Carville: Wake up Democrats; you could lose

[Simon_Jester]

There are better examples than Kitchener; the Dervish empire was in some ways pretty messed up, being a military dictatorship in its own right and all.

But there are plenty of good examples, British and otherwise.

[Zinegata]

It depends on the time when you want to stop them. Drastic economic sanctions right at the beginning might have undercut them immediately. The exact time after which they were no longer stoppable except through military means can be debated, but its not like they were unstoppable the moment they got to power. Hell, if there had been additional support for Weimar Germany - instead of a "let them suffer" mentality - it would have probably been possible to stop the radicalization in its politics from getting as bad as it did.

I would say that my statement presumes that the point wherein diplomacy/sanctions could have worked was already past; otherwise I would be talking about the pre World War 2 situation. I really don't think the war could have been averted by diplomacy or sanctions once Poland was invaded.

I'm not denying that the Allies could have done more during the 1920s and 30s. Certainly the Treaty of Versailles was grossly unfair to Germany. But I think the context of the discussion has always revolved around the fact that Nazi Germany had already begun its aggression - and this is already after numerous earnest attempts to achieve peace in the era by accomodating Hitler's demands (i.e. allowing the annexation of Austria, the Munich Conference, overlooking the militarization of the Rhineland, etc)

[Akhlut]

There are better examples than Kitchener; the Dervish empire was in some ways pretty messed up, being a military dictatorship in its own right and all.

But there are plenty of good examples, British and otherwise.

It is, however, a great example of white British dudes absolutely slaughtering brown-skinned people who were massing together because they weren't fond of Europeans.

[Sea Skimmer]

At the end of WW1, a lot of people wanted revenge - especially in France. But, at the peace conference, two of the big three were willing to moderate: Woodrow Wilson wanted to be fair, and Britain's Lloyd George feared communism and saw a shattered Germany as a problem for that, and some officials called it out for being too harsh.

If Wilson was better at playing the professional diplomacy game (or even if he simply had better health after the fact to help sell it to the US as it was), it is very possible it would have turned out better than it did.

Bad luck and individual people's mistakes, before, during, and after the conference were bigger factors than impossibility.

The French weren't in much mood for compromising further on the harsh terms they got through. The French revenge plans literally would have reverted Germany to the way it was in 1869, a collection of independent states, minus large areas west and some east of the Rhine being in French hands. They'd already compromised pretty far to knock that down to an intact Germany and a 15 year mandate to control the Saar coalfields. Meanwhile reparations payments were no different in concept than what Germany had imposed in 1871, and unlike 1871 France actually had legitimate massive damage to a huge portion of its industrial heartland. Germany meanwhile had actually stashed large amounts of the French payments in a fort as gold bullion for the actual purpose of funding mobilization for the next war. Much of the rest was spent on the Army and building a web of forts to stop the expected French war of revenge in the mid 1870s that never happened because France was too divided politically. Not to mention agriculture, large areas of the western front were not just masses of unfarmable craters but also so poisoned by explosives that nothing could grew for years. Damage to Britain was token in comparison and the US entirely unaffected. You might convince the French to ask for less money, but they'd demand billions and billions no matter what and its not unreasonable to believe that they would go it alone and impose a peace plan themselves. After the armistice Germany was simply in no position to resume fighting even if the British and US completely withdrew.

[HMS Conqueror]

Those damn dirty third worlders, stealing property from giant corporations after those same corporations had rightfully stolen it from the natives and slaughtered them to maintain it in the first place! It's a fucking outrage!

Do you think all those oil rigs in the Persian Gulf and drilling in Persia were built by the native goatherders in the 1920s, and then villainously seized by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company? It does not sound plausible to me.

And while I don't support propping up useful-idiot coupists as a response, the only reason that's done is because gunboating thieving governments is no longer acceptable.

Killing impoverished farmers who want their ancestral lands back after having them stolen by the US military to be given to United Fruit = JUSTICE.

Killing the governments perpetrating the theft.

btw, population of Cuba is overwhelmingly descended from white colonial settlers from Spain.

The sad fact is there are a lot of honest authoritarians in the world and in most of it they run things.

Maybe they wouldn't be so attractive if the dishonest authoritarians in supposed democracies weren't constantly trying to impose dictators on other nations that rule for the benefit of Europeans and the USA.


Anyway, do you long for the days of Kitchener of Khartoum and Britannia bearing the white man's burden over those filthy, unwashed heathen masses?

