Jihad of the poppy

Francis

Beautifully and concisely put.

Robbo

What a surprise - the BBC chose to not report this disgusting event on the 6 o'clock news.

Liz

Weimar Republic.

Pot Head

Free speech makes me proud to be British!

Lazyranchhand

I hope you're right, Melanie - two minority extremist groups exercising their right to protest peacefully, with almost no incident to report.

Roy

The answer is; to kick them out ... they deserve no better ... end of story.

davvers

Well the protesters are here now and they ain't going away any time soon.As long as we continue to value our freedom of speech we shall just have to stomach it.

Cynic

Multiculturism has so enriched our lives, hasn't it?

Robbo

Free speech my ass! These people are determined to subvert and destroy, and intend to eliminate Western civilisation from within.
Allowing free speech is a dangerous luxury in these circumstances.

TomTom

Idiots who insult the memory of Indian Army soldiers Muslim and Hindu who died in Burma, Singapore, North Africa and Italy fighting in the world's largest volunteer Army.

These fools are not fit to be treated as adults and should be ridiculed and lampooned mercilessly

Jez

It's gone viral on Facebook.

Everyone had enough.

(Can some one spike Pot Head's tackle and just get him out of here?)

Dixon

The more of this kind of thing the better. It just advertises the reality these people embody.Give them enough rope...

It has to get worse before it gets better.

Simone

davvers, why do we have to stomach it? Isn't this treason?

Frank

Roy: don't kick them out, just kick them.

Austin Barry

These people are so obnoxious in stating their case, that you wonder whether it's a false flag demo by Jesuits.

Roy

Cynic and Robbo, well said.
These people don't deserve any freedoms that western civilizations have to offer ... so back with them to where-ever they came from.

Jayson Rex

It's the "Chamberlain jigg" all over again. We cannot hide from the inconvenient truth indefinitely. As long as Britain is not free of Islamists there will be NO peace, prosperity and security for its people. Sorry.

Terry in Oz

I have a firm position on the muslim bile against Britain. Arrest them and deport them to whichever place they came from. And their immediate families with them.

Sounds harsh, but no family who lost a fighting man or woman should have to observe this scum taking advantage of our freedoms in order to deprive us of them permanently.

steve

Yes, a handful of nutters seeking media coverage threaten us all. How is this any different from Fred Phelps and his church who picket the funerals of soldiers in the US? As obnoxious as they are, they hardly represent the future.

Derek BLADES

Poppy-burning Spokesman Asad Ullah said: ‘We find it disgusting that innocent people, innocent children, have been killed in an illegal and unjust war and we are demonstrating against that.’

Not obviously stupid or even particularly anti-British. In fact that statement probably represent the majority view of most British people. We are doing harm rather than good in Afghanistan and should get out.

LibertarianLou

It shouldn't the role of the state to interfere in this stuff. I find their actions despicable but I find a lot of things despicable. I think flag-burning, quran burning, poppy burning, holding up anti-gay signs, holding up pro-gay signs, whatever - it should all be legal.

The state isn't there to protect me from being offended. The police should have better things to do (like sorting out student protests)

AngloWelshDragon

If this happened in our small town they would be going home via the local A&E. How long will British people keep taking this crap? No doubt they are all living on benefits so we get to fund their disgusting activities as well as paying for the police time spent escorting them. Time we got off our complacent arses and started giving as good as we get I think.

Vulture

@Austin B.
Er...no you don't. These people have our measure exactly right.
They will not be touched.
They know that we are weak, corrupt, amoral and creepily subservient to them. Ripe for Dhimmitude in fact.

The must be fought or surrendered to. At the moment we are on our knees to them.

michael

good v evil

Great kids learning to say thankyou... v ... Spoilt brats whose parents hadn't the gumption to teach them never to play with matches .

EH

This is not the future, this is now.

EDDIE

How to undermine a country by abusing using our own much valued freedom of speech.

simone

Derek Blades, you clearly didn't read all the reports about this. This was not simply an anti-war protest nor a political protest; it was an anti-British protest. They made it very clear that their allegiance is not to this country.

Why are we tolerating our enemies within our borders?

Sanity Man

This is no more a "glimpse" of Britain's future than the Westboro Baptist Church is a glimpse of the future of America.

Arnold Levan

Iam 86 yrs of age and a war veteran; I never thought that I would to see the day when our fighting men who gave their all for their country would be so denigrated. Its digusting. If some of the perpetrators are naturalised British, their citizenship should immediately be revoked, if not they should be deported

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Of course the BBC kept this very quiet. Ironic that the police went after the EDL, trying to prevent the FundaMental Islamists. Need I say more?

Dagobert

These Moslem protesters should be reminded that the overwhelming majority of Moslems killed recently in Iraq were killed by fellow Moslems. So when are they going to protest outside mosques about this slaughter?

MairT

Thought this might be of interest:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11745100

Michael White

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11744811

Here's the BBC report. It seems the blame for all this falls on the EDL...

charlene

I see as reported on Daily mail website one of the students carrying a cricket bat is a Mr Chodury obviously of Asian origins, apparently acitve at Manchester uni in Palestinian justice, and to cap it all has a degree in law. Truly disturbing, there is oviously an emergence of a liberal fascit movement which is linked with the palestinian movements. Cetainly they have more in common with weimar than with democracy. For the record I am a mature student who loves Israel and is far too busy to go on protests as I try to read widely in my chosen field. And what is May doing to stop this abuse of British democracy?

Osman

I'm a Muslim and I condemn this incident in the strongest of terms.

Not in my name!

stu

Quite apart from the obviously disgusting display of the UK Muslims at their protest, I am also somewhat troubled by seeing 7-year-old boys dressed up in the medals of their forebears. Can I be the only person to see a moral problem with this?
I don’t wear a Poppy. There are several reasons why.
My not wearing a poppy, however, is not a slur on the dead or an insult to all those who have sacrificed their lives whilst in uniform.
I’ve been to the battlefields of France & Belgium, gripped in silence at the graves of my ancestors at Tyne Cot & Bedford House Cemetery, south of Ypres.
My grandfather was a D-day veteran, he fought at Caen & in the Normandy breakout, ending the war in Austria. Many of his friends did not return with him.
He never wore a Poppy, would have nothing to do with the British Legion & did not mark Armistice Day in any overt manner that I can recall. As with many servicemen who fought, remembrance & grief were private matters for them & they took no pride in their participation in the Second World War. It is in honour of his memory that I choose to not wear the Poppy.
Outside our local school, there is a flagpole which bears a standard stating “support our armed forces”. I personally find this rather shocking, schools should be devoid of political propaganda in any shape or form.
I have -and continue- to support Veterans Aid which is the leading charity for homelessness among Veterans in the UK.
Organisations such as Veterans Aid help homeless British vets but by far the biggest charity for those returning from the wars is the Royal British Legion, which ran into controversy because it now benefits from the legacy given to it by Tony Blair. Blair got around seven and a half million dollars for his book advance and his money looks like the biggest ever single donation to the Legion.
Newsreaders in Britain have been lashed in the media for refusing to wear them, such is the social stigma of questioning the wearing of a poppy in the weeks around the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. At least, the black plastic ‘stigma’ of the paper poppy no longer bears the words ‘Haig Fund’, referring to Earl Haig, who went down in history for his repeated orders for tens of thousands to die pointlessly at Passchendaele, Ypres and the Somme. Later, the Royal British Legion chairman Major Francis Fetherston-Godley would be photographed with Herrs Hitler and Goering, spending pleasant hours being photographed in the run up to the Second World War.
Such is the tabloid frenzy over poppy day that the white poppy movement, dedicated to decoupling the military from remembrance never had much success, even if white poppies with ‘no more war’ in their centres were first sold in the 1930s.
It is clear that while desperately poor war veterans may be grateful for charity, most grateful is the government which doesn’t have to shoulder the responsibility for after-care. And the corporate media are only too happy to back an appeal which — at its real core — is a demonstration of laissez faire: that taxes should not be raised to pay for the care of those who have been ordered to fight.
The late poet Ted Hughes dealt with issues concerning the poppy in his poem ‘Out’ [in Wodwo:1967:Faber & Faber].
The psychological inheritance of war.
The stifling effect of war, both cultural and personal.
The need to put war’s memories and the dead to rest.
In a society that cannot let go of the violent past, every birth is a death & each new child dies into English culture.
The significance of the poppy, both in reference to John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” and to its use as a decorative emblem to be purchased and worn on Remembrance Day. Hughes loathed the practice of keeping the war’s memory alive with this emblem:
“A canvas-beauty puppet on a wire – today whoring everywhere.
It is years since I wore one”
Cenotaphs: false tombs erected as World War I monuments, almost every sizeable English town has a cenotaph honouring World War I soldiers.
“So goodbye to that bloody-minded flower,” Hughes writes; “You dead bury your dead. Goodbye to the cenotaphs on my mother’s breasts”
[Rejecting not just the war but the clinging to the memory of that war.]
It is possible to see in these lines and in the closing line; “Let England close. Let the green sea-anemone close” a repudiation of both the father’s legacy of war memories to the son and of England’s saturation in the memory of that war.
“The poppy is a wound, the poppy is the mouth of the grave, maybe of the womb searching”
Both the grave and womb are connected here, as they are in the second section “The dead man in his cave beginning to sweat; . . . the mother in the baby-furnace”
A grim view of birth into a culture that cannot let go of its memories of devastation:
Doomed to produce children oppressed by war’s psychological legacies.

