WE HAVE JUST CONCLUDED four years of commemorating the First World War. What amazed me about all that official amplification of 100 year-old echoes is how little new information it contained. As is the case with Sir Peter Jackson’s stunning colourisation and all-round technical enhancement of First World War film footage, we have learned nothing that we did not know before. Our troops wore khaki uniforms. Their buttons were made of brass. They sang as they marched. In a strange way, by being stripped of their black-and-white historical dignity, they have been rendered ordinary: indistinguishable from the inhabitants of the here-and-now. They look and sound like extras in one of Sir Peter’s movies.
Perhaps it was always so with official attempts to appropriate the past? To dress contemporary problems in antique costumes and pack the past’s dialogue with all the lies our masters would like us to mistake for history.
It is a task which, tragically, is becoming easier with every passing decade. Reading some of the comments to Mike Treen’s latest post, I was astounded by the number of readers who had no idea of what was happening in 1918. They were clearly astonished by Mike’s snapshot of the dramatic events which drove the Allied and Central Powers to sign the Armistice of 11/11. But, then, why shouldn’t they be astonished? The “official” commemorative programme did not appear to regard the revolutionary wave washing across Europe in 1917-18 as in any way relevant to the War’s end.
Those same officials were even more determined to keep from New Zealanders living at 100 years remove from the First World War just how authoritarian the government of their grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ was. Far better to simply go on insisting that the young men fighting and dying in far-off Gallipoli, Flanders and Palestine were engaged in advancing the cause of freedom, justice and democracy. Informing young Kiwis that their forebears were actually fighting to secure for Great Britain the strategic oil reserves of the Middle East might cause them to ask – given the number of wars (some quite recent) that have been fought for the same prize – whether it was worth the sacrifice of 18,000 young New Zealanders.
The historians’ problem is that they assume that everyone knows the story when, as Mike’s post makes clear, hardly anybody understands what actually happened 100 years ago. How the fighting ships of Great Britain, the world’s greatest naval power, had made the transition from coal (of which the British had plenty) to oil (of which the British had none). How the Brits key oil supplier, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, had suddenly become vulnerable to the intertwined military and economic ambitions of the German and Ottoman Empires. How the rapidly expanding German High Seas Fleet and the proposed Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway convinced the Foreign and Colonial Office that the Germans had to be stopped. How the British Government could have prevented the outbreak of war in 1914 – but chose not to. How the big losers of the First World War were, you guessed it, Germany and the Ottomans. How Great Britain’s new best friends in the Middle East all just happened to live on top of a sea of oil.
And it’s still going on. New Zealand, whose Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, declared war on Germany in 1914 without bothering to consult the NZ House of Representatives, remains a loyal member of the Anglo-Saxon “Club”. (John Key’s term for the “Five Eyes” security pact linking Britain’s ‘white empire’: The UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; with that other great Anglo-Saxon power, the United States of America.)
The great disadvantage of being a member of the Anglo-Saxon Club is that it makes it practically impossible for most New Zealanders to see their country and its allies for what they are – imperialist bullies.
The present Coalition Government has made much of the “danger” China poses to the micro-states of the South Pacific. So much so that our Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, has declared the need for a “Pacific Re-set”. Exactly why the presence of China should pose a danger to the peoples of the South Pacific, while the ongoing presence of its former imperial and colonial powers do not, is never explained. It is simply assumed that “we” are the good-guys and the Chinese are the bad guys.
No one asks the question: Is it appropriate that Australia is essentially re-colonising Papua-New Guinea? Or wonders why the Australians have turned the tiny tropical state of Nauru into a sweltering island prison for Middle Eastern refugees, utterly destroying its democratic institutions in the process.
Most New Zealanders remain blissfully unaware that 100 years ago the New Zealand military occupation force of what had been German Samoa allowed a ship carrying the deadly influenza virus to dock in Apia. Or that, over the course of the next few weeks, that criminally negligent decision led to the death of fully one quarter of the inhabitants of the western half of Samoa. Or that, a few years later, New Zealand soldiers shot down unarmed Samoans demanding their country’s independence from New Zealand colonial rule.
We forget that both the British and the Americans, the good guys, held the Pacific peoples in such high regard that they turned their home islands into test sites for their atomic and hydrogen bombs. The radioactive fallout from these atmospheric tests poisoned the Pacific environment – along with the peoples who lived off its fruit, root vegetables and fish.