Yes; the Mad Mahdi was an evil man and I only wish that Gordon has succeeded in killing him. We impose proxy rulers these days because it's uncool to rule ourselves; though the imperialists were not spotless in this regard either, preferring in most cases to co-opt local institutions rather than replace them with superior western institutions.

[Akhlut]

Those damn dirty third worlders, stealing property from giant corporations after those same corporations had rightfully stolen it from the natives and slaughtered them to maintain it in the first place! It's a fucking outrage!

Do you think all those oil rigs in the Persian Gulf and drilling in Persia were built by the native goatherders in the 1920s, and then villainously seized by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company? It does not sound plausible to me.

No, the Iranian landowners were ousted by a violent dictator in collusion with European capitalists.

And while I don't support propping up useful-idiot coupists as a response, the only reason that's done is because gunboating thieving governments is no longer acceptable.

Killing impoverished farmers who want their ancestral lands back after having them stolen by the US military to be given to United Fruit = JUSTICE.

Killing the governments perpetrating the theft.[/quote]

Good luck using your navy to destroy the US government.

btw, population of Cuba is overwhelmingly descended from white colonial settlers from Spain.

Half of Cuba's population has mitochondrial DNA from Africans and Native Americans (46% and 4%, respectively), indicating that Cuba's a pretty even mix of European and African with some Native American admixture.

So, you're wrong. As always.

The sad fact is there are a lot of honest authoritarians in the world and in most of it they run things.

Maybe they wouldn't be so attractive if the dishonest authoritarians in supposed democracies weren't constantly trying to impose dictators on other nations that rule for the benefit of Europeans and the USA.


Anyway, do you long for the days of Kitchener of Khartoum and Britannia bearing the white man's burden over those filthy, unwashed heathen masses?

Yes; the Mad Mahdi was an evil man and I only wish that Gordon has succeeded in killing him. We impose proxy rulers these days because it's uncool to rule ourselves; though the imperialists were not spotless in this regard either, preferring in most cases to co-opt local institutions rather than replace them with superior western institutions.[/quote]

Ah, yes, the wonderful British system of imperialism, responsible for deaths far outnumbering Stalin and Mao.

Exactly what the world needs more of.

[Simon_Jester]

One wonders how much use "Her Majesty's Ship Conqueror" would be to imperialist adventurers, and what they'd think of him...

Anyway.

It's interesting to reflect that in many cases the Western-backed tyrants happily swept away "superior Western institutions" as soon as they became inconvenient. Which makes a mockery of the whole idea of Third World nationalists-as-thieves. When the Iranians use a secret police force to beat and terrorize dissidents, it's "superior Western institutions;" when the Iranians try to get control of the oil exports from their own country which were originally set up by a corrupt hereditary monarch and left Iran with only a tiny sliver of the revenue, it's theft and the elected government gets overthrown.

When the governor of Egypt provides thousands of Egyptian conscript laborers to work themselves to death digging the Suez Canal, it's "superior Western institutions" creating a canal where none existed before (hide the evidence of the ancient canals!). When, ninety years later, the Egyptians decide they're tired of getting only 7% of the canal revenue while the other 93% goes to Britain and France, it's theft and the Europeans go to war.



Also, Skimmer's point is interesting. In the English-speaking narrative of World War One, the war caused a lot of death but not a lot of damage- Britain came out of the war with effectively no damage to its industrial infrastructure aside from the cost of war mobilization. France did at least as much of the dying, and took far more physical damage; they had a lot of repair work to do.

We can talk about extending aid to troubled countries like 1920s Germany- who was going to extend aid to the French for the aggressive war that someone else had committed on their soil?

[HMS Conqueror]

Iranian landowners were ousted by a violent dictator in collusion with European capitalists.

I do not know if the landowners were expropriated, but even if they were, compensation owed them would be much less than the value of the oil produced by the western corporations. The difficult bit is finding and extracting the oil, not just living near it.

btw, population of Cuba is overwhelmingly descended from white colonial settlers from Spain.

Half of Cuba's population has mitochondrial DNA from Africans and Native Americans (46% and 4%, respectively), indicating that Cuba's a pretty even mix of European and African with some Native American admixture.

So, you're wrong. As always.

65% identify as white. And the blacks are no more native than the whites, just had less choice over being there.

