Well let me tell you something. Firstly, baths didn’t actually originate from any Western civilization. So if you hate non-westerners so much you might as well stop bathing (once again your stupid insult has backfired on you). Secondly, the reason non-Western countries are so technologically and socially retarded is because YOU UNCIVILIZED BARBARIANS DELIBERATELY DESTROYED THEIR SOCIETIES. DID YOU EVEN READ THE ABOVE ARTICLE? HOW IRONIC THAT YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF AND YOUR PEOPLE THE EPITOMY OF CIVILIZATION WHEN YOU EVIDENTLY DON’T EVEN POSSESS THE ATTENTION SPAN TO READ THE ARTICLE YOU ARE COMMENTING ON.
My mind is overwhelmed by the irony of the fact that even as you try to assert your opinion that Western civilization is above other human civilizations, you consistently display your lack of basic intelligence, which is the greatest form of civilization itself. I would continue responding bit by bit to everything else you have said to me, but there is no need to. All I have left to say is this.
Thank you for proving my point.
125. Nell | February 5th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
The 1848 “rebellion” (how cute) was worse. The British order was “kill every male above the age of 8”.
200,000 people were killed, taking into account the population at the time it was a genocide. The educated and leadership class of the Senkadagala Sinhalese (“Kandy” as the British called it) was lost. A generation was wiped out. The effects of which are felt to this day.
Family names which existed for 2,000 years are now gone.
To add insult the British used imported Tamils as the military force to carry this massacre out. And late millions more loyal, subservient, effeminate Tamils (as the British described them) were imported into “dilute up” the population to make the demographics more favourable in order to prevent future challenges to British control (this is how the British maintained “peace”). The surviving Sinhalese kicked out of their ancestral lands were thrown into poverty with the Tamils and British sitting on it.
It is why the Eastern province of Sri Lanka for example forms part of the “Tamil majority area/Tamil homOland” as they claim even though this gigantic province is not even populated.
You will find the Tamil population concentrated in and around Trinco and in Baticola town. The inner areas of the province, aka the whole thing is EMPTY of Tamils.
The Tamils in East are a batch who were “rewarded” for their services to the British with settlement in the East, its why they are so concentrated in one spot like someone dumped them there, the inhabitation pattern is so unnatural, especially for a squabbling lot claiming they have been in said area for 2,000 years (a load of balderdash).
I’m a Moor and IMO Sinhalese get a lot of stick for nothing. You should see the way Tamils are treated in Malaysia or India. Malays and North Indians do not tolerate any political dissent from Tamils especially. They banned Tamil political parties that advocated any form of civil disobedience and sedition (i.e. in the 50s and 60s that meant ALL of them), let alone an armed struggle as in the case of Sri Lanka where they were allowed to run amok under the tag of “democracy”, “dissent” and look what happened, AND still these Tamil separatists parties are allowed to advocate their racist belly aching nonsense right at this moment. Only place where a bunch of tarts calling death on the majority community have such ridiculous levels of immunity in the name of “democracy”. Imagine a minority political party calling all white people in Canada/US/UK to “submit” to them being given entry to Parliament and access to international forums and other perks paid for by the same Government and people they want crushed? Would that be allowed under “democracy”?