Old Sapper

And to think when all this went public, the UAF and Hope Not Hate tried to start a race riot by stating to a local paper, and on their blog, that rioters were going to march on Brick Lane in revenge. There was no such action planned.

And to think our PM backs and arranges funds for these nut jobs.

davvers

We all know that these people thrive on publicity. Maybe we can bring in a law that any anti British protest march/demonstration etc will automatically be subject to an immediate ban on any media reporting.I know it's a bit like sweeping it under the carpet but I for one detest seeing on TV or in print these anti British people sounding off against us. Why they stay in this country when they hate us so much I just don't know.
Regrettably the P.C. brigade will reject any attempt to restrict these people.

louisb

Who on earth sanctioned that this demonstration should take place? Are our police and local authorities so bereft of common sense that they couldn't outright ban anything going on at this time on the 11th November?

Jez

@ Old Sapper,

"And to think our PM backs and arranges funds for these nut jobs."

And exactly the same people trashed his HQ office complex to say thanks for all that backing.

I say, what a nieive idiot.....

mind you, awfully great education- What.

Adam B.

Trust Blades to defend public poppy burning.

This is sheer hatred against Britain, its heritage, the sacrifices of its soldiers from the First World War to today.

What's wrong with you?

Mustapha Bunn

Stu @ 6'54pm you a bit late in ... "finding it rather shocking,schools should be devoid of political propaganda in any shape or form",the problem with schools in Britain now and for probably more than the last twenty years is that they,and their pupils, have become subject to propaganda on a huge scale most of which is aimed at destroying any feeling of pride in Britain by the British.......and I use the term 'British' in its original meaning not that which has been foisted upon us.
And some might not think that Ted Hughes had much claim to morals etc. either.

C.Gee

stu:

So, let's brain-storm about what emblem would be right for you and others like you, who find the poppy, image-wise, sort of bloody (birth-blood, death blood), redolent of old Mommy-Earth, womb 'n tomb, life-giver, death-collector (even the grave yawns), child sacrifice (though the "mother in the baby-furnace" might have special meaning for Ted, a poet who did not die in foreign field nor before one wife killed herself and another killed herself and her and Ted's child in peace time), vulgar nationalism and mawkishness. An emblem that would demonstrate your charity to vets but your distaste for nationalism and "politics", your concern for children's mental health, your conviction that history - war memories - should be flushed down the old memory hole (the same Earth-Mother cloaca?), your preference for quiet grief, yet your need to make your dissent known...Not a “white poppy” - though I can see its bloodless merits. How about a small white rectangle - the page of peace, a tabula rasa? I know, how about a poppy-cock : a poppy with a rooster, herald of a new dawn?

Louis Berk

Stu, I understand your reasons and those of many veterans for not wanting to commemorate the day in such a visible fashion. However, I and many others take another view. I was born about 10 years after the war and I have many reasons to be extremely thankful for all the service men and women who stood up for democracy when it would have been a lot easier to cave in to fascism. My entire family in the UK would have been wiped out, otherwise, as indeed the majority of my family on the continent were. I see wearing a Poppy and more importantly giving money to the British Legion as a small way in which I can express my gratitude to a group of people who are fast becoming lost in time and the inevitable revision of history to support many different interpretations. My parents both served (because of their age most of the war) and like your father they had little if nothing to do with the British Legion. However, later on in life both my parents did begin to attend rememberance ceremonies and I do recall my father being quite moved by them. We underestimate the psychological trauma inflicted by WWII on all participants, especially the armed forced. I assume in some way it was cathartic for my father to have some conclusion to his experience by attending these ceremonies.
I have another purpose for wearing a poppy in today's world. I am a teaher and I am fortunate to teach in a challenging and rewarding secondary school in the East End. As you can imagine many of my students are recent immigrants or first generation and they are not necessarily familiar with the institutions in our society. As an educator I think I should be allowed to express myself by wearing a poppy and when I am asked by my students for the significance, I am able to relate how I grew up in the shadow of the second world war, the horrifc aftermath of the genocide inflicted by the Nazis and the rememberance of the sacrifice of their youth made by my parents - lucky survivors - and those who made the ultimate sacrifice. I think the general reaction is always that of interest and I feel I have done a small part in helping to foster understanding of the history and social rituals of our liberal, democratic society.

Comprehensiveboy

Channel 4 broadcast this right after a straightforward report of the normal remembrance. The effect was like a slap in the face. Someone in there is on our side. I say give them maximum publicity. We need more documentaries on them and opportunities for them to metaphorically spit in our faces. Perhaps then the British will stop being post modern ironic pussies and realise they are under attack. We owe these primitive parasites nothing. Defeating them is a service to humanity. They and their creed are not superior. This must be done while they are still weak and ahead of their curve or we'll know what Lebanon tastes.

John.

Not only did the BBC say nothing but also only one single newspaper mentioned it in its headlines: the Daily Mail.

Patricia

I wonder... How many of them are on benefits?

stu

Mustapha Bunn@5:09am
As Thomas Jefferson said: “Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.” I feel that pride invariably creates unhappiness. If our self-worth is dependent on a sense of pride we become insecure and hyper-sensitive to the criticisms of others. On the flip side, wouldn't there also be plenty to feel ashamed of in British History? Should we accept the 'pride' but reject the 'shame'? I reject both, I may be English but I'm not responsible for England's history, nor should I appropriate other's sacrifice & attach it to my own sense of 'self'.

C.Gee@5:15am
Why do you feel I need to wear an emblem? Surely the quiet support of homeless veterans & honouring my grandfather's wishes should be enough. I'm extremely sorry if you were offended by my post, I just felt that the private & 'quiet' amongst us get tarred as pacifist soldier haters, which I feel is extremely unfair & somewhat troubling with respect to our collective future. Mrs Merkel said last November "one must learn to rise above one's history" & whilst I am very much against the EU, I would have to agree with her on this point if on no other.

Louis Berk@10:24am
You appear to wear the poppy for many admirable reasons & for none of the suspect ones. Can we say the same for our 'tv personalities' & politicians? The knee-jerk reactions of distain for those -like myself- with a bare lapel is what I find extremely worrying. Considering the losses my family have suffered [in both world wars] I felt I needed to speak up, but your balanced response has made me realise that there must still be many reasonable people out there, even if they are hard to find.

Eddie

Looking at the UK from the USA, it seems that the UK has become "Free Speech for Thee, but not for Me".

Derek BLADES

Like stu I felt a certain unease at the picture of the young boy dressed up as a soldier. Most youngsters like things that go bang and I can remember that my early reading was heavy on war stuff. I just hope the young lad's parents have the good sense to steer him towards healthier pursuits.

The 11 November ceremonies have all the symptoms of becoming a national disgrace on the scale of the Diana funeral. An outpouring of artificial grief hyped up by the gutter press and frankly an embarrassment to all people of good sense. The Daily Mail repeated that ludicrous phrase about "honouring those who gave their lives for their country". As an ex-military person myself I can safely assert that no soldier ever gave his life for anything. Rather it gets taken away by the opposition and very much against the soldier's will. The message of the 11 November ceremonies should be that war is beastly and to be avoided except on the very rare occasions when the life of the nation is at risk. Certainly not the case, please note, with the bloody “wars of choice” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unlike Stu I do wear a poppy. It’s one I bought years ago. The very notion of an Earl Haig fund for the war-wounded borders on blasphemy. There are several more worthwhile charities for injured soldiers, sailors and indigent Gurkhas.

Mustapha Bunn

Stu,my self worth is most definitely not dependent on pride in my country but at the same time I do not feel a need to denigrate it either.
Unfortunately there are some in Britain who do feel the need to and our children,or in my case grandchildren,seem to be their target.
You are welcome to your views,and I support your concerns ref. TV persons and politicians etc. but I wouldn't worry too much about a childs support for our armed forces there are bigger "politicisations" than that that to worry about.