Ah, yes, the wonderful British system of imperialism, responsible for deaths far outnumbering Stalin and Mao.

Exactly what the world needs more of.

Who did the British Empire kill? As far as I am aware there never was a general policy of killing natives for no other reason than to get rid of them anywhere.

The closest you might get is North America/Australia, but even there most of the work was done by disease, and the London government was far more restrained than the settlers wanted to be.

Actually, I'd like to see an academic source for that, not just a rebuttal.

It's interesting to reflect that in many cases the Western-backed tyrants happily swept away "superior Western institutions"

If you'd been reading my responses you'd know I don't like the useful-idiot coupists for precisely that reason, and even criticised the imperial governments for often not reforming the territory under their control.

When the Iranians use a secret police force to beat and terrorize dissidents, it's "superior Western institutions;" when the Iranians try to get control of the oil exports from their own country which were originally set up by a corrupt hereditary monarch and left Iran with only a tiny sliver of the revenue, it's theft and the elected government gets overthrown.

The issue is that both these things are wrong, not just the beating dissidents. Stealing oil wealth you did nothing to find or extract because it happens to be in your country is like me demanding the hotel at the end of the street give me a cut in the bookings because I happen to walk past it each morning. It's nationalist demagoguery of the lowest order.

[HMS Conqueror]

Seems unlikely France thinks they fucked up, when they were attacked without provocation by Germany. The Germans took the view that France was going to attack them eventually, so they implemented a plan to try to knock France out of the war quickly. France did not 'choose' to join WWI let alone cause it.

Britain then joined because Germany invaded a neutral state under British guarantee to get at France.

So that's not a very reasonable expectation. Actually the most interesting fact is that 2/3 Axis powers had been in the Entente in WWI, both had gained territory, and 1 (Japan) had lost hardly any soldiers or money to do so. Another interesting fact is that the USSR acted in pretty much the same way as Nazi Germany in the interwar era, attacking its neighbours and trying to piece back together a lost Empire.

The problem was either that Germany was weakened a lot too much (ie. the Entente didn't win the war and then turn around and recognise Germany as the European hegemon anyway), or a lot not enough (ie. the Entente didn't permanently destroy Germany's ability to wage another war without having to fight it again later). And neither is really attractive. First for obvious reasons, and second because then who buffers against USSR, and if no one, mightn't USSR just become an even worse version of Germany when it overruns most of Central Europe?

My view is that the European question was only settled by the invention of nuclear weapons freezing the borders while everyone was still exhausted.

[Simon_Jester]

Her Majesty's Ship, how are people ever to drag themselves out of poverty if someone else can claim to own the ground beneath their feet and its mineral rights, just by virtue of having made a deal with a corrupt asshole idiot excuse for a king who lived and died fifty years ago?

No competent Iranian government would have signed away the mineral rights that European companies extracted from Iran in the late 1800s and early 1900s. No European government would have signed away such rights, because they (correctly) view control of mineral rights as an important national asset. Does it really make sense that the only way to own any oil is to be part of the same ethnic group as the guys who founded the first oil exploration companies? How is that anything but "nationalist demagoguery of the lowest order" in its own right?

Seriously, this isn't the sanctity of property you're talking about. This is faking up a claim to a title deed, then going "rargh, mine, gimme" when anyone tries to stop you from squatting on their lawn because of a verbal agreement you made with their mentally disabled brother.

If "superior Western institutions" are to be a meaningful idea, then countries that do have those institutions (like parliamentary democracies that care about the whole country instead of kings that care about having as many solid gold toilets as possible in their own personal royal palace), those institutions have to be able to renegotiate agreements with colonial powers on terms consistent with the well-being of the country they represent. Incompetent or Quisling governments' agreements can't be allowed to bind competent governments later on.

I mean- imagine if during World War Two, the Germans had found massive oil deposits in France, and had Vichy sign away all mineral rights in France to the Nazis. Would we expect the governments of France's postwar Fourth and Fifth Republics to abide by that agreement? Hardly. Would the Germans have a right to complain about "theft" of minerals they discovered? No, because the agreement was made under duress- Vichy was neither willing nor able to act as a competent negotiator on behalf of the French people who own the land the minerals are under.

So why should an Iran that is ruled by a competent parliament be bound by an agreement that signs over mineral rights, if that agreement was written by a corrupt and incompetent hereditary king? If you're going to expect them to abide by that, you're totally neutering the idea of "superior Western institutions." Because as soon as a country with "superior Western institutions" starts trying to govern itself as competently and efficiently as any Western country would, they're thieves for trying to take back all the stuff you got the old, inferior government to hand over to you.