Such is the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon powers in the South Pacific. And yet “we” are not perceived to be a “danger” to its peoples. Rather it is the Chinese: a nation which has seized no colonies; created no pandemics; and exploded no nuclear devices in this part of the world who are considered “dangerous”. The country that kept New Zealand prosperous through the Global Financial Crisis is slowly but surely being transformed into our enemy, while the country that has imposed tariffs on our steel and which demands that we endanger our own health by dismantling Pharmac, is hailed as our “very, very, very good friend”.
One hundred years ago, New Zealand was a small but vigorous limb the great heraldic beast known as the British Empire. Being so, we were able to see only the great heraldic beasts identified as our enemies: the German and Austrian eagles; the Ottoman’s crescent moon and star. Having laid them low, we hailed our victory as a good thing. Very few New Zealanders ever grasped what the rest of the world saw when it looked upon the British Empire: a huge blood-smeared lion whose sharp teeth and vicious claws struck terror into the hearts of all those too weak to resist them.
Perhaps it is time for New Zealanders to give up their diet of imperial lies and learn, at last, how to digest the truth?
Although I do not disagree with most things here, I do not exactly embrace the warmth of the Chinese motives in their quite blatant push into the Pacific. I mean it costs a $100k to get one of their people in as a National list member. Do you think that price will not be recompensed at some point, with interest?
And just because they haven’t done the imperialist thing for a while now, although South East Asia has a far longer memory, doesn’t mean that’s not a possibility, now does it?
And loath the US and lord knows at times they give good cause to do so, were it not for their men and their resources, imperialist Japan had us on the menu. And history was quite unequivocal, that Japan did not do losers well at all.
I don’t think Chris was implying that China was approaching the pacific with warmth in their hearts, merely that it was illogical to consider them a danger while ignoring what the anglo empire has spent the last 200 years doing in the region
Empires come and go, in various shapes and forms, and while we may condemn the already established ones, the new and rising ones will simply take their place, further down the line, and be as nasty and bloody as the ones that were before.
amen
For every right wing Chinese with money there are many who are not and would never join with NACT.
Look to the NZ NACT Govt at the time for motives as they were directly involved.
Was the Chinese govt involved in having Chinese national join NACT.
So what authors and books do you recommend? I admit my total ignorance of all this and am rather keen to remedy it
Had no idea of the shift from coal to oil etc, and would be very grateful to access more info
“Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, declared war on Germany in 1914 without bothering to consult the NZ House of Representatives”
All I can say is bloody hell. Learn something new every day. What a prick.
If that riled you up, then if you buy this theory it really will.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/world-war-i-the-gallipoli-campaign-the-untold-story/5445098
Rather it is the Chinese: a nation which has seized no colonies;
er
1. using artificial islands to (create airfields) steal economic zone claims from ASEAN nations.
2. using loan debt to acquire ownership of (naval) ports, and the imperial form of economic integration
3. and using loan debt to create a foreign territory based military grade global communications and navigation system
The country that kept New Zealand prosperous through the Global Financial Crisis
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The fact that there was no downturn in China during the GFC was not an act of friendship for us.
As for Americans – their trade practices have been now worse than Oz (trying to keep our apples out and as for their economic exploitation of our taxpayers there – not getting the benefits after paying taxes for years), the EU or China for that matter.
The Chinese are the coming imperial power, finally disparaging the old order as their era comes to a suntsu (sun set), is simply an apologetic for the continued fawning appeasment of mammon and fortresses.
A million in camps for re-education, human rights lawyers imprisoned, near total media censorship, a controlled internet, the arrest of people who sell books – the warnings that they will not tolerate criticsm of their government – domestically or internationally. A nation with this approach with the largest economy and ultimately the largest military the world has ever seen, what could go wrong?
The Chinese building Islands in the middle of the sea isn’t the same as brutally suppressing native population globally which the British empire did with horrific effects towards the natives also exporting their racial superiority around the world that has a legacy that last for many generation and it reflected today in your comment.
Yeah sure … it’s racist to oppose oppression by non white people ….
Sounds like you read cnn
…reads like I watch CNN ….
The practice, of identifying an expressed opinion with that of some media source, is derived from an earlier one, disparaging information presented based on a linked source.