Harvey

Blades

In case you failed to notice. The war in Irak removed a bloody tyrant from power. As for Afghanistan ,well really what did you expect the Americans would do after 9/11 ? Send in the keystone Cops or simply tell OBL that that one was on the house .
You really are something else.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

Of course they are on benefit, the government should make the tax payers life easy and send this exterimists to Sharia law countries. Why do we have to pay them to hate us?.
stu did you say that you are troubled seeing 7 year old boys honouring and wearing the medals from their great grand pas? What is wrong with you? I think you are one of those people who don't like seeing people going to church on Sundays, or don't believe getting marry and have a wedding is not important because celebration is not fashionable thing, some people need to get a grip, that little boy in the picture who was wearing the medals from his ancestors is a good boy and he looked cute with his medals. Anyhow do you guys know this year for the first time 10, 000 more poppies was sold? I feel like celebrating.

Thank you to all our service men and women, and thanks to Melanie Phillips for mentioning this not the BBC.

AY

Not less disgusting are creeps from Guardian's CIF, who publish stuff like "Masters and servants of war", aiming to weaken UK self-defence by causing distrust between government, army, and the population. Also all over news there is loud trumpeting that "AlQaida can't be defeated" - by BBC (who else..) interviewing some high army brass.
At least, not timely, not responsible, and untrue.
Most likely, simply a payed pro-jihadi advertising, the provocation prepared in advance.

West is a civilization that landed man on Moon. Mapped the Earth and the planets, mapped the skies and the genes. Defeated diseases. Learned to live in peace and harmony.

And we now should admit defeat? to that bunch of bleating fuzzy camel mugs - who have nothing to present as achievement, and nothing to propose to the young, only the same rusty archaic cult mixed on mediocrity, myths, and aggression? Oh come on. Usually they start crying about their divine invincibility, when they are almost done.

John.

Simone: Sadly and madly the law against treason was repealed by the Labour government. I wonder why!
davvers: I believe that the establishment of the Caliphate is close to some of their hearts. Could this be an answer to your question?

C.Gee

Stu:

“Surely the quiet support of homeless veterans & honouring my grandfather's wishes should be enough.”

It should be enough, but somehow for you, it isn’t, is it? You wish to elevate your private decency into a cultural psychodrama: this is the way for the nation to “rise above its history”, or to forget it, for the mental and moral health of its children. Sure, the Germans have “risen above” their national history - by drowning their national shame in the sea of Europe. Psychologically, this is a form of denial, colluded in by the rest of Europe. Even if one thought that “rising above” national history is the best means of not repeating it, keeping a British national remembrance of wars past would at least help the Germans in the fight against recidivism.

“I'm extremely sorry if you were offended by my post,...”

If anything is offensive, it is this egregious example of passive aggression. Being offended is your thing, Stu. Stealth compassionating is what you do, because you think silence authenticates the feeling - unlike the spurious feeling bruited by empty TV people and the sheep-on-the-street. There are many paths to sanctimony. You have chosen the narrow, lonely, unlit tunnel. Being mistaken for a rat is the hazard of your martyrdom.

C.Gee

Derek BLADES:

"As an ex-military person myself I can safely assert that no soldier ever gave his life for anything. Rather it gets taken away by the opposition and very much against the soldier's will."

Ex-military and non-military persons, can all safely assert pretty much anything. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is probably not what is on the mind of the soldier as the "opposition" kills him. But it is surely sweeter and more seemly for survivors and the nation to give the soldier's life a significance by publicly recognizing that a death in war is not a stupid waste. Perhaps you would like to see war memorials that differentiate between deaths in a war of choice (including defense of others) and deaths in a war of defense of self. The former has wreaths laid upon them, the latter garbage.

davvers

John: You are of course correct.....it is only a matter of time unless the sleeping giant awakens.

Gordon Ross

I well remember the spate of what some people called 'knee-jerk’ reactions from sections of the indigenous British population against British-born Jews back in 1947, following upon action taken by Jewish so-called "terrorists" against the occupying British military and administration during the period of the 'Palestine' mandate. Synagogues, Jewish centres and individuals were attacked, and I recall a press photograph of a bunch of people, including young children, somewhere in the north of England, demonstrating in the streets with placards calling for violence against Jews.

Let’s be clear, at that same time there were not any British-born Jewish clerics or other community figures here preaching hatred or inciting to violence, murder and treason, or disaffected young British-born Jews demonstrating against the treatment of their brothers and sisters by the British in ‘Palestine'.

What a contrast with the situation here in these present times ! In July 2005 there were the London Islamic bomb outrages resulting in many dead and injured. Since then there has been an ongoing Islamist terror campaign in Britain, demonstrations by British-born Muslims calling for violence against and murder of non-Muslims, and a continuing barrage of complaints and demands issuing from the Muslim community, including the demand for the introduction of ‘shariah’ law ! Some ten days ago a Muslim woman was found guilty of the attempted murder of her local MP by stabbing him in the stomach, because he had supported the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The excuse offered was that she had been radicalised by a fanatical ‘jihadi’ cleric via ‘You Tube’. Now we have young black-clad banner-bearing British-born Muslims demonstrating in London with placards bearing the legend “British troops burn in Hell !”

Have there been any significant counter-demonstrations or protests against these outrages from any section of the indigenous British population of the kind that took place back in 1947 ? The only demonstrations staged here in these times have been in support of the ‘Hezbollah’ and ‘Hamas’ terrorist organisations (“We are all ‘Hezbollah’ / ‘Hamas’ now !”), some of which have been led by prominent public figures such as ex-London Mayor, Ken Livingstone (whose inclination is to welcome and embrace known extremist Muslim cleric hate-mongers and boast of how he has stood up to the Israelis), gorgeous George Galloway (of ‘Big Brother’ fame) and aged radical left-winger, Tony Benn (complete with Arab ‘keffiyah’ around his scrawny kneck). ‘Britistan’ may be nearer than many of us think !

Dixon

stu
November 13th, 2010 8:42pm

"Mustapha Bunn@5:09am
As Thomas Jefferson said: “Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.” I feel that pride invariably creates unhappiness. If our self-worth is dependent on a sense of pride we become insecure and hyper-sensitive to the criticisms of others. On the flip side, wouldn't there also be plenty to feel ashamed of in British History? Should we accept the 'pride' but reject the 'shame'? I reject both, I may be English but I'm not responsible for England's history, nor should I appropriate other's sacrifice & attach it to my own sense of 'self'."

I agree with that bit. I have never been able to fathom the notion of taking pride in sonething one didnt do. Its baffling. Whether it be pride in ones wifes career or pride in being the same nationality as Albert Einstein. None of this vicarious pride makes any sense. Even though I am a nationalist of a sort, I dont take pride in the achievements of others who just happen to share my nationality. How can you be proudof what somneone else does. Its utterly mysterious. Its also related to honour. And we know where that leads.

kate b

Can we swap these low-life for the Christians in Iraq?

Noah Aaron Bashi

Wake up and smell the Sharia.

pterodactyl

A nation is given full representative democracy and uses it to commit suicide. Very odd.

Skeptic

According to reports in the Israeli press, at least, there was a grand total of 35 or so people who attended the idiotic poppy-burning ceremony. Much ado about nothing.

Dave

There is a dance taking place between 'rent a beard' and the pro-war neocon media.

'Rent a beard' want the notoriety of offending the imperialists and the neocons want to hype their photo-shoot to inflame public opinion.

Both groups should be ignored and repudiated by community leaders.

Jez

@ Gordon Ross,

Great context.

But did parts of the Jewish population start burning poppies on Rememberance Day, chanting 'British Soldiers burn in Hell'- actually in the minutes silence or blow up London buses, tube trains or target airports in the UK? Did they call for Great Britain to become an exclusively Jewish nation or tear up / attempt to burn down many of the areas they settled in?

No.

So what's your point?

AndyinBrum

Question. How many of you actually went out and collected for the RBL this year?

I did a couple of Sundays, and my cadets, most of which the majority of you lot would think were wastrel yobs on none cadet evenings (& to be honest I would agree with some nights) Gave up whole weekends to collect for no reward than doing what's right.

They then turned up yesterday in the cold to parade in memory of generations that they have no connection to (their Grandfathers are my fathers age & so missed the 2nd world war) and behaved themselves impeccably.

But what is reported? A few mental nutjobs who believe in a myth that should get them locked up in a loony bin if not for historical providence, instead of praising the current generation of people who gave their time and energy for the Poppy Collection & the massive generosity of ALL creeds & colours who have donated so much in such straightened times.

It's just an excuse to be hysteric & mussy bash again and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Here endeth the lesson (/rant)

Mr. Mabutoh Afunfa

They should definitely deport them.

