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The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

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Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#141
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If so, question of my own. The landlord worked and spent resources (time, money) to increase his assets (develop the property). You, at your job, worked and spent resources (time, etc.) to increase your assets (e.g. size of your bank account). Do you think you should have indefinite ownership of your bank account? The landlord earns rent from his property. I earn a salary from my job. The landlord and I are on equa…

You've distilled your claim: the right to ownership of an asset is dependent on whether or not you keep improving it ("my employment at my job depends on me continually adding value to society"). There are a lot of people on here who built their own SaaS businesses. In a lot of cases, those are just websites that provide some simple service. And, in a lot of cases, once its built there isn't really much to do except…

P.S. I am not arguing that people should have their land confiscated by the government, btw. I think something as simple as higher property taxes, or higher taxes on land that isn't directly occupied by the owner is pretty equitable.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#143
post #93
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than "for what it's worth", that's an important difference. The full quote puts a very different spin on Churchill's position. The article: "When some British officials objected to his proposal for “the use of gas against natives,” he found their objections “unreasonable.” In fact he argued that poison gas was more humane than outright extermination: “The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life shou…

If the use of gas is so reasonable, one wonders why he only supports using it against "uncivilized tribes".

I'd assume that it stems from a few places. One of them would probably be the "White Mans Burden", but another would probably be that uncivilized tribes don't have guns to shoot back with and so using modern weaponry against them will end in a lot of deaths.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#144
post #93
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than "for what it's worth", that's an important difference. The full quote puts a very different spin on Churchill's position. The article: "When some British officials objected to his proposal for “the use of gas against natives,” he found their objections “unreasonable.” In fact he argued that poison gas was more humane than outright extermination: “The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life shou…

If the use of gas is so reasonable, one wonders why he only supports using it against "uncivilized tribes".

I don't think he only supported it in that case (the part of the quote before that reference makes it clearly general and not specific to that case), I think that's the user case he saw as being immediately relevant to Britain in the context of the efforts to ban it in warfare.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#145
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Plus; how would you stop it?" Well the primary targets, the carriers, weren't present. That was fortunate for America, to put it lightly. With the carriers missing, the attacking Japanese pilots focused their attacks on Battleship Row, against which they did severe damage. It should be noted however that after the first attack wave, the USN managed to put up very dense anti-aircraft fire that impeded the Japanese…

The US broke the Japanese crypto and naval signals well before the war. I’m curious how they missed the boat (no pun intended) on the massive attack. I vaguely remember the radio operators mistaking it as nothing which delayed the defences - as the hundreds of aircrafts came into view on radar. But beyond that how could they not have intercepted the planning beforehand? I’m not suggesting a conspiracy just curious.

Radio silence. There was no need to signal instructions to the attack force en route as everything was carefully planned in advance. Likewise, no need for the attack force to report until after the attack.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#146
post #112
post #42

The one party that seems to go unscathed or are even in power positions are the princes that chose to ally with the British to retain their kingdoms. The Last Nizam went to become an MP for a long time. His violent Razakar militia morphed into Political party and wins every Parliamentary election in Hyderabad. The Scindias of Gwalior are power players in both the INC and BJP. There are numerous other royal descendant…

> The Last Nizam went to become an MP for a long time. Osman Ali Khan was briefly the titular head of post-accession Hyderabad but was never an MP. > His violent Razakar militia morphed into Political party and wins every Parliamentary election in Hyderabad. MIM as a political entity predates the Razakars. And I'd say the present day AIMIM has as much in common with it's predecessor as the Congress has with it's pre-…

Osman Ali Khan was M.P. of kurnool.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#147
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Last Nizam went to become an MP for a long time. Osman Ali Khan was briefly the titular head of post-accession Hyderabad but was never an MP. > His violent Razakar militia morphed into Political party and wins every Parliamentary election in Hyderabad. MIM as a political entity predates the Razakars. And I'd say the present day AIMIM has as much in common with it's predecessor as the Congress has with it's pre-…

Osman Ali Khan was M.P. of kurnool.

That was a different Osman Ali Khan, not the Nizam: https://archive.siasat.com/news/former-mp-osman-ali-khan-pas...

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#148

The article says: "Thanks to Churchill’s personal decisions, more than 3 million Bengalis died of hunger in a 1943 famine. Churchill deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles, meant for yet-to-be-liberated Greeks and Yugoslavs. “The starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less serious” than that of “sturdy Greek…

That seems ridiculous and wildly over the top. Hitler took a peacetime situation and started a war because he wanted to rule the world and abolish democracy everywhere. Churchill was one of the key men who stopped him, was forced into the situation of defence and had to make many hard decisions along the way. If there had been no Hitler then Churchill would never have been in the position of having to decide what to…

My point was not that Churchill wanted fascism or communism. The point was that Hitler was a genocidal leader and that the British/Victorian government during the 20th century also perpetuated genocide, directly or through inaction.

Hitler didn't take a "peacetime situation." There was hyperinflation in Germany post WWI, and a massive arms and military-industrial build up all the way through the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, Hitler didn't want to "abolish democracy everywhere" - his objectives were to make Germany self-sufficient and in control of Europe. He was certainly anti-democracy in terms of slowness, and believed in stronger centralized power, but I don't think he cared if South American states for example were democratic or not.

The British Empire didn't "dissolve" itself in India - there were decades of non-violent protest, including strong political pressure after WWI (Britain promised to give India independence after WWI, but didn't). Millions of lives were lost in this process both due to colonial brutality as well as 1MM+ dead due to the partition of India and Pakistan and it's aftermath.

Look up books like Late Victorian Holocausts [1], which make the exact argument of how British and other colonial governments created or at least prolonged famine situations across the world.

Happy to discuss further if you want to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting hypothesis. Isolationism was a popular position in America before Pearl Harbor, to the extent that in his 1940 campaign FDR promised he wouldn't enter into a foreign war if he was reelected. And true to his word, after he was reelected America did not declare war on Germany despite many in the press demanding it. Eventually, after Pearl Harbor, it was Germany who declared war on America, not the o…

>> flew combat missions as a civilian (which is a bit strange.) While a civilian, he flew solo missions as a fighter pilot and engaged the enemy. We have a term for this nowadays, "illegal combatant."

We have a term for this nowadays, "illegal combatant."

It's only illegal if the other side do it.

Re: The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The equilibrium/fair cost of a latte doesn't go up because a few millionaires move into a neighborhood, it might go up because of a barista labor-shortage, a coffee bean-tariff, or other supply-side effect. In my economics class, I remember drawing a supply curve and a demand curve, and labeling the intersection “equilibrium.” If a millionaire moves into my neighborhood and buys so many lattes on a regular basis th…

We are viewing the analogy differently: a millionaire doesn't drink meaningfully more coffee1 than a normal person (perhaps better coffee) but can pay more for it, paralleling the housing needs/wants of a ""tech bro"" and a teacher. To use your version, the problem is that the coffee shops aren't allowed to make more coffee. If they could they would continue to do so (because money), at the point where they make the…

I was only replying to a comment that acknowledged supply changes could affect prices, but seemed to intentionally downplay changes in demand having any effect (which is why my hypothetical millionaire has to buy so many lattes that coffee shops were running out; having people with more disposable income doesn’t change demand until they spend that income). Sadly I am not a millionaire myself, and have no firsthand knowledge about how they spend their riches.
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