It’s a tribal behaviour, which diminshes debate and is of our sad decline into the Trumpian age.
And do not forget Tibet.
Won’t somebody please think of Tibet..?
Yes, very good points. It is too simplistic to try to point out who is the most mendacious regime in history or operating today. It’s pretty well known every one of the Empires are rats and did and do terrible things for money, oil and power, religion or ethnicity. The latest media outrage being Saudi Arabia’s brutish not to say surreal Dr Evil Act in all that kingdoms recent doings under MbS. It will be very hard for anyone now required to shake the hand of any diplomatic figure from Saudi Arabia and not feel the need to wash the blood away, like Lady McBeth, who couldn’t..but in saying that it is truly amazing how many rats governments will swallow for a few billion of trade, even when the rats are parading around out in the open.
But, back to China – just a short look at modern Chinese history on how the Communist Party treated their own citizens should give great pause if they gained real power over this region. Groups of citizens who are not Han Chinese do not fare too well in modern day China either.
Spot on Chris.
The British navy’s transition from coal to oil. The Berlin-Baghdad railway. Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and control of the oilfields……
‘Perhaps it is time for New Zealanders to give up their diet of imperial lies and learn, at last, how to digest the truth?’
The time for that was long ago, when all the information cited above became freely available. However, public apathy, official censorship and corporate control ensured the lies of empire remained intact.
We should note that the effects of dependence on oil have become utterly dire. However, officialdom is incapable of responding appropriately and continues to make matters worse by promoting increased oil dependence and failing to address anything.
‘UK government’s air pollution strategy ‘a shambolic mess’
‘In October, the World Health Organization said air pollution was the “new tobacco”, causing 7 million deaths around the world and harming billions more.’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/12/uk-governments-air-pollution-strategy-a-shambolic-mess
It is abundantly clear that the government of NZ is doing no better than the UK government when it comes to air pollution (or anything else that matters long term).
The lies of empire keep oil-dependent societies such as NZ locked into policies and practices that gradually destroy more lives and progressively wreck the environment, both locally and globally.
Good on you for speaking truth to power but nothing will change for the better. Pollution levels will continue to rise, the Earth will continue to overheat, and parades of officials will continue to endorse and celebrate lies.
nd the reason it didn’t happen then and won’t happen now is because the government does not want the truth promulgated and because the average person living in NZ is not interested.
Your piece Chris, and Mike Treen’s, work well together actually and deserve wider circulation–the unpopularity of local conscription, and the influence of international worker uprisings on the end of WWI, and the beginnings of Mid East turmoil over oil, are all matters whose fallout remains relevant today.
WWI was an out and out imperialist war, that NZ workers should have taken no part in, it is an unedifying spectacle to see young people today turning out for ANZAC day because of years of official revisionist history–hell military historians had to revise the NZ Gallipoli participation rate upwards recently, which saw casualty numbers fall to around the Australian troops level–what took so many decades for that to surface? Not important perhaps in itself, but it shows what can happen when myth replaces research and facts.
Not too many, if any, Bolsheviks in todays NZ Labour Party!
“A huge blood-smeared lion whose sharp teeth and vicious claws struck terror into the hearts of all those too weak to resist them.”
Thank you for writing this, Chris. The sheer irony is that a large number, possibly the majority of settlers in this country, come from families irrevocably scarred by past imperialist wars. Our dirty dark underbelly of violence which continues to damage generation after generation, may well be resultant from our damaged genetic coding.
I think and hope that the young are asking more questions now, but as long as we have govts too dishonest or too plain dumb to relate to reality, we’re stuffed.
WW1 was a fraudulent war by the bankers for the bankers who profited by supplying both sides up until 1916 when the Zionists decided they would profit more by being given Palestine. The Kaiser said no to them, but the British said yes and the Balfour declaration was born and the rest as they say is history.
Hitler was right in that the Zionist bankers stabbed Germany in the back, but this leaves the question of why did the Germans think they could win a war when it relied on food and material to run its war machine from Allied countries via neutral ports? German leadership betrayed the German/Austrian people by going to war and not suing for peace earlier. Humanity betrayed itself as a xenophobic small minded species that cant see past its nose.
As for who started the war history is clear that Cuo Bono needs to be applied and those who profited handsomely were the bankers financing both sides to keep the war going. France and Russia lead the pack for starting it, but in reality all sides were itching for a fight.