How would you feel if someone got an agreement from your mentally disabled brother for the right to squat in a tent on your lawn, and then called you a thief and a cheat for trying to evict him from the premises? Agreements signed with incompetent people cannot be considered binding on entire nations for decades into the future, after the incompetent government has long since been replaced.

We can talk about extending aid to troubled countries like 1920s Germany- who was going to extend aid to the French for the aggressive war that someone else had committed on their soil?

I don't think the dollar amount of the reparations are as important as the feeling behind it. For example, calling it an aggressive war that someone else had committed is going to be perceived as unfair. Surely you can agree that the blame of WW1 can't be placed on any one country. After all, it wasn't a German who assassinated the archduke!

Of course it was an aggressive war someone else had committed. What, do you think having a huge German army camping out in France was France's idea? You think France should accept equal responsibility for the fact that like five million Germans with guns were parked on their land and refused to go away?

Sheesh.

[HMS Conqueror]

Land wealth is only a small % of global wealth, and even less in developed countries.

The question is more like, how is that land more valuable to you, as a modern industrial concern that can employ nearby people and generate some rent for its owners (I don't support expropriation), or as an open field that you might have some resources you don't know how to search for or extract? And who are "you" anyway? I don't see why the Iran government has more claim to that oil than the people who discovered it and put it to productive use.

[PeZook]

What? OF COURSE the Iranian government has all the rights to the oil beneath its territorry. Literally every standard of international law that was ever implemented or proposed says so - this is why all countries can chase away or arrest people fishing without permission in their exclusive economic zones, or example.

You do know that treaties laying down what we think of as international law are one of those superior western institutions, correct?

[Akhlut]

I do not know if the landowners were expropriated, but even if they were, compensation owed them would be much less than the value of the oil produced by the western corporations. The difficult bit is finding and extracting the oil, not just living near it.

The funny thing is I bet you'd be blabbering about Communist evils if a government nationalized a company and said that "the compensation owed to the executives is of much less value than the goods being produced by the government".

However, it's nice to see that you don't really care about property rights in the least (those of the original Iranian landowners) when those rights become the least bit inconvenient to white people with money.

btw, population of Cuba is overwhelmingly descended from white colonial settlers from Spain.

Half of Cuba's population has mitochondrial DNA from Africans and Native Americans (46% and 4%, respectively), indicating that Cuba's a pretty even mix of European and African with some Native American admixture.

So, you're wrong. As always.

65% identify as white. And the blacks are no more native than the whites, just had less choice over being there.[/quote]

They may identify as white because of culture, but a significant portion of them are partially black and Native American.

Ah, yes, the wonderful British system of imperialism, responsible for deaths far outnumbering Stalin and Mao.

Exactly what the world needs more of.

Who did the British Empire kill? As far as I am aware there never was a general policy of killing natives for no other reason than to get rid of them anywhere.

Forgot about the Irish, huh? the Irish potato famine killed 1 million people and could have been, if not prevented, massively softened by British intervention (source).

Famines in India between 1870 and 1900 killed ~29 million people; the British withheld food from famine struck regions and otherwise acted in a manner very similar to how Stalin did during the Holodomor. (source, another source which refers to the first source mentioned and gives some numbers; unfortunately, hard to refer to a book on the Interwebs and mark specific passages down;describes a bit how policies killed millions upon millions of Indian people). Famines from throughout the British period of rule in India give us another ~37 million dead, giving us nearly 70 million dead Indians (not an academic article, but very well-sourced itself with 55 cites from a number of sources that all seem credible).

Churchill also was probably responsible for a million to three million dead Bengalis during WWII (url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... amine.html]source[/url]; source).

The issue is that both these things are wrong, not just the beating dissidents. Stealing oil wealth you did nothing to find or extract because it happens to be in your country is like me demanding the hotel at the end of the street give me a cut in the bookings because I happen to walk past it each morning. It's nationalist demagoguery of the lowest order.

It's more like someone kicks you out of your house, builds a hotel there, and then when you ask for your land back or at least some of the money from the hotel, they shatter your kneecaps and rape your wife.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I do not know if the landowners were expropriated, but even if they were, compensation owed them would be much less than the value of the oil produced by the western corporations. The difficult bit is finding and extracting the oil, not just living near it.