126. CrazySetting2.0 | February 5th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Why does the West, espiecally EU back Tamilia? Its history history: Tamils were imported in to Sri Lanka by Europeans as indentured labourers, a military force to subjugate Sinhalese with and a tool to alter demographics to dilute up the then hostile anti-Western Sinhala population with its own proud civilisation, values and culture that was far purer with pro-Western Tamil lackeys so governing Sri Lanka would be easier. Lest we forget the slaughters and conversions of Sinhala Buddhists since 1505. The worst being in 1818 and 1848 by the “holiest” of Human Rights crusaders: the British. Today under the guise of human rights they are doing what they did since 1815, using Tamils to fight and crush Sinhala Buddhists to ensure their dominance and economic and geopolitical interests. The bulk of the Tamils today in the Jaffna Peninsula (Yapnapura) were brought in by the Dutch to cultivate Tobacco. Tamils in the East were originally settled there by the British as a “reward” for killing Sinhalese in 1818 and 1848 hence why the gigantic Eastern province (made so when the British drew it on the map to punish Sinhalas and the Senkadagala Kingdom) has a Tamil “majority” which is amazingly enough concentrated in Baticalo town, not spread out. The bulk of Tamils in the Wanni jungle are in fact Tamils from the plantations moved their by the Norwegian NGO “Redd Barna” back in the 1960s to subvert the Sirimavo-Shastri Pact back originally designed to send Tamils in the central province back to their homeland of Tamil Nadu in India. Instead Norway intervened (no surprise there) gave them lunch packets to last 2 days, hired a train and sent them into the jungles of the Wanni in the middle of the night. Funnily enough they then became part of the so called “Sri Lankan Tamils” who we have just spent the last 30 years fighting, when not only are they NOT unique to Sri Lanka, but were treated like dirt by the racist chauvinistic Jaffna Tamils. Same Jaffna Tamils who are to this day drunk on power, racism and supremacy their European masters had inoculated them with against Sinhala Buddhist people that they want to return to the British apartheid system of governance where Tamils were favoured, privileged and buttressed ahead of non-Tamils for simply being Tamil. The idea of being on an equal platform to people they viewed as inferior, as has been the case since 1948, is something they find hard to stomach. It is the loss of these privileges and power that Jaffna Tamils called “discrimination” and started a war against Sinhalese with (dragging in the other relatively peaceful Tamils communities who they themselves systemically oppressed and discriminated on class, caste and language and then excused their behaviour to fellow Tamils by blaming the Sinhala boogie man as always). The last 30 years of Tamil induced brutal violence, and 60 years of Tamil induced political agitation and uncertainty were all in fact a manifestation of Tamil greed, hunger for power, desire for apartheid and suppression of non-Tamils human rights.
127. Simon_Jester | May 26th, 2010 at 7:42 am
The only point I disagree with here is the claim that the British were actually worse about these things than the Nazis were.
That’s not meant to detract from the horrors of what the *British* did, though. The point is that the Nazis started doing, or trying to do, all the same things the British did.
For example, we know the Brits used foreign troops from one country to crush opposition to their rule in another. The British did this *all the time,* as Mr. Brecher explains with the example of the Malays in Sri Lanka. As he puts it: “Left in peace, Malays could be trouble–a proud, warlike people. So by sending them to die in Sri Lanka, you’re diverting all that young, angry Malay blood away from SE Asia and using it to bleed Kandy (bleed Kandy–I like that!). Two birds, one bloodsoaked stone.”
Then he goes on: “You see why I get impatient with you gullible suckers yammering about the fucking Nazis? The Nazis were retards… compared to the Brits, the scariest motherfuckers ever to butt-fuck the planet.”
And yet the Nazis did the same damn thing. For example, they raised units of non-German foreigners, put them in the SS, and sent them off to fight the Russians. After making their ally Italy dependent on them for supplies and military advisors, they used Italian troops to occupy much of Eastern Europe, freeing up Germans for the front. Then they used Eastern European troops to *reinforce* the Germans on the front.
The Nazis used large numbers of Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian troops as dependent subject-allies against their main enemies, and small numbers of troops drawn from other conquered populations in the same way.
The only reason the Nazis didn’t become famous for doing this kind of thing is that they lost so quickly, because they picked a fight with about three large countries at once, any one of which had enough firepower to hold them off or defeat them.
-Another example: scorched earth tactics. Mr. Brecher describes the “Wasteland Policy” the British used against the Sinhalese: “Brit-led troops “draining the sea” the Sinhala irregulars swam in by burning every hut, every field, and killing every animal in every village they suspected of harboring “rebels.””
He goes on: “But they [the British] did it smart, not like the idiot boastful Nazis y’all love to obsess on. I bet every one on the planet can name the Nazi death camps, but I’d be surprised if more than, say, a half dozen people outside Sri Lanka can name the policy the Brits used to destroy the Sinhala for good.”
Thing is, the death camps were only half the system the Nazis had in mind for destroying the peoples they wanted out of the way. And the flashy, high-profile half at that. The other half was… the Wasteland Policy, pretty much. Their postwar plan was to apply a wasteland policy over *all of Russia,* destroying the Russians as thoroughly as the Australian Aborigines (victims of the British who got it even worse than the Sinhalese did; at least the Sinhalese eventually got their country back to them after the Brits were done crapping all over it).
But they never got to implement that policy either, because they lost the war. Why did they lose the war? Because they picked a fight with three big countries at once, any one of which could probably have held them off, and any two of which could have flattened them.