Don’t believe that Allied industry and bankers were supplying the German war machine (killing many NZers in the process and yet never mentioned at memorial services) then check this out:
Germany was being supplied via neutral ports, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can read all about this trade in great detail, including all the actual figures of materiel shipped in the book The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, 1914-1918. By Rear-Admiral M. W. W. P. Consett, C.M.U. London: William and Norgate.
In this book, Rear-Admiral Montagu William Warcop Peter Consett exposes the truth of how WWI was a complete fraud, a manufactured war that was artificially lengthened through secret trade and gives all the facts and figures to prove it. Amazingly, this most dangerous book is once more in print and available at Amazon.
Here is a summary of Consett’s book.
ADMIRAL Consett is the first writer who has dealt fully and statistically with the way in which Germany during the War obtained such supplies as a full exercise of our sea’ ‘power would have prevented from reaching her. This is an extremely important subject;though we must also add a very complicated one, and we are grateful to Admiral Consett for having written this book. In all future discussions of the subject it will be quite indispensable for its documentary evidence.
No one was in a better position than Admiral Consett to keep track of the supplies that went into Germany through Scandinavia and Holland in the first two and a-half years of the War. He was naval attaché in Scandinavia from 1912-1919. The irony and the tragedy of it was that a tremendous proportion of these supplies came from Great Britain herself. We, in fact, diligently supplied and fed our enemy.
In Admiral Consett’s view Germany would have collapsed perhaps a couple of years sooner but for this help, which she had not dreamed that we would ever give her or allow to reach her. Those who are content to regard the question simply from the point of view of failure to apply the physical power which we possessed will, of course, say that the British Government was guilty of a crime.
But the question is not nearly so simple as that. There was also a political side to it. Few people need to be reminded of the way in which America championed the cause of the neutrals in the early part of the War. There were times when the ugly prospect had actually to be faced that if a few more restrictions were put on the trade of neutrals America would become our opponent instead of our potential friend. She might have cut off the supply of munitions. Admiral Consett is not unmindful of this difficulty ; he touches on it ; but in our opinion he does not allow nearly enough weight to it.
Scandinavia, as he admits, was dependent upon her overseas supplies. Could we have isolated Scandinavia and Holland from the beginning of the War on the ground that whatever they bought from us would be sure to be passed on to Germany ? Could we have done this, we ask, without alienating the sympathies of the impartial world which we certainly deserved and which for the most part, as it was, we enjoyed?
Admiral Consett says that Scandinavia had always expected to suffer if there should be a European war in which Great Britain was involved and that she was surprised that we called upon her to suffer so little. His evidence on that point satisfies us less than his evidence about the supplies which undoubtedly passed through to Germany.
The political atmosphere which belligerents create for themselves during war is a matter of greater moral significance than some people would allow it to be. Another point worth noticing is that Scandinavia necessarily imported directly much more than before since great neighbouring ports, like Hamburg, were closed.
We felt bound to make these reservations before coming to Admiral Consett’s facts, but having made them we are now free to summarize what he says and to emphasize its importance. His facts are, indeed, astonishing. Scandinavia and Holland promised that goods- imported from us would be used in the country of their reception and not be transmitted to Germany.
Admiral Consett says that these promises were useless. He brings out very clearly what we confess we had not appreciated before, that a large part of the American indignation against us at the beginning of the War was based on the fact that Great Britain was, so to speak, competing with America in sending goods to neutral Europe. America complained that Great Britain, though a competitor, imposed unnecessary rules on her rival. One competitor was fixing the handicap of the other.
This curious situation was obscured at the time owing to the contradictory statements of the Government. Thus on January 26th, 1916, Lord Robert Cecil stated in Parliament that ” not much was going through neutral countries ” to Germany.
Yet in a message about the same time to America in answer to one of her complaints the Government said : ” It is common knowledge that large quantities of supplies have passed to our enemies through neutral ports.” The message went on to say that neutral ports had, in fact, been ” the main avenues through which supplies have reached the enemy.” Naturally America retorted : ” What about the supplies you are sending yourself ? “
We may fairly assert, however, that the conduct of Great Britain, in many respects inimical to herself, was based on a generally scrupulous regard for pledges that she had given or implied, and for the customs of war. The Treaty of London, which had not been. ratified owing to the wise intervention of the House of Lords, was at first acted upon as though it had full validity. As everyone knows, it seriously detracted from our ability to make war effectually.