What? You dont think they would have developed it eventually? How exactly are you reaching this decision? Is it not more logical to assume that the native people's in question would have developed their oil fields were it not for the intervention of foreign nations/corporations in league with a fully captured local government? That seems more reasonable to me.

Scenario:
As is now at least federally legal in the US, Nestle petitions my local government to Eminent Domain the 15 acres of hypothetical land I own, because it is sitting on an aquifer and the taxes the city stands to gain from development are larger than the way I have kept the land (say, a nature preserve and my private residence).

If I wanted to develop this land and sell the water rights, I could. However, I value the water as it is (a ground water table and associated wetlands that recharge it) to an extent more than the monetary value. Should not the compensation paid me when it is taken be proportionate to the value of the water rights, said water rights being the reason the land is being taken from me in the first place?

Lets try a different one, closer to the above.

Lets say I own this same patch of land. I have developed it for subsistence agriculture, because I lack the means to develop it as a tap for bottled water. I might be happy to invite someone in of my own accord, but instead the water rights are Eminent Domained out of my hands for the same reason above. Should the same situation not also apply, where the value of the mineral rights per gallon of water goes into the price?

The issue is that both these things are wrong, not just the beating dissidents. Stealing oil wealth you did nothing to find or extract because it happens to be in your country is like me demanding the hotel at the end of the street give me a cut in the bookings because I happen to walk past it each morning. It's nationalist demagoguery of the lowest order.

They did nothing to find or extract the oil wealth because they were prevented from doing so, because the land was essentially taken by force or corruption from under their feet. This is something you seem to forget.

[Block]

They did nothing to find or extract the oil wealth because they were prevented from doing so, because the land was essentially taken by force or corruption from under their feet. This is something you seem to forget.

Mostly it's because they lacked the ability to do so. Still do actually, most engineers in that field still tend to come from the US and Europe.

[Simon_Jester]

Land wealth is only a small % of global wealth, and even less in developed countries.

The question is more like, how is that land more valuable to you, as a modern industrial concern that can employ nearby people and generate some rent for its owners (I don't support expropriation), or as an open field that you might have some resources you don't know how to search for or extract? And who are "you" anyway? I don't see why the Iran government has more claim to that oil than the people who discovered it and put it to productive use.

So... property should really belong to whoever can make the best use of it?

Who gets to decide that? Can this result in mansions being expropriated and the contents sold off to buy shoes for orphans or something?

No? Why not? Is it because property belongs to whoever currently holds title? Well then, who issues title? What about stolen goods; can Bob steal someone's iPad and sell it to someone else, when he's not got the standing to pass on the title?

No? Why not? Because Bob has no standing, you say? But corrupt government officials do have standing, as long as they sell to corporations at the expense of citizens and not the other way round...

Is there really a self-consistent rule here? Or does it all come down to naked brutality and "rargh, mine, gimme" greed for whatever you can get your hands on by guile or force?

They did nothing to find or extract the oil wealth because they were prevented from doing so, because the land was essentially taken by force or corruption from under their feet. This is something you seem to forget.

Mostly it's because they lacked the ability to do so. Still do actually, most engineers in that field still tend to come from the US and Europe.

Most Americans and Europeans lack the ability to tap an oil field too: they hire other people to do that. Just as most Americans and Europeans aren't physicians or lawyers, so they hire other people to do those jobs.

In countries where the government was able to hang onto control of the land and where useless poltroon-governments didn't sell everything off for a small lump sum up front, that's the normal reaction. I hire engineers to come in and develop the field. The land above the oil field doesn't need to be foreign property for me to arrange that.

The real problem here is that the Iranians never got a chance to set rational terms on which to contract with foreigners to tap their oil fields. Instead, some dodgy individuals used the pre-existing back-channels by which the Persian Shah could be bribed into giving concessions to foreign companies. They got rights to the vast majority of oil revenues in this way, at a time when the immense economic value of oil was not widely known even in the West.

And when the Iranians tried to renegotiate, they were seen as thieves and ingrates... How is a competently governed nation supposed to respond to this kind of nonsense?

[bobalot]

We can talk about extending aid to troubled countries like 1920s Germany- who was going to extend aid to the French for the aggressive war that someone else had committed on their soil?