That was their mistake, when it came to playing at imperialism. They were every bit as ruthless as the established masters of ruthlessness, the British. They may even have been a tiny hair worse; they didn’t crush their victims more thoroughly in the time they had, but they damn sure got a start on doing it faster, and made a bigger dent in the first few years than the British did in most peoples *they* oppressed.
What the Nazis failed at wasn’t lack of ruthlessness; there was no lack of that in their colonial policies. What they failed at was remembering not to bite off more than they could chew.
128. Ruwan Pathirana | June 28th, 2010 at 8:09 am
Do not know how things goes now. But we know that those days British were murders, black hearts. they threw sinhala, tamil babies to sky and shot them. British have that kind of black history. Not everyone and not many. There were good people.
Past is gone. No more angriness. But please leave us alone.
129. TrangleC | January 11th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
I always get angry when I see British comedians like Rowan Atkinson making jokes about how hell is for Germans and stuff like that.
130. TrangleC | January 11th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
@ Simon_Jester:
I think you are missing the point here. The point is not that Nazis haven’t been bad, the point is that they haven’t been the only ones who were bad, but are pretty much the only ones who get scolded for what they did.
And the British are certainly not the least and last when it comes to pointing fingers and throwing the first stone at the Germans, are they?
Everybody knows what the Germans did, everybody learns about it in school, thousands and thousands of books have been written about it, Germans are still the number one villain of choice in every kind of fiction.
Nobody remembers or gives a shit about what the Brits did though.
How many articles like this one can you find in the internet?
Not many.
And then you come along and think it is a good idea to write a long comment, once more trying to hide British crimes behind Nazi crimes? In the comment section to the ONE article that makes the point that it is fucked up to always talk about Nazi crimes and totally forgetting and ignoring the crimes of others?
131. Carl | February 18th, 2011 at 4:15 am
Wow, I’m quite impressed by all this. Take standard historical practice, apply it to a civilization that is laden with liberal guilt (that’s what we get for being the best) and then shout loudly about it so people overlook the million dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, thank’s to the US.
In the past, what do you think happened when a city fell to its attackers? The men were killed, and the women and children enslaved. Everywhere, assuming the entire population wasn’t just butchered out of hand.
Before ‘human rights’ existed, and they’ve only existed since WWII, this was just standard practice. The people in the city knew it. The people besieging the city knew it.
You can bleat on about how tragic it all was for the natives, but what the good fuck do you think the natives were doing to each other before the British arrived? You think they were giving each other flowers and hugs?
No, because it was standard practice to kill the men and enslave the women, guess what, that’s what they did too. Are you going to criticise the Zulus for doing it? Are you going to criticise the Indians for the Kalinga Wars? No? Why not? They did exactly what the British did and they did it on their own.
The only things that set British civilzation apart from anyone else are these points:
1. We did it bigger and better than everyone else, with less manpower. You suck.
2. Abolitionism. That’s right, fuckers, we paid the natives to build railroads and hospitals. Unlike everyone else, who used slaves. Good job, moralisers!
3. We understood that while assembling a pillar of skulls may make a strong point, its rarely pertinent in the long run. Unlike just about every Eastern civilization in history.
4. In 1940, we stood alone against the Nazis while the rest of you scratched your arses and thought “perhaps its best to learn German”. So suck it.
132. TrangleC | March 23rd, 2011 at 10:43 am
@ Carl:
I think you are missing the point. The point is that a big part of this world – including Great Britain – has come to the conclusion that doing such things is very, very bad. Others have been punished for doing it. Was that wrong in your opinion?
This article is about hypocrisy, not about what was usual and normal in war for the last ten thousand years.
When you condemn one people for what “they” have done you can not just ignore if your own people have done compareable things.
And railroads and hospitals are a pretty shitty deal in exchange for being the victim of a genocide. According to your logic the Jews would have to be pretty grateful to the Nazis because they got even more out of the Holocaust in the end than just a few railroads and hospitals.
133. Vis8 | April 18th, 2012 at 5:55 pm
Thank you, Mr Brecher! To add a footnote to your article, British (and US, Canada, Australian) members of the parliaments have effectively succumbed to the lure of ‘campaign donations’ (aka terror money) and promised votes of the Tamil expatriates. These expatriates who are living in numbers, as ‘refugees’ are enjoying the greener pastures of what the west has to offer, and are very worried that they will be deported to a now peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka has been caught between this convenient-pairing of the expat Tamils and western politicos’ looking for easy money and votes.
Sri Lanka needs some honest, righteous persons from the west, to see the reality as it is, and to help them.