Admiral Consett shows that the excess over our normal exports to Scandinavia amounted often to 200 or 300 per cent., and in some cases even to 1,000 per cent. Germany was thus enabled to stem the tide of starvation and to pull through 1916 and 1917. He says that in the first seven months of 1916 ” the meat export alone during this period, 62,561 tons, was sufficient to furnish about 1,000,000 meat rations per day throughout the seven months on the scale of the current German Army ration.”
We cannot give many examples of Admiral Consett’s remarkable figures, but yr! must mention a few as typical. During the first four months of 1915, the increases in the amount of cocoa exported from Great Britain to Scandinavia, Holland and Italy as compared with the corresponding period in 1913 were almost tenfold greater.
Coal was sent apparently without restriction to Scandinavia, and it was handed on freely to Germany. Denmark exported horses, cattle and food to Germany, while we supplied her with the fodder and fertilizers for producing them. We also supplied the apparatus of fishing, and it is to be noted that as a result, or at all events partly as a result, Denmark and Sweden sent to Germany forty-six times the amount of fish which they sent to this country. Great Britain more than doubled the amount of oil seeds, tallow, lard, fish oils, animal oils and fats which she sent to Scandinavia, and these went into Germany for the manufacture of glycerine used in high explosives.
In 1913 Great Britain sent to Denmark 150 tons of lubricants ; in 1915 she sent 500 tons. Why ? The export of copper to Sweden doubled ; simultaneously the export of copper from Sweden to Germany trebled. In the first six weeks of 1916 we allowed 20,000 tons of zinc ore to go to Rotterdam. Thence it went to Liege. In 1915 we sent to Sweden twelve times the amount of nickel we had sent in 1913. Cotton was not declared contraband till August, 1915. In 1913 we had sent 1,940 tons of cotton to Sweden ; in 1915 we sent 10,300. The exports of cotton to Norway and Denmark rose correspondingly. Our exports of flax, jute, skins, phosphate, pyrites, sulphate of ammonia, rubber and many other things all increased greatly. Admiral Consett says that cement was the only commodity that formed the subject of particular inquiry when the general question of our trade during the War was raised.
Consideration for neutrals, although in our opinion politically and morally necessary, surely provides no excuse for these huge increases over the normal. One would have thought that the obvious thing to do was to ration Scandinavia and to take our exports in the year before the War as the maximum figure allowable.
After two and a-half years Admiral Consett’s advice was acted upon, and we did proceed on the rationing principle. But why not sooner ? America, so far from objecting, would have welcomed any restrictions we laid upon ourselves.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/11/12/hitler-was-right-germany-was-stabbed-in-the-back/
I applaud the very thing about PJ’s colouring and remastering that you criticise. These were real young men and old generals, just like us alive in the real world such as it was at the time. It was not a mythical fantasy world like so many we might escape into, it was a brutal nightmare reality they could not escape from.
Everything PJ touches becomes banal, dumbed down and sentimentalised. He is also a creep who took away workers rights.
I expect that studies of the Napoleonic wars, the 100 year war between England and France, the Boer War and others now consigned to history pages could be examined in the same way. Just different aspects of those wars produce different stories. If you asked other countries for their perspective you would get another range of views of the same wars.
“The “official” commemorative programme did not appear to regard the revolutionary wave washing across Europe in 1917-18 as in any way relevant to the War’s end.”
Yes, and so much more information, that our media and other ‘sources of information’ never seems to present, is gone unknown and unnoticed.
Conditioning is part of the modus operandi by most governments, same as it is an instrument used by commercial enterprises and their marketing soldiers.
You can count the truly enlightened on one hand, I suppose, as the forces of manipulation and misinformation are so damned powerful, few can resist them totally.
That is, despite the occasional gripe, I cherish what Monsieur and Comrade Trotter writes about here. Few have the historic knowledge he has, in little old New Zealand.
And of course, who among the younger generation would really want to bother what happened a hundred years ago? The temptations and excitements of today are too great, they demand their attention and toll.