Derek BLADES

C.Gee

Thank you for the Latin doggerel. Let me return the favour with this closing stanza from one of Wilfred Owens' better known poems .

"If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori."

In your case it may not be a lie as I would define it. You actually seem to believe that Horace was right. Some people never learn.

Rob

Didn't someone clever once say that true decadence is tolerating that which wishes to destroy you?

Gordon Ross

Jez, you seem to have misunderstood my comment.

As far as I'm aware, I made a clear contrast between, on the one hand, the situation in 1947 when, despite the absence of demonstrations or actions of any kind by Jews here against British behaviour and policy in 'Palestine', synagogues, Jewish centres and individuals here were attacked in reprisal for action taken by so-called "terrorists" in ‘Palestine’ against the British there and, on the other hand, the situation here today where Muslims commit acts of terror, incite hatred, violence, murder and treason, and continually complain and demand, without any effective censure, and are even appeased and supported in the pursuance of their objectives.

Alex

Disgusting. Thousands of soldiers gave their lives so that we could be free, and then these Moslems do what they bloody well like.

vicky park

The demonstrators are outnumbered by the 320 or so Muslims sering in the British armed forces and an insult to LCpl Jabron Hasmi of the Intelligence Corpswho came to the UL aged 12 to die in Afghanistan age 24.

C.Gee

Derek BLADES:

“Some people never learn.”

That sounds familiar. Are you referring to Joan Baez’s “Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?/ Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?/ Where have all the soldiers gone?/ Gone to graveyards everyone/ When will they ever learn?/ When will they ever learn?”

“Thank you for the Latin doggerel.”

Everyone seems to have a doggerel in the fight. I’ll pit Rupert Brooke (...a corner of a foreign field That is for ever England), John McCrae and Tennyson (into the Valley of Death rode the 500) against Ted Hughes, Wilfred Owen and Joan Baez.

Meanwhile, away from the doggerel eat doggerel mean streets, our professional soldiery can get on with the job of war purely as a career, in high zest at the prospect of a reasonable pension on retirement, payable to the spouse on death, plus housing benefits.

Derek BLADES

C.Gee.

I understand your preference for Rupert Brooke over Wilfred Owen. As a biographer explains “Rupert Brooke was still an apprentice poet in 1915 when he died, aged 28, of blood poisoning, having never seen the military action he had romanticised in the five sonnets that culminate in The Soldier.”

As you didn’t like “Some people never learn” let’s try “Ignorance is bliss”.

Mustapha Bunn

Gordon Ross.. One of the ruses used by"so called terrorists" in Palestine was to to have a young girl visit the local police station and report suspicious goings on at an address.The police/military would pay a visit and when inside the aforementioned residence the bomb would go off.
I think that sort of tactic against authorities attempting to carry out a U.N. mandate is worthy of the use of the word "terrorist" whether they be Jewish or whatever.
And by the way,before the accusations start, I fully support Israelis in there quest for a homeland.

Gordon Ross

Mustapha Bunn, when the so-called 'Palestinians'(whether Hamas or Fatah)and Hezbollah have set off their bombs, even against civilians on buses and in pizza parlours, they have been referred to by the biased and dishonest British MSM as 'militants' and even 'freedom fighters'. This has been swallowed by, probably, the majority of the British public and has become part of popular sentiment. I prefer to regard the people who fought against the oppressive (to say the least) British military and administration (not against civilians) as Jewish patriots.

And by the way, Israelis are not engaged in "a quest for a homeland"; they, and Jews everywhere, already have one (for the past 3,000 or so years), just like the Irish, wherever they may be living.

John.

Gordon Ross: Surely the reason is staring you in the face: the unfortunate Jews weren't about to put bullets in our heads whereas some Muslims are only too ready to do so at the slightest criticism.

Bernice Wright

Shocking images of burning poppy - "As Britain remembered its past today, a glimpse of its future" Quo vadis Great Britain?

Derek BLADES

If I understand Gordon Ross correctly he is grumbling that no group is currently threatening violence against Moslems here in Britain.

A thoroughly nasty sentiment and one that few people even on this blog go along with. But surely he is wrong on the facts. Try the English Defence League website, Mr Ross or go to their next demo.

Gordon Ross

For the sake of D Blades’ peace of mind, I was not advocating violence against Muslims here in reprisal for the outrages perpetrated here by some of their fellows.

I was simply underlining the fact that, in 1947, sections of the indigenous British population chose to attack Jews here in reprisal for anti-British action taken by Jews in ‘Palestine’, even though there had been no anti-British action of any kind taken by Jews here, and contrasting that with the fact that, in these times, there have been no attacks against Muslims here by indigenous Brits despite serious anti-British actions taken by Muslims here. Just goes to show where the prejudice in this country really lies !

As for “nasty sentiment” on this blog, I leave that to D Blades and his buddies. They have shown repeatedly that they are expert at it.

martinR

((Derek BLADES
November 17th, 2010 5:11am

If I understand Gordon Ross correctly he is grumbling that no group is currently threatening violence against Moslems here in Britain.

A thoroughly nasty sentiment and one that few people even on this blog go along with. But surely he is wrong on the facts. Try the English Defence League website, Mr Ross or go to their next demo.))

DB's name is suspiciously rather too English!

Derek BLADES

Gordon Ross

My apologies. I had indeed misunderstood what you were saying.

My wife is Chinese and remembers that during the Korean War bricks were tossed through the windows of the family home in Liverpool and a lot of mindless violence was directed at anyone of Oriental appearance.

The lesson I draw from the absence of serious anti-Moslem violence now is that the last fifty years has seen a great improvement in the behaviour and level of education of British people.

The anti-Jewish outrages that you describe in 1947 could not happen today. The British have become more tolerant and considerate towards others regardless of their religion, colour or sexual preferences. A good thing all round.

Barry

davvers: "Well the protesters are here now and they ain't going away any time soon.As long as we continue to value our freedom of speech we shall just have to stomach it."

But will they be prepared to stomach us? I fear they won't, that's the problem.

C.Gee

Derek BLADES:
"The anti-Jewish outrages that you describe in 1947 could not happen today. The British have become more tolerant and considerate towards others regardless of their religion, colour or sexual preferences."

From a February, 2010, Independent article:

-The number of anti-Semitic attacks in the UK reached record highs last year as anger over Israel's assault on Gaza led to an explosion of race hatred targeted at Britain's Jewish community.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity which monitors attacks against Jews, said 924 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded last year – a 69 per cent increase on 2008 and the highest number since the charity began keeping records of anti-Semitism in 1984.
The charity said Israel's three-week invasion of Gaza in January last year led to an unprecedented outpouring of anger directed at Britain's Jews, with more anti-Semitism recorded in the first six months of 2009 than in any entire previous year.
Of the 924 confirmed incidents, 124 were violent assaults, three of which involved what the CST classified as an "extreme threat to life". It was the highest number of physical assaults recorded against the Jewish community since records began and represents a 41 per cent increase on the previous year.

Physical assaults tended to be most common within areas where members of the Orthodox or Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities are most visible, such as Salford and Bury in Greater Manchester and Hendon and Stamford Hill in north London.

Your complacency about British tolerance is unfounded.

Harold

Derek BLADES
November 17th, 2010 5:28pm
You are too sanguine. The Met has seen an increase in attacks on Muslims in the last decade (national figures are not gathered). There is also a marked increase in attacks on Jews after each of Israel's acts of aggression (national figures are gathered). Britain is certainly civilised and tolerant, but not entirely. There is no room for complacency.

Adam B.

Mr Blades, you wear a poppy without contributing a penny to ex-servicemen, ex-servicewomen and their families. A tad hypocritical?

And it hasn't been called the Haig Fund since 1994 - when you bought your last poppy.

Adam B.

How did a blog about Muslim extremists burning poppies become about percieved Muslim victimhood?

Mustapha Bunn

I wonder how many of the 924 incidents as listed by C.Gee @ 8.20pm are attacks by Anglo Saxon British ?After all the p.c. police forces of this country won't inform us unless they happen to be EDL etc.

Harold

Derek BLADES,
I should have added that it is difficult to put such figures in context. Reported anti-semitic incidents are consistently around 500 a year but rose to around 900 after the assault on Gaza. They range from grafitti to abuse to threats and assault. The numbers for similar attacks on Muslims are not collated or made public. Similarly, I do not know the figures for other victims of prejudice, for example, I do not know how many homophobic incidents are reported each year. I also do not know whether 500-900 incidents a year in a population of 60m makes Britain particularly violent in its anti-semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-gay etc. prejudices. Nevertheless, the point remains that there should be no tolerance for such attacks, no distinction between those against one group and another, no excuses because such and such is being committed overseas, or because such and such a holy book demands discrimination. But I do agree with you: "The British have become more tolerant and considerate towards others regardless of their religion, colour or sexual preferences. A good thing all round."