I don't think the dollar amount of the reparations are as important as the feeling behind it. For example, calling it an aggressive war that someone else had committed is going to be perceived as unfair. Surely you can agree that the blame of WW1 can't be placed on any one country. After all, it wasn't a German who assassinated the archduke!

I disagree. Germany gave a virtual blank check of support to Austria-Hungary when it was formulating their demands on Serbia after the assassination. Austria-Hungary presented Serbia with a list of ultimatums what it knew Serbia could never accept and would lead to war with Serbia and its protector Russia.

Austria-Hungary would never have started a war with Russia alone.

[Ultonius]

Who did the British Empire kill? As far as I am aware there never was a general policy of killing natives for no other reason than to get rid of them anywhere.

Forgot about the Irish, huh? the Irish potato famine killed 1 million people and could have been, if not prevented, massively softened by British intervention (source).

Famines in India between 1870 and 1900 killed ~29 million people; the British withheld food from famine struck regions and otherwise acted in a manner very similar to how Stalin did during the Holodomor. (source, another source which refers to the first source mentioned and gives some numbers; unfortunately, hard to refer to a book on the Interwebs and mark specific passages down;describes a bit how policies killed millions upon millions of Indian people). Famines from throughout the British period of rule in India give us another ~37 million dead, giving us nearly 70 million dead Indians (not an academic article, but very well-sourced itself with 55 cites from a number of sources that all seem credible).

Churchill also was probably responsible for a million to three million dead Bengalis during WWII (url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... amine.html]source[/url]; source).

I don't think any of the sources you've given are evidence of 'a general policy of killing natives for no other reason than to get rid of them'. The policies that failed to mitigate the famines in Ireland and India were massively negligent, and are evidence that the British government of the time thought that adherence to laissez-faire capitalism was more important than people's lives, but they were not intended to be genocidal. The worst that can be said is that racism/ethno-religious prejudice meant that the government was more cavalier about the human suffering involved than if white Protestants had been threatened by famine.

[Akhlut]

I don't think any of the sources you've given are evidence of 'a general policy of killing natives for no other reason than to get rid of them'. The policies that failed to mitigate the famines in Ireland and India were massively negligent, and are evidence that the British government of the time thought that adherence to laissez-faire capitalism was more important than people's lives, but they were not intended to be genocidal. The worst that can be said is that racism/ethno-religious prejudice meant that the government was more cavalier about the human suffering involved than if white Protestants had been threatened by famine.

I'm sure that is of great comfort to the people who died that it wasn't an intentional act of genocide, but one caused by people who didn't want to spend any money to save the people they were governing.

Especially when the British had one famine where they prevented mass starvation of Indian people, but that just cost a little too much money.

So they opted to save the money instead of tens of millions of Indian people. It may not have been active genocide, like Hitler's efforts against the Jews and Roma, but when Stalin forcibly exported grain from Ukraine and didn't have any famine relief efforts there, the result is called the Holodomor and is called one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century after the Holocaust. Why shouldn't the British get the same treatment for the Irish and Indian famines?

Also: he's the one who brought up intentional murder in order to actively destroy people who weren't English; I simply said that the British were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.

[HMS Conqueror]

The funny thing is I bet you'd be blabbering about Communist evils if a government nationalized a company and said that "the compensation owed to the executives is of much less value than the goods being produced by the government".

However, it's nice to see that you don't really care about property rights in the least (those of the original Iranian landowners) when those rights become the least bit inconvenient to white people with money.

Foreign oil companies add value - the knowledge and capital equipment needed to extract the oil. Nationalising a company doesn't add value.

Forgot about the Irish, huh? the Irish potato famine killed 1 million people and could have been, if not prevented, massively softened by British intervention (source).

Ireland was a part of Britain, not a colony, and Britain didn't cause the famine.

Famines in India...

Britain didn't cause famines in India. It had famines before British rule and continued to have them after independence.

Churchill also was probably responsible for a million to three million dead Bengalis during WWII (url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... amine.html]source[/url]; source).

Only arguable case - and this was to prevent the supplies being seized by the Japanese, who would have caused even more deaths if they had been able to invade India. This is a policy countries use on their own land in desperate wartime situations.

The issue is that both these things are wrong, not just the beating dissidents. Stealing oil wealth you did nothing to find or extract because it happens to be in your country is like me demanding the hotel at the end of the street give me a cut in the bookings because I happen to walk past it each morning. It's nationalist demagoguery of the lowest order.