The war was about the imperialists scrapping over re-dividing the world into their own sphere of interest. But as it turned out workers did not all rush off to die for their countries. And as the war dragged on it became clear that its objectives were to sacrifice workers under arms to serve the interests of the tiny ruling class in all the imperialist powers.
So the ‘main losers’ were not countries – of course one set of nations ‘won’ and the other ‘lost’ – but rather which class won. Capitalist wars are always ultimately class wars. It was the workers of the world who were defeated, not because they were not willing an able to win, but through the failure of communists to convince enough workers to turn their guns on their own ruling classes.
First, workers were drafted to fight one another in a bosses’ war. The downside was that millions died for profits. But the upside was that workers were armed, mobilised and capable of fighting for revolution.
This was proved in Russia in October 1917 where the new workers government took power and immediately called a halt to the war with Germany, appealing early in 1918 for German workers under arms to turn their guns on their own ruling class.
Second, the bosses called the war to a halt only because the success of the Russian revolution created a climate of insurrection among the troops who fraternised with the ‘enemy’ against orders, staging mutinies that turned into insurrections late in 1918.
The bosses recognised that there was a bigger enemy than their main imperialist rivals. Revolutions would overturn their governments and expropriate their capitalist private property, as in Russia. So they signed a hasty armistice and started collaborating to invade Russia from all points of the compass to smash the Bolshevik revolution as the living example of the socialist alternative to capitalist crises, wars and genocides.
In Germany, the suppression of the revolutionary uprisings from 1918 to 1923 put a stop to another Bolshevik Revolution succeeding. The communist leadership was jailed or assassinated and the treacherous social democratic government collaborated with the white guards and fascist gangs to smash any attempt at a Bolshevik type revolution.
As a result the Russian revolution became isolated and its ability to lead a world socialist revolution was compromised. This led to the degeneration of the revolution as the bureaucratic caste under Stalin maneuvered into power. The ramifications of this defeat reverberate through the international working class to this day.
So while the war began as an imperialist war between the rival powers, it ended only when insurrections among the armed workers under their command threatened socialist revolution to bring a nasty end the reign of global capital.
The quarantining of revolution in Russia without the support of a victorious revolution in Europe meant that the ultimate losers of WW1 were not any particular capitalist nation, but the world’s workers.
That’s why all commemoration of imperialist wars has a class character under all the patriotic clamour. It’s class character is that of a celebration of the victory of the imperialist ruling classes, ganging up in a military alliance to defeat the rise and spread of socialist revolution.
Better to call a rapid halt to the war, concede some redistribution of profits and stocks until another crisis brings the next world war, and redirect the immediate war effort into a holy war against the ‘reds’ and socialist revolution, the real existential enemy of all imperialist ruling classes.
What the hell has the lion thing got to do with Brits (bastard colonisers) I have never got this as their symbol?
“The great disadvantage of being a member of the Anglo-Saxon Club is that it makes it practically impossible for most New Zealanders to see their country and its allies for what they are – imperialist bullies.”
At first glance, this is what I thought when younger. But the more you look at the world and its history of empires and kingdoms, you come to the conclusion that the Anglo-Saxon club is simply a great white shark in an ocean of Tigers, Bronze Whalers, White Tips, and Hammerheads. If you think for a minute that others would rule more wisely, less selfishly, or with some kind of benevolence lacking in our culture, then you’ve read far too little of non-European & pre-17th century history. We’re just the leftovers in the shadow of the side which won the game the other empires and kingdoms eagerly played. The world would probably look different if the Khanate, or the Persians, the Egyptians, the Huns, Imperial Japan, etc. had won. But it would work exactly the same.
Take for example the Ottoman Turks mentioned in this article. Check out the game they were running before we beat them. Their ethno-supremacist imperialism over the rest of the Islamic world. Their networks of mass enslavement running from Africa to India and up into Russia and Europe. Consider that perhaps the Sunni-Shiite conflict and inter-ethnic distrust within the Islamic world owe far less to the 50-ish (at most) year period of western powers occupying or directly influencing them, and much more to c.500 years of Ottoman dominance and abuse. It would be odd if it didn’t.
We ought to be self-critical a century on. But also grateful. I’m glad our side won. Take this for example:
“Such is the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon powers in the South Pacific. And yet “we” are not perceived to be a “danger” to its peoples. Rather it is the Chinese: a nation which has seized no colonies; created no pandemics; and exploded no nuclear devices in this part of the world who are considered “dangerous”.”