Gordon Ross

Mustapha Bunn, Nov. 16, 5.17 am

I designate the Arabs who blow up civilians, including children, on buses, in pizza parlours, in hotels, in markets etc. etc. as “terrorists”. The British MSM often choose to call them “militants” and even “freedom fighters”. I choose to designate the Jews who took action against the oppressive (to say the least) British military and administration (but not against civilians) in ‘Palestine’ (a name invented by the Roman Emperor, Hadrian) as “patriots”.

The British “attempting to carry out a U.N. mandate” had signed up in the 1917 Balfour Declaration (not worth the paper it was written on) to facilitate the (re-)establishment of the Jewish national home in ‘Palestine’, but did more to sabotage than to facilitate it.

“And by the way”, the Israelis do not need to engage in a “quest for a homeland”; they and Jews everywhere already have one (for some 3,000 years) in the land of Israel.

Harold

Gordon Ross
November 18th, 2010 1:14pm
The Balfour letter talked of establishing a Jewish home (nothing about "RE"-establishing or "THE" national home). You say Balfour's letter was not worth the paper it was written on. Without it, and its incorporation into the Mandate for Palestine, the Zionists would have found it a great deal more difficult to colonise Palestine. It certainly proved worth more than the (legally stronger) bits of paper the British signed with their Arab allies, but reneged on.

The Mandate authorised Britain to facilitate a home for Jews in Palestine so long as this did not compromise the rights of the existing population. The British certainly helped establish a Jewish home. It also compromised the rights of the existing population to do so.

Ganpat Ram

These British commemorations of their World War Two dead are utterly ludicrous, because they overlook the Indian elephant in the room: the simple fact kept out of British histories that over 90 per cent of the dead on the British side due to World War Two was Indian - the three MILLION victims of the Bengal Famine deliberately allowed to happen by Winston Churchill.

A superb history of this appalling war crime by Churchill - condemned even by his closest colleagues - has just been published: "Churchill's Secret War: The British Ravaging of India During World War Two", by the distinguished US journalist Madhusree Mukerjee. (Published by Basic Books)

Someone remarked of Hitler: "Untold millions of blameless died as a result of the toxic brew of incompetence, racial obsession and utterly fantastical beliefs."

You will conclude the same about Churchill by the time you have finished this new startlingly revealing book on Churchill by the distinguished US journalist Madhusree Mukerjee. You will never view Churchill in the same way again.

Gordon Ross

Harold, 2.16 pm

The Balfour Declaration also recognised the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land re-named ‘Palestine’, but it still wasn’t worth the paper it was written on ! I guess that, to a lesser extent, the Arabs were shafted too, in consequence of British duplicity (divide and rule), although the several modern Arab states were created in the vast lands outside ‘Palestine’ which the Arabs had invaded and conquered following the advent of Islam.

As for Harold’s “existing population”, there have always been some Jews living in ‘Palestine’, even after the Roman expulsion of the major part of the nation Our connection with the land was always recognised, albeit in a mostly hostile manner, until after 1948, when Arab propaganda, vigorously aided by the ‘anti-Zionists’ in the West, began to take root. Emmanuel Kant, the 18th century philosopher and anti-Semite (despite his Hebrew forename) referred to the Jews confined to the Frankfurt ghetto as “the Palestinians living among us”. Prior to 1948, Jews like me were frequently told to “go back” there. Israeli novelist Amos Oz has pointed out that, in the 1930s and early 1940s, graffiti on European walls read ”Jews to Palestine !”, but after 1948 they changed to “Jews out of Palestine !”, a case of “don’t be here” and “don’t be there”, or simply, “don’t be” !

In consequence of the 2,000 years history of accumulated discrimination and persecution, the 19th century fathers of modern Zionism were laudably intent on promoting the return of diaspora Jews to the homeland and the Jewish renaissance and right of the Jewish people to self-determination there.

Adam B.

Harold, what do you want? For Israel to simply disappear? Yet again you trawl through your version of what happened in 1948. How does this get anyone anywhere - unless of course it is your aim to delegitimize the Jewish state altogether. Or is this just an academic exercise?

Mustapha Bunn

Gordon Ross @ 1.14pm you may prefer the use of the title 'patriots' but I'm sure you would have some understanding of the British publics feelings in 1946/48.
Having survived a 5 year world war, in which their family members played a small part in ensuring the survival of some of Europes Jewish population,they found it a little hard to understand that those same family members became targets for Jewish patriots.
The patriots may,in your opinion,have only targeted British military forces but they still managed to blow uphotels as well didn't they?Or did they check the register prior just make sure all the victims were firstly British and secondly military?
I apologise for my use of the word quest as used in my previous post.Israelis do indeed have a homeland my use of the word should be taken as a quest for a peaceful one for the years to come.I,honestly,wish that.

Derek BLADES

Both Harold and C.Gee tell me I am too sanguine about racial violence in Britain, and they may be right. Just one comment on the Community Security Trust figures which both of them cite and which refer to abuse against people who are, or are perceived to be, Jewish.

Since the CST was set up in 1994 their figures show an underlying increase in reported incidents with the spikes noted by Harold and C.Gee coinciding with Israeli violence against Arabs. The underlying increase is certainly deceptive since much of it is due to the spread of awareness of the CST among the Jewish community as well as efforts by the CST to make reporting easier. You can now do it online for example. Crime statistics are inherently unreliable because they depend on the extent to which victims choose to report what they perceive as criminal acts. The public’s perception of what constitutes a crime is heavily influenced by media and government campaigns. The increase in reported rapes is a good example. Women, and sometimes men, now report as rape or attempted rape what used to be considered as no more than normal interplay between the sexes.

But what is clear is that most of the anti-Jewish violence in Britain is due to IDF violence against the Arab population in the West Bank and Lebanon. Yet another reason why all people of good sense should be working for a decent settlement of the Israeli-Palestine conflict and not encouraging the continued theft of Arab property and anti-Arab violence in the occupied territories.

Gordon Ross

I guessed that Mustapha Bunn (at 12.24 am) would get round to the blowing up of hotels as an example of Jewish “terrorism”. He is, of course, making an oblique reference to the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, an action that was intended as a symbolic demonstration against the British administration in its HQ, to which end a warning was given in advance, in order to enable evacuation of the staff. According to a survivor, a typically arrogant British officer forbade and prevented the evacuation, declaring that "we" don't take orders from the Jews; "we" give the orders !

D Blades’ (at 7.46 am) last paragraph clearly indicates that there is deep British popular concern over and opposition to Israel’s defensive military action in Gaza, but none at all with the attacks on Israeli civilians which gave rise to it. Very much a one-sided business, isn’t it ! He offers this in explanation of and as an excuse for the attacks on Jews here, just as he offers the war against the British in ‘Palestine’ as the excuse for the 1947 attacks on Jews here. What chutzpah ! All this goes to underline the fact that anti-Jewish prejudice in Britain is endemic.

John.

Ganpat Ram: May I suggest that famines are caused by natural events - droughts, floods etc. - rather than by one single human being? In any case a single person cannot be termed "the British" who comprise millions of people!

Harold

John.
November 19th, 2010 1:33pm
Can I suggest you read some of the economic work on the causes of famine (for example, by Amartya Sen): it indicates that natural disaster often contributes, but so do malfunctioning markets - which argues for government intervention. The negligence in this instance was not just one man's. The cabinet as a whole was responsible for the decisions taken which knowingly disregarded the pleas from British officials in India, who knew what threatened.

Harold

Gordon Ross
November 18th, 2010 7:20pm
I have said on other threads that the existing population of course includes the Jewish inhabitants. The League of Nations gave Britain a mandate in Palestine until its population was deemed (by the imperial powers) to be sufficiently evolved to determine its own fate. In other words, Britain governed Palestine in trust for its inhabitants (Muslim, Christian, and Jewish). Its mandate was of course complicated by the further requirement to facilitate a Jewish national home in Palestine, so long as this did not infringe the civil rights of the existing population. As I understand it, Balfour, Lloyd George, Samuel et al. fully intended to disregard the rights of the existing population. However, this intention is not reflected in the drafting of the Mandate (as is clear from the record of the deliberations of Lord Curzon, M. Millerand, and Sgr Nitti, where it is made clear that "civil rights" includes political rights.)

Harold

Derek BLADES
November 19th, 2010 7:46am
The criminal activities of the state of Israel are absolutely no excuse for any attack on British citizens. The way you frame your response risks misunderstanding.