It's more like someone kicks you out of your house, builds a hotel there, and then when you ask for your land back or at least some of the money from the hotel, they shatter your kneecaps and rape your wife.

At the very outside, "Iran" did not own the land, it was owned by individual private landowners. I am not sure those were even expropriated, but if they were, they are indeed owed monetary compensation. That has nothing to do with nationalising companies, though.

[Ultonius]

...when Stalin forcibly exported grain from Ukraine and didn't have any famine relief efforts there, the result is called the Holodomor and is called one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century after the Holocaust. Why shouldn't the British get the same treatment for the Irish and Indian famines?

For one thing, the Irish and Indian famines can definitely be said to have had their origins in natural causes such as crop failure and drought, while the Holodomor was arguably manmade, caused by extremely high requisition quotas, and other centralized agricultural policies of the Five Year Plan. The Holodomor also involved incredibly harsh measures such as classifying food as government property, which made it illegal to glean or hoard even small amounts, as well as the 'blacklisting' of some villages that failed to meet their grain quota, which involved the suspension of all trade with them, effectively a blockade. In Ireland and India, the authorities appear to genuinely have believed that the market would provide a solution. In Ireland, part of the problem was that landlords were expected to help their tenants, but the lack of 'tenant right' everywhere but Ulster meant that many landlords found it easier to simply evict their tenants.

Also: he's the one who brought up intentional murder in order to actively destroy people who weren't English; I simply said that the British were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.

]

Yes; the Mad Mahdi was an evil man and I only wish that Gordon has succeeded in killing him. We impose proxy rulers these days because it's uncool to rule ourselves; though the imperialists were not spotless in this regard either, preferring in most cases to co-opt local institutions rather than replace them with superior western institutions.

Ah, yes, the wonderful British system of imperialism, responsible for deaths far outnumbering Stalin and Mao.

Exactly what the world needs more of.

I'm not exactly sure how your comment about deaths relates to what HMS Conqueror said. Are you claiming that the co-option of local institutions or their replacement by western institutions caused famines? It seems a bit of a non sequitur otherwise.

[Akhlut]

For one thing, the Irish and Indian famines can definitely be said to have had their origins in natural causes such as crop failure and drought, while the Holodomor was arguably manmade, caused by extremely high requisition quotas, and other centralized agricultural policies of the Five Year Plan. The Holodomor also involved incredibly harsh measures such as classifying food as government property, which made it illegal to glean or hoard even small amounts, as well as the 'blacklisting' of some villages that failed to meet their grain quota, which involved the suspension of all trade with them, effectively a blockade. In Ireland and India, the authorities appear to genuinely have believed that the market would provide a solution. In Ireland, part of the problem was that landlords were expected to help their tenants, but the lack of 'tenant right' everywhere but Ulster meant that many landlords found it easier to simply evict their tenants.

As I showed with the Bihar famine of 1873, the British could have easily exported grain from another part of their empire, Burma, to stop any excess mortality from famine. They knew from prior famines through the prior century that they've been ruling there what happened when famine started to occur in India: tens of millions of people died.

To have found a solution to a recurrent problem and then backing off from that solution simply due to worries about money and Malthusian concerns is just as much an act of killing as Stalin requisitioning large amounts of grain from Ukraine.

Additionally, for Ireland, the British were shipping out grain from Ireland. Simply wedding oneself to the idea of the free market solving everything when it is clearly not kills just as many people as shooting them in the head, it just takes less effort.

]Yes; the Mad Mahdi was an evil man and I only wish that Gordon has succeeded in killing him. We impose proxy rulers these days because it's uncool to rule ourselves; though the imperialists were not spotless in this regard either, preferring in most cases to co-opt local institutions rather than replace them with superior western institutions.

Ah, yes, the wonderful British system of imperialism, responsible for deaths far outnumbering Stalin and Mao.

Exactly what the world needs more of.

I'm not exactly sure how your comment about deaths relates to what HMS Conqueror said. Are you claiming that the co-option of local institutions or their replacement by western institutions caused famines? It seems a bit of a non sequitur otherwise.

I asked him if he longed for the days of British hegemony and used Kitchener as an example of imperialism. I then expanded on that by bringing up Britain's starvation of Indians, the much larger and more brutal crime.

[Simon_Jester]

Foreign oil companies add value - the knowledge and capital equipment needed to extract the oil. Nationalising a company doesn't add value.