We should never forget this crime which our leaders committed in testing nuclear weapons like this (or the way our own naval personnel were often exposed at distance to see how close they could get away with using them). But how many died in those nuclear tests? Because while our leaders were doing that, Mao and his criminal junta killed millions of their own people to terrorize the rest into obedience so that they’d stand by while the party reprogrammed their children in front of them.
Mao and his criminal junta killed millions of their own people to terrorize the rest into obedience so that they’d stand by while the party reprogrammed their children in front of them.
What a load of bollocks. The Maoist period in China saw the greatest, most rapid rise of life expectancy and literacy in human history. At the time of Mao’s death, China’s life expectancy was already higher than that of India’s today, in spite of both countries starting off independent under similar conditions in the late 1940s.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4331212/
Furthermore Mao made the country truly independent, and laid the foundations of the economic takeoff that happened under Deng.
Perhaps you should start reading some real history and adopt an evidence based approach – and not simply snort on the dreck dished out by the apologists of Western imperialism
Overlooking the Great Famine that caused the death of tens of millions of Chinese (maybe 45 million) because Mao demanded food be sent overseas to provide cash for imports [of machinery].
‘Beijing government officials, including Zhou Enlai and Mao, increased the food procurement quota from the countryside to pay for international imports. According to Dikötter, “In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people to death.” Mao was quoted as saying in Shanghai in 1959: “When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”
In their attempts to survive, Chinese people resorted to hiding, stealing, cheating, pilfering, foraging, smuggling, tricking, manipulating or otherwise outwitting the government. There were reports of armed assaults on granaries or trains.[7] Overall, Dikötter estimates that there were 45 million premature deaths, not 30 million as previously estimated. Some two to three million of these were victims of political repression, beaten or tortured to death or summarily executed for political reasons, often for the slightest infraction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao%27s_Great_Famine
Any old fart could grow an economy @ 6% or 8% with a billion people. ANY OLD FART COULD. The trick is not killing a whole bunch of people in the process would be a knew thing.
Life expectancy probably did rise for those who weren’t killed, but you can’t deploy that to get around the mass murder of your own people, Wei.
Still, I have to admire the balls on a guy who can stand there and claim that upwards of 40 million people killed by their own state isn’t ‘real history’. I’m *fairly* sure that it seemed pretty real to them. Note that what the following items share in common is their reliance on PRC documents and archives to support their claims.
From the Independent:
“Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html
Washington Post:
“While most scholars are reluctant to estimate a total number of “unnatural deaths” in China under Mao, evidence shows he was in some way responsible for at least 40 million deaths and perhaps 80 million or more. This includes deaths he was directly responsible for and deaths resulting from disastrous policies he refused to change.
One government document that has been internally circulated and seen by a former Communist Party official now at Princeton University says that 80 million died unnatural deaths — most of them in the famine following the Great Leap Forward. This figure comes from the Tigaisuo, or the System Reform Institute, which was led by Zhao Ziyang, the deposed Communist Party chief, in the 1980s to study how to reform Chinese society.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/07/17/how-many-died-new-evidence-suggests-far-higher-numbers-for-the-victims-of-mao-zedongs-era/01044df5-03dd-49f4-a453-a033c5287bce/?utm_term=.f3134ebeb53f
A boost in life expectancy in exchange for the chance to spend that life in a pall of unmitigated state terror? What an illiberal nightmare. Looks like the propaganda works on you though, Wei. Your digital social credit score probably got a nice upward ping out of that one.
Washington Post, Frank Dikotter (an apologist for the opium war), and an independent article quoting Dikotter.
As I said, dreck from the apologists for Western imperialism.
The fact is though, even their own figures prove my point. Mortality rates (not just life expectancy – although the two are related) plummeted under Mao. More so than for any other developing country in history.
Do your own research, get the figures (for 1949 to 1980 say) and then come back for a facts based discussion.
Mao is perhaps the greatest humanitarian in human, and he saved more lives than any other political figure in all of human history.
Dismissing 40+ million dead by the hand of their own government takes some stones to explain away. But I never said you don’t got ’em.
Sounds like there are huge gaps in the Chinese state education system … that they would like the rest of the world to catch up with.
Winners, impose their lies in the area under their control …
Beware the US based info on China and Mao.