Restructuring after thirty-years of insane terrorism is difficult enough…. but Sri Lanka has achieved the resettlement of at least 95% of the estimated 350,000 civilians displaced due to terror.
134. neil de silva | April 18th, 2012 at 7:14 pm
Vampire Victoria’s children – the blood suckers plunderers, exploiters – the Satan’s progeny. Simple explanation. Paedophiles, mass murderers, serial killers, arsonists, sex maniacs, family drug and alcoholism and family sex, list goes on and on and the Gold medal goes to …. Anglo Saxons. Most commentators seem to be very authoritative about what happened in Sri Lanka about Tamil distorted history – thanks to their friend th WASP. Read ‘Revolt in The Temple’ by Wijewardenas – Lake House Group to have an insite into what really happened in Sri Lanka under the British Yoke. Very little has been written on this topic for obviuos reasons. We who lived there exactly know what happened and unlike others like the Secretary of State without a Penis, we don’t go by Anglo Saxon Propaganda Machine which vomits utter crap, to their advantage, as usual. Not a single younger generation of Anglo will ever admit to the attrocities committed by their elders – this Satanic Race!!!!. Both Tamils and Anglos have few things in common. Talks a lot, lie to get what ever they want, and both intelligent but wisdom at the rear end.
135. Leela | April 18th, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Ryunosuke: You referred to Tamils that planted tea as recent imegrants meaning others were home grown.
You are mistaken for I shall give you just one example. the economic Times of India mentioned of an anecdote of a 77-year-old woman named Janaki Amma who lives in a lower middle class residence about 20 km from Kollam, Kerala. Reminiscing her childhood she is said to have said to Economic Times reporter that her maternal uncle Velupillai is the father of LTTE leader Pirapakaran. And it was Pirapakaran’s grandfather who went to Ceylon during the last century to earn a living.
Do you want me to write about all those Tamils brought to Ceylon by the Dutch and the British from Keral’s corremander coast to til our soil to grow tobaco for them.
Leela
136. neil de silva | April 19th, 2012 at 12:56 am
You can say bad things about Chinese, Russians, Turks, Irish, Koreans, Japanese, Arabs etc. etc. but the moment you say bad things about ENGLISH, well that can’t be right. the writer must be mad!!!! Anglos are very decent, good people. They look after pussy races like Tamils who lick their arses (Sinhalese never did except for some traitors!)- American vulture got into Iraq, Lybia and grabbed their oil (Pentagons official position) now targeting Iranian oil – cripple the country and move in – in the name of freedom, democracy – grab Hambantota harbour in Sri Lanka with the help of Sakkiliyas (Tamils) Go establish the Eelam in Tamil Nadu!!!in India – that is the Homeland for Tamils 60 million bloody Tamil macaroons living there – you demand 2/3rds of SL coastal area for less than 4% of poplulation of Tamils!
Bloody hell! Go to hell!
137. Nelson | April 27th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Hats off to you Sir ! You hit the nail on the head [ with a sledge hammer ].
Thank you for the accurate account and analysis of history of this beautiful Island.
” History is also the worst enemy of those who are selfish and greedy. History exposes their deception, fraud and conspiracy.”
Nelsonlanka
Website : http://lankavisions.weebly.com
Blog : http://discover-srilanka.blogspot.com
138. bob | June 18th, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Dolan/brecher- Back to work…The red coats are coming!!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/06/how_to_kill_a_rational_peasant.html
139. Home office lk | July 28th, 2012 at 4:14 pm
All you people need to chill out man you all sound like the british home office idiots who got paid to get the terrorist into the country.
140. vis8 | November 11th, 2013 at 4:12 pm
This picture speaks a 1000 words:
“Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, 1818”
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=565616950176869&set=pb.153545984717303.-2207520000.1384214927.&type=3&theater
Appropriately titled ain’t it?
141. Amila Bandara | January 1st, 2016 at 3:18 am
I’m a Sinhalease and I know what british (I purposely use simple b) did to my country. They were monsters, stole everything from my country. The shining gems in fucking queen’s crown is stolen from Sri Lanka.
There is a place called “Raththanapitiya” near Colombo. English meaning “Bloody breast land”. You know how that name came ?
More than 300 of civilians (men, women, children) went temple and they were coming back. bloody english captured them, raped women and cut their breasts and wait till they died. And for excoriated all men. You know what was those innocent civilians did wrong ? they were Buddhist not Christians. That was how fucking british ruled my country.
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