Harold

Adam B.
November 18th, 2010 11:29pm
Were you to observe the basic decencies of debate, like apologising for mistakes, I might consider replying.

Ganpat Ram

JOHN:

Here is the "Sunday Times" review by Sir Max Hastings of Madhusree Mukerjee's devastating indictment of Churchill. It states the basic points very concisely, and is by a known nConservative hostorian who is an ex-editor of The daily Telegraph, and an expert on Churchill:

"The 1943 Bengal famine was one of the second world war's greatest scandals. This book lays the blame squarely on Churchill's shoulders

Reviewed by Max Hastings

Title Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II
Author Madhusree Mukerjee
Publisher Basic Books
Length 368 pages
Price £17.09

WINSTON Churchill told the House of Commons after Pearl Harbor in December 1941: "The great thing is that we have four-fifths of the world's populations on our side." This was a terminological inexactitude. It would have been more correct to say that the allies had many of the world's peoples under their control, which was somewhat different.

A significant proportion, including many Arabs and Indians, were alienated from the allied struggle for freedom, because it included no commitment to liberate them from colonial mastery.

Even Churchill's greatest admirers cannot escape the fact that British misgovernment of the Raj represented a blot on his wartime leadership.

"He is really not quite normal on the subject of India," wrote Leo Amery, secretary of state for India. Churchill defied American opinion by resisting serious negotiation with Nehru's Congress party about self-government. He wrote in his war memoirs that President Roosevelt's commitment to this represented "an act of madness… Idealism at other people's expense and without regard to the consequences of ruin and slaughter which fall upon millions of humble homes cannot be considered as its highest and noblest form".

He claimed that British policy was based on a refusal to desert the Indian people in their hour of need, "leaving them to anarchy or subjugation". He caused most of the nationalist leadership to be imprisoned for much of the war, and endorsed ruthless repressive measures in response to strikes, demonstrations and acts of sabotage. The British authorities copied Stalin's policy in Russia by confiscating all accessible private radios to prevent disaffected Indians from listening to Axis broadcasts.

All this was narrowly defensible in the context of Britain's struggle for survival, especially when the Japanese were at the gates. On January 21, 1942, the viceroy Lord Linlithgow reported to London: "There is a large and dangerous potential fifth column in Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Orissa, and…indeed, potentiality of pro-enemy sympathy and activity in eastern India is enormous."

But the scandal, one of the great horrors of the war, was the 1943 Bengal famine, in which at least 1m and perhaps 3m Indians perished. In the clubs of Calcutta sahibs continued to enjoy unlimited eggs and bacon, while a few yards from their doors people died in the streets.

This is the story Madhusree Mukerjee tells in her significant and - to British readers - distressing book. A soldier of left-wing sympathies, Clive Branson, was appalled by what he found in India during war service there: "Let our imperialists boast… Never will any of us…forget the unbelievable, indescribable poverty in which we have found people living wherever we went." If the British people knew the truth, "there would be a hell of a row - because these conditions are maintained in the name of the British".

Bengal was especially vulnerable. Its principal source of imported rice was cut off when neighbouring Burma was occupied by the Japanese. The British confiscated or disabled most of the coastal region's transport, including boats and bullock carts, to prevent its use by the enemy. This crippled both fishing and trade.

Much traditional crop-growing land had been turned over to jute production, vital for sandbags - indeed, India became a major source of war material for the empire. Then in November 1942 a cyclone struck today's Bangladesh, killing 30,000 people and ravaging the countryside. As hunger began to give way to starvation, the authorities were slow to respond. Large quantities of food continued to be exported to Sri Lanka.

When the crisis was belatedly recognised and the new viceroy, Wavell, appealed to London for food aid, his repeated and increasingly urgent requests received woefully inadequate responses. He wrote: "Apparently it is more important to save the Greeks and liberated countries from starvation than the Indians and there is reluctance either to provide shipping or to reduce stocks in [Britain]."

The government pleaded the shipping shortage, which was real enough. But Mukerjee makes the telling and just point that, even at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, Churchill insisted on sustaining the British people's rations at a level far above that prevailing in India.

To put the matter brutally, millions of Indians were allowed to starve so that available shipping - including vessels normally based in India - could be used to further British purposes elsewhere. When Churchill's nation was engaged in a desperate struggle, perhaps this reflected strategic logic. But it made nonsense of his post-war claims about upholding the interests of the Indian people, and indeed of the whole paternalistic ethic by which the empire sought to justify itself.

Churchill wrote in March 1943, applauding the minister of war transport's unwillingness to release ships to move relief supplies: "A concession to one country…encourages demands from all the others. [The Indians] must learn to look after themselves as we have done… We cannot afford to send ships merely as a gesture of goodwill."

It is a ghastly story, and the book's eyewitness accounts of the consequences for the people of Bengal make harrowing reading. Most recent western histories of the war in the east mention the famine - as earlier chronicles did not. But Mukerjee's book offers the fullest account I have read.

She is right in asserting, passionately and bitterly, that British wartime governance of India was exploitative. Towards the end of her tale, however, I became less confident of her judgments. She suggests, for instance, that British agents might have been responsible for the 1945 plane crash that killed nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose, serving with the Japanese. British enthusiasm to eliminate Bose was not in doubt, but there is no evidence to suggest that they were smart enough to sabotage his aircraft on the far side of Asia.

Finally, she blames Churchill for the bloody 1947 partition of India. This seems a bridge too far. The old imperialist's enthusiasm for a Muslim Pakistan is well known, as is his matching distaste for Hindus. But he was two years out of office when partition came. Its causes seem to lie deep in the subcontinent's history and racial make-up. It is hard to make a credible case that what happened was the product of a Churchillian conspiracy.

But the broad thrust of Mukerjee's book is as sound as it is shocking. I have myself argued that Churchill's disdain for the interests of black and brown peoples besmirched his awesome wartime record. If the Bengal famine arose from circumstances beyond British control, failure to relieve the starving millions - or even to be seen to care much about them - was in substantial degree our fault.

© 2010 Times Newspapers Ltd"

I suggest you read the book before making disingenuous remarks.

Adam B.

Harold, I'm waiting for YOUR apology, describing Arab pogroms against Jews as "understandable".

Adam B.

I see Harold, re your response to Blades.

They're just an excuse for attacks on Israeli citizens instead?

Appalling.

Mustapha Bunn

Gordon Ross @ 12.52pm ... I stand corrected.The hotel bombing was not a terrorist act or indeed a patriotic act just a 'symbolic demonstration'.That should be some comfort to those who lost relatives there.
I must admit I hadn't heard of the 'typically arrogant British officer'before but then that may be just another urban myth like so many others in this sorry saga.

Derek BLADES

Neither Gordon Ross nor Harold liked me saying this:

"But what is clear is that most of the anti-Jewish violence in Britain is due to IDF violence against the Arab population in the West Bank and Lebanon."

I was commenting on the statistics published by CST which show that peaks in reported anti-Jewish acts coincide with heightened Israeli violence against Arabs. By saying "due to" both of them thought I might have meant "justified by". That was certainly not my intention and I apologise for the misunderstanding. I am no more in favour of such stupidity than of white trash throwing bricks at my Chinese wife’s house during the Korean War.

But Gordon Ross goes on to conclude that "All this goes to underline the fact that anti-Jewish prejudice in Britain is endemic." I think a more accurate interpretation is that the majority white "Christian" population of Britain is suspicious of any group that looks a bit different. That is a prejudice that is regrettably endemic in the majority groups of every country in the world. Note that the anti-Jewish acts are heavily concentrated in parts of our cities where Jews draw attention to themselves by wearing Jewish dress of some kind. The wider Jewish population is not targeted.

The British gutter-press panders to this prejudice by pillorying groups that look different in some obvious way. In the 1930s it was Jews, in the 1950s it was people from the Caribbean and now it is Gypsies and people dressed up as Arabs.

Harold

Adam B.
Up to your grubby little tricks again.

Harold

Gordon Ross,
"there is deep British popular concern over and opposition to Israel’s defensive military action in Gaza, but none at all with the attacks on Israeli civilians which gave rise to it."

There is absolutely no justification for calling the assault on Gaza "defensive".

I do not think Israeli citizens should be attacked because of the actions of their state (we in Britain and America of all people should hope that principle is generally observed).

I and others have repeatedly condemned the insicriminate rocket fire from Gaza. I do not recall any of the claque here ever condemning Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Adam B.

Blades confidently asserts that the "wider Jewish population is not targeted".

On what evidence do you base this assertion? I personally know of antisemitic attacks in rural areas.

Is it just one of your hunches?

Adam B.

Vet constructive and mature, Harold.

John.