Parroting it is senseless.
Moa kicked the US out of China.
I think you mean the Communists pushed out the former government (Nationalists) … as far as Taiwan.
… after asserting domestic control of government and the economy, the communist party decided to engage with the wider capitalist world and trade with it.
The feelings for Mao in China are…, complex.
On one hand, Mao freed China from the west. On the other hand he fucked everything up after that. That’s why he’s respected in China, because he did in fact do some pretty good things for it by freeing China from the control of western powers (and Japan), and he was honestly badass considering he had a bunch of peasants and kicked in both the Japanese and the Guomingdang despite overt US support of the latter.
After a few generations when everyone who suffered under him is pretty much dead already, you can see why attitudes towards Mao are going to be much less harsh, since people remember the former and gloss over his fuckups, which is generally what happens to dead men you’re inclined to respect.
Mao was and still is a hero to many Chinese. He did great deeds, of this is in no doubt. But great does not mean good.
I hope this helps yall understand why he’s not vilified in China.
I wonder how much fish Chinese fishing vessels have taken illegally out of the South Pacific Fisheries over the past 100 years ?
A DIEt of Lies
https://www.corbettreport.com/wwi/
As the last post plays over the lawns and into the greater silence, the body count for Mosul is, so far; 38,168 according to RT documentary team reporting/filming from the field.
Another account has Maria Zakharova report in this broadcast,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciiq0WoBIAo
during clean up of airstrike in Al-Hadiqa and Al-Baida: Al-Rashid Stadium and the local zoo, over 4000 bodies were found; mostly women, the elderly and children. In addition, a mass grave with over 2,500 bodies was found on a farm near a pediatric clinic and the national Hospital.
None who’s names will appear on the AngloUS/Zionist memorial plaques as sacrifice for ‘Perfidium’..the empire of perfidy we have all suffered under these long years. The very same empire our lads murdered each other for 100 years ago. READ the revisionist Historians. Read the of the myth making machinery dressed up in night vision googles (sic) now on the march again; pumping the youth with nostalgia disguised as reverence.
Although it is abundantly clear that the British Empire was founded on land theft, slavery and looting etc., we must not forget that it was established and expanded in competition with other empires of the times, notably the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and French empires. And in every case, it was cunning application of superior death-and-destruction technology or outright deceit that facilitated expansion of empires. Indigenous people do not normally give up their land bases and their treasures without a fight.
Had the British not been determined and resourceful, and had they not successfully conned indigenous peoples, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would have almost certainly become French-speaking colonies.
Transfer of wealth from one location on the planet to another is the ultimate objective of trade and of empire, and in the past that wealth facilitated the construction of vast country houses and palaces in the recipient nation whilst the people robbed of wealth lived in poverty, as did most of the people in the recipient nation.
Much of the history comes down to a small minority within nations -greedy sociopaths, for want of a better term- wanting much, much more for themselves and much, much less for everyone else, and being prepared to lie and cheat in order to get what they want. In modern times, just as in previous times, empire and trade facilitate high living standards for a few at the expense of the many.
Many of those who want more for themselves and less for everyone else are members of national or global financial ’empires’ and national or global communications ’empires’ that control the public arena so effectively there is virtually no debate about anything that really matters.
Sadly, many central government and local officials build ’empires’ that serve their wants for power and wealth. Others, bound by a combination of ignorance, regulation and fear, keep regurgitating the fraudulent narrative of empire.
Meanwhile, the masses remain distracted, confused or apathetic, and focused on consumerism -just as their controllers want them to be. In these times of slow-motion collapse that we are living through, what has been described as the ‘Triumph of the Spectacle’ reins supreme: corporatised sport, celebrity gossip, personality politics, fashion!
Present living arrangements, though unsustainable, are held together in the short term by phony cultural memes and power systems that block public debate.
Clearly, this will all end catastrophically -as a result of planetary overheating, energy depletion, overpopulation, overconsumption, loss of biodiversity, financial collapse, major military conflict, or a combination of those factors- because the empire will not allow strategies that might avoid catastrophe. .
Have another beer mate, the discussion is now all about Bunning’s barbeque advice, onions below or on top. That is what seems to ‘matter’. Nothing else matters to the manipulator elite, and to the dumb idiots adoring their success, power and ‘guidance’.
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