Who cares?

As a practical matter, is "added value" more important than who owns the value?

This seems very amusing to me because it's one of the basic cornerstones of communism too: the idea that we shouldn't get hung up on who has the right to control what property; what matters is what we can do with the property for the sake of nebulous collective benefits.

At the very outside, "Iran" did not own the land, it was owned by individual private landowners. I am not sure those were even expropriated, but if they were, they are indeed owed monetary compensation. That has nothing to do with nationalising companies, though.

Actually, there's a huge issue here, one you're gliding over.

You seem to think that mineral rights are a purely private matter- there is no state interest, there is no community interest, in ensuring that the only valuable property that exists in the boundaries of the country can be traded on terms that allow economic growth in the country. That works well enough if you assume by default that everyone's going to get rich anyway. It makes no damn sense to apply it to developing nations where most of the population is trapped in subsistence-farmer poverty.

Don't you remember comparative advantage? Let someone take away the only area you currently hold comparative advantage in, and you sign away your nation's growth potential. That's what the 19th century Qajar kings did in Iran: they systematically sold off and scrapped Iran's growth potential, in exchange for more money in their personal coffers. That included the oil revenues.

After the Qajar dynasty fell, the first thing the government did was try to get back some kind of meaningful control over the terms on which their country exported goods. Without that control, and without being able to make sure the export revenues stayed in Iran so they'd have a comparative advantage, development was impossible, posterity was impossible, and the market was useless to them.

And maybe you're totally fine with this, because you're not even a laissez-faire capitalist on this issue, you're a "rargh, gimme"-ist. If it belonged to Britons past, it should belong to Britons future, regardless of whether Britons obtained it by trading in stolen goods...

This is not an argument decent people are going to find compelling.

[Akhlut]

Foreign oil companies add value - the knowledge and capital equipment needed to extract the oil. Nationalising a company doesn't add value.

Ignoring the part about how you only like property rights when they only benefit white people, not brown people, eh?

Forgot about the Irish, huh? the Irish potato famine killed 1 million people and could have been, if not prevented, massively softened by British intervention (source).

Ireland was a part of Britain, not a colony, and Britain didn't cause the famine.

So, when you move in foreigners to rule over the native population, and subjugate the populace, then it's not colonialism?

Also, the Crown was exporting grain from Ireland during the famine; they may not have caused the blight, but they certainly didn't do a damn thing to relieve the famine itself.

Famines in India...

Britain didn't cause famines in India. It had famines before British rule and continued to have them after independence.

The difference is in the death tolls; tens of millions during each famine during the Raj, only tens of thousands after the Raj. The Indian government intervened during famines and prevented the wholesale deaths of millions of peoples, despite having far less wealth than the British Empire. The British Empire, on the other hand, despite having prevented one famine from claiming even hundreds of thousands of lives, let all the others occur which killed over 60 million people.

Churchill also was probably responsible for a million to three million dead Bengalis during WWII (url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... amine.html]source[/url]; source).

Only arguable case - and this was to prevent the supplies being seized by the Japanese, who would have caused even more deaths if they had been able to invade India. This is a policy countries use on their own land in desperate wartime situations.

If that sort of famine was going on in Britain, I can damn well guarantee that Churchill would have done everything in his power to get famine relief.

But a few million Bengalis? Fuck 'em, they're brown, they can die.

[Zinegata]

What? OF COURSE the Iranian government has all the rights to the oil beneath its territorry. Literally every standard of international law that was ever implemented or proposed says so - this is why all countries can chase away or arrest people fishing without permission in their exclusive economic zones, or example.

Yep, exactly. While it is true that you may need foreign investments (usually Western, but that's changing with China aggressively pursuing new sources of raw materials) in order to exploit this wealth, the reality is that there should always be a fair distribution of profits from the exploitation of these resources; and by "fair" I mean that the owning nation should have a significant (if not majority) share of the profits.

The problem is when powerful nations start "regime-change" on lesser nations in order to get better deals on resource extraction, by installing a more pliant government. Or - and this happens FAR more often - they simply directly bribe the current rulers (by giving money directly to their pockets, instead of the national coffers) in order to get better deals.

While this was a major problem during the Age of Imperialism, it's still a problem even today; particularly the second part. Corporations still bribe public officials of Third World nations in order to get more favorable deals, and the people who benefit are not the people of the country but the corrupt officials and the corporations.