Ganpat Ram et al.: What happened in Bengal in 1943 has to be seen as part of a very much larger picture. There were two main theatres of war in which the British forces were engaged, the European and the Far East. In the Far East the British, (as opposed to the Americans), were mainly engaged with the Japanese in Burma trying to prevent the Japanese from taking India. I doubt that a Japanese invasion would have been particularly agreeable for the Indians. In Europe the invasion of Sicily and the subsequent advance up through Italy were about to begin, (and started in July of that year), post El Alemain, (won in 1942). Preparations were in hand for the Normandy landings of 1944. An immense tonnage of merchant shipping had been sunk by German U boats so merchant ships were, in any case, in very short supply and we in Britain were on near starvation rations ourselves. I was a boy at the time and remember it well. As I have said to you before, every effort had to be expended on keeping the war effort going in the heart of the titanic struggle going on between opposing leviathans in Europe. That was where victory was going to be won or lost and the welfare of everyone in the Empire depended on our winning. Obviously. How do you imagine non-existent food was about to be brought to India in non-existent ships under the circumstances? We, in Britain, were actually growing almost all our own food ourselves. Secondly you fail to consider that there are such things as unintended consequences as well as intended. Stalin deliberately starved the kulaks to death in vast numbers, and Mao deliberately starved millions to death during the Cultural Revolution. Do you really believe that Churchill can be be put on the same footing - that he decided deliberately to eliminate huge numbers of unfortunate Indians? I suggest that (a) there was logistically nothing whatsoever that he or the government in Westminster could have done in the situation obtaining in 1943 and, (b) that the disaster in Bengal was both unintended and unwished for.
The real tragedy in India is, and has been for the past 3,500 years, the terrible iniquity of the caste system and the permanent, hereditary, slave-like subjugation of a very large percentage of the population by the brahmins and the warrior caste. In spite of Ghandi's outrage and legislation against this abominable practice it continues alive and well to this day. How many millions and millions of lives have been blighted and ruined by this? How many more millions of poor little children have had their limbs amputated or been blinded so as to beg more effectively in the streets of the large cities? How many tragic young brides have been burnt to death by their husbands and mothers-in-law in so-called "kitchen accidents" throughout the ages in India? How many small children labour in clothing factories? These are deliberate acts of oppression, mutilation and murder, yet they all continue not only unabated, but also increasingly, in India. Nothing is done to put a stop to all this, yet all you can think of is some terrible occurence (imagined to have been a deliberate act),that took place in the now distant past. Read Rohinton Mistry's "A Fine Balance". Some of this was even alluded to in "Slum Dog Millionaire". A few facts: it was the Atlee goverment who rushed through Indian independence, (which had been on the books since the 19th century). The ICS had not had time to train a fully functioning organisation to take over from them, and no-one realised that Jinnah was on his last legs. The socialists were more driven by doctrinnaire idealism than by pragmatic reality. The result was the horror of Partition which should never have happened.

Ganpat Ram

JOHN:

Your cheap laughable rant, incoherent and teeming with manifestly absurd statements is not worth a serious reply. It condemns itself and the mentality of defending the indefensible it embodies.

Britain growing almost all its own food in the Second World War years? Enough to make a cow laugh. In fact, one thing the very revealing study by Madhusree Mukerjee about Churchill and the Bengal Famine (Basic Books, 2010) is that it shows in precise tonnages the vast imports of food into Britain during those years INCLUDING FROM INDIA....Rice was, by the insistence of Churchill EXPORTED from India even in 1943 as famine was raging. Mukerjee has done the serious archival study necessary in the UK shipping records and has shown that far fromn there being a shortage of shipping, 1943 was a time when there was a GLUT of shipping avaialble to the UK. The food stocks in the UK were far in excess of requirements, as noted by the Government of India. Churchill also controlled Indian sterling surpluses in London and these could not therefore be used by India to purchase food. He blocked the Australians and Canadians and the US who were eager to send food to India. Australian ships filled with grain by-passed a starving India and added to huge stockplies in the Mediterranean that could not be used until the War was over.

Churchill as bas as Hitler? In regard to India, yes. He accompanied his refusal to give famine relief with savage racial abuse of Indians. He and his extremely influential racist adviser Cherwell suggested Indians were not worth helping because they wwere breeding too fast. This was a Hitlerian argument, as noted at the time by the Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery.

The shabbiness and disingenuousness of many of the British responses to the exposure of their hero for the mass murderer he was is a great lesson, at least for me.
It showed me that I was mistaken in assuming the British were unlike the Germans or the Japanese when it came to owning up for the indefensible enormities of their rulers. Not so at all: in fact, it is the Germans and the Japanese who have been forced to do some serious owning up about their atrocious past while the British retreat into diverting responsibility and cheap evasions.

The point is that rulers and governments are not in place for nothing: they are there to prevent the worst happening, within their power, to the people they rule. They are not there, like the man called Churchill, to pour out foul racial abuse and act the role of the cussed obstructer when it is made clear by his own officials that India needs food shipments to prevent millions starving to death.

Wavell, the British Viceroy in India at the time of the Bengal Famine, struggled futilely to get Churchill to see reason and to behave like a human being and provide famine relief before millions perished needlessly. When these millions HAD died due to Churchill's savage obduracy, Wavell wrote to the Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery: " Bengal famine was one of the worst disasters ever to befall any people under British rule, and the cost to our reputation is incalculable." He saw that it was about Britain and its reputation.

Huge shipments would not have been needed: a few ships with grain would have convinced hoarders in India that prices would drop, forcing them to put grain on the market. This would have forced prices down and saved millions of lives. All this was explained in detail repeatedly to Churchill by the British officials in India but he rejected their advice with savage racial abuse of Indians. This is all on record.

Read the book before you make further disingenuous remarks.
As for the suggestion that Churchill is excused for starving an estimated three million Indians to death because India was defended from the Japanese - the people who suggest such things condemn themselves beyond words. Would the British have forgiven him for starving millions of Britons because his regime had a role in preventing Nazi invasion? One only says such things when one has absolute contempt for the fate of other peoples.

Harold

John.
November 22nd, 2010 2:44pm
It is true that hard decisions had to be made in the war. It is not true that there was nothing Britain could have done to mitigate the famine. Certainly that was the opinion of the officials and politicians with direct responsibility for India. That Stalin and Mao proved more spectacularly incompetent and malign in no way excuses what happened in India; nor does the fact that it was Attlee and Mountbatten who were criminally negligent (at best) in the Partition; nor the fact that many practices common in some sections of Indian society are wrong.

Mustapha Bunn

"GLUT of shipping available to UK" ...."food stocks in the UK were far in excess of requirements".
So that's why we had food rationing in 1943,which by the way continued in one form or another until the 1950s',it was because we had too much food ! You could have fooled me,Ranpat.Perhaps it's time you took your rantings to a blog more suitable.

Stephanie Tohill

Sorry Mel, but "Free Speech" is a fundamental right within a democratic society. Free Speech and freedom of expression isn't just limited to things 'we like hearing'.

As for claiming that Free Speech is the way a "liberal society disappears up its own fundament" tell that to the USA. Hardly liberal yet 'Free speech and freedom of expreission' is guaranteed under the US constitution.

Stephanie Tohill

"Terry in Oz
November 12th, 2010 4:05am
I have a firm position on the muslim bile against Britain. Arrest them and deport them to whichever place they came from. And their immediate families with them.

Sounds harsh, but no family who lost a fighting man or woman should have to observe this scum taking advantage of our freedoms in order to deprive us of them permanently."

Terry

1) I don't see why people should be deported for protesting when Britain allows Free Speech and protest. That's the point of free speech. People, even military families do not enjoy a right 'not to be offended'.
2) You presume these people are from somewhere else. If they're British then they cannot be deported to 'where they came from.'
3) Their families are irrelevant. It is a fool who champions collective punishment against a group of people merely for sharing blood/national etc ties.

Ganpat Ram

Mustafa Bunn:

British responses when the inhumanity of THEIR regimes is exposed remain highly educational.

So Indians have to starve to death in millions because there is some rationing in wartime Britain? Because the master race did not have unlimited bacon and eggs (though, notoriously, in INDIA they did, at the height of the famine)?

The UK stocks of food I referred to of course took wartime rationing into account. But those rations were incomparably greater than the food availability in India. Moreover, social historians like Paul Addison have shown poorer Britons actually ate BETTER during the more equitable food distribution situation of wartime than before.

When Germans claimed they had to let Jews and Russian prisoners die of starvation because of wartime rationing, was that accepted as an excuse?

Food from India, at Churchill’s insistence, was EXPORTED even in the famine year of 1943. Indian shipping was seized by the British and could not be used to bring in food. The British, despite a glut of shipping, refused ships for this purpose. They actively prevented the US, Canada and Australia from sending food to a starving India. Indian sterling holdings were not allowed to be used for alleviating the famine. Later, India was made to pay a big sum to the UN famine relief organisation, but the British ensured India itself was not eligible for aid.

The rapacity of Churchill was astounding. His own Cabinet colleagues thought it Hitlerian. But the covered up facts are now known. Historians will increasingly study the UK shipping and food import records, and his reputation will be shattered.

John.

Ganpat Ram: Not a word about the real oppression of Indians which continues to this day. As for growing our own food, whatever you say. I was alive then and witnessed it with my own eyes. Have you never heard of the "Dig For Victory" campaign? You also wilfully ignore the logistics of the war, which I took the trouble to explain fairly simply. I would add that no tax raised in India was ever spent anywhere but in India. I repeat that under the circumstances nothing other than what happened could have happened. Mistry is another Indian who has gone to live in Canada, but he is interested in exposing outrages about which something can be done rather than ranting intemperately about things about which nothing can, nor could have been, done. As usual you fail to trake the large view and concentrate on what would appear to be not only a biased view but also a view unsupported by the facts. For instance the sataistics about food available at the time in Britain and the shipping available are simply not accurate. This leads one to suspect that your other data are faulty too.

Gordon Ross

Mustapha Bunn, Nov. 20, 4.11 am

The arrogant British officer who forbade and prevented the evacuation of the King David hotel was the party responsible for the loss of life (Jewish and non-Jewish) in the explosion. His part in the incident is referred to in the late Menachem Begin’s “The Revolt”, the second book of his autobiography.

Mr Bunn referred earlier to the “ruse” of a young girl luring “police/military” to their deaths in a bomb-rigged house. Perhaps that “may be just another urban myth“.

Derek Blades, Nov. 20, 7.00 am

“Note that the anti-Jewish acts are heavily concentrated...........where Jews draw attention to themselves by wearing Jewish dress of some kind. The wider Jewish population is not targeted”. Not so; Jews wearing ‘normal’ dress have been identified as Jews and attacked for that reason. There have been vicious attacks on Jewish teenagers at school by their non-Jewish fellow pupils, simply because they are Jewish. The attackers of one young Jewish girl knocked her to the ground and stamped upon her head.

I would indeed agree that a large part of the British MSM deserves the description “gutter press” that “panders” to the endemic British prejudice against Jews. I don’t really know what the situation is with regard to British popular sentiment and Gypsies, but I think that the British have always been quite fond of “people dressed up as” Arabs.

Harold, Nov.20, 11.09 am

There is every justification for calling the “assault” on Gaza a defensive operation. Gaza is controlled by Hamas, an organisation that refuses to recognise Israel’s right to exist and is dedicated to its destruction and the destruction of all Jews everywhere.

Having withdrawn from Gaza in the hope that it would lead to peace and an eventual settlement, Israel suffered renewed, intensified and more sophisticated rocket attacks upon its civilians, and stayed its hand for too long before taking action to try to end a totally unacceptable situation.

Harold

Gordon Ross
November 23rd, 2010 12:19pm
I'll set aside your story about why Israel withdrew to the perimeter.

In 2008, there was a ceasefire in place. Israel did not observe the terms of the ceasefire. Hamas did. The Israeli security services confirmed as much. Hamas indicated its willingness to negotiate an extension of the ceasefire. Israel ignored the offer and engaged in military attacks. Israel had manifestly not exhausted all other means to achieve peace and so cannot claim it acted in self-defence. It is simply wrong to suggest otherwise.

Mustapha Bunn

Ranpat ... your use of the term "master race" with reference to the British reinforces my earlier post.

Adam B.

Harold, revisionist nonsense. It was Israel who offered to renew the ceasefire (or hudna), whilst Hamas declared it was over and resumed rocket attacks (which had never ceased anyway).

Amazing how you can call day night, and night, day.

Gordon Ross

Further to Adam B’s response to Harold’s last posting, Harold clearly shows that he is the perfect example of the British ‘anti-Zionist’. He will condone and support any and every act of terrorism and aggression that is committed against the Jewish state and its citizens.

Ganpat Ram

here is an extract from a Times of India article (12/9/10) on the unmasking of Churchill:

"Madhusree Mukerjee's"Churchill's Secret War" is the tale of a less wholesome Churchill. It is the richly documented story of the war hero who was so blinded by his hatred of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress, Indians, Hindus and Bengalis that he facilitated a manmade famine in 1943 and contributed to anything between three and five million starvation deaths in Bengal.

What comes through Mukerjee's study is Churchill's astonishing lack of humanity. Driven by the goal of"total victory", the British prime minister's priority lay in ensuring that the home front was well looked after. He ensured that the quality of bread for British civilians was maintained and that there was a comfortable food buffer, even if this meant the diversion of merchant shipping to the Atlantic and the denial of much-needed food imports to India."

Churchill's luck has run out. His once untouchable world-wide reputation is going to wrack and ruin.

Harold

Gordon Ross
November 24th, 2010 1:06pm
I did briefly consider dignifying this with a response, but the futility was borne in upon me: you associate yourself with Adam B. whose only way of trying to keep up is by twisting what his opponents say, and you have shown yourself to have a mind closed to historical evidence - when some inconvenient facts on the Mandate were put to you, your only resort was silence.

John.

Harold: Officials and politicians in India had no idea of what the situation was like in Britain at the time - a situation which precluded anything being done to alleviate what was going on in India - according to G.R. - whose info. I regard as being inaccurate to say the least. I remember the food shortage, the bomb damage everywhere. how thin and strained people looked. If food was so abundant, where was it? If ships were so plentiful why weren't they bringing food to us as well? Food was better in the sense that it was healthier than the rubbish people fill themselves with nowadays, not in the sense that it was abundant. If the situation was so dire in Bengal why was it never mentioned by either Ghandi or Pandit Nehru, who would certainly have made a tremendous fuss had it been so?

Harold

John.
November 24th, 2010 7:50pm

"If the situation was so dire in Bengal why was it never mentioned by either Ghandi or Pandit Nehru, who would certainly have made a tremendous fuss had it been so?"

- You seem now, bizarrely enough, to be questioning whether there was a famine.

"Officials and politicians in India had no idea of what the situation was like in Britain..."

- The officials and politicians included Wavell and Leo Amery, both of whom had a very good idea of the conduct of the war.

Ganpat Ram

JOHN:

Your comments are laughable. The situation not so dire in Bengal? No, only dire enough to kill several millions from famine. Just for the record, Nehru and Gandhi, like thousands of other nationalists, were packed away in British jails at the time. An elementary school kid in India would know that. The famine was a matter of incredibly inhuman censorship by the rattled British. When as British editor of the Calcutta "Statesman", Ian stephens, horrified by the skeletal thousands dying in front of the opulent Britih clubs of Calcutta, dared to break the story of the famine and print photos, it caused monumental rage against him by Churchill's minions. It is a famed episode in modern Indian history. Someone ignorant of these things is just a joke commenting on this dreadful grim subject. Incidentally, even the Germans in Hitler's Germany ususally had better taste that to gorge in clubs on unlimited rich food within a few yards of people dying of famine, as happened with the British in India during the Churchill Famine.

Adam B.

Harold, instead of laying into Gordon Ross, who says it as it is, perhaps you would be a bit more circumspect and apologise for your contention that the antisemitic pogroms of the early 1900's, committed by Palestinian Arabs, were "understandable".

Mustapha Bunn

Ranpat,this blog was originally about Muslim extremists in Britain.
You seem to be obsessed with taking it over to attack the British and their perceived racism,not only in the 40s',but also today.
As you are so concerned with starvation etc. in India in those days perhaps you could enlighten the rest of us as to conditions there at the moment, and your views on the caste system as practised in India for centuries and,unfortunately,still practised today.
I have read that the economic miracle happening in India,2nd.highest growth rate in the world etc. has had no appreciable effect on living conditions for approximately 80% of the population,something which you will no doubt either deny or blame on the British,as usual.
Something which puzzles myself and many others in Britain is ,why,if the British are so 'racist'etc.do so many people from all parts of the globe wish to live amongst us?

Mustapha Bunn

Gordon Ross @ 12.19pm .. the story of the 'ruse' was related to myself by a relative who served for 2 years in Palestine at the time in question.Places,bodies even,were booby trapped.
In all the 60 years that I have known him this is one of only two recollections of those times that he has ever spoken to me about,the other being his attendance at nearly 100 military funerals in Palestine.He has never,I repeat,never,spoken in any manner disparaging whatsoever about the Jews either then or now.With this in mind I believe his story.
I will leave you continue to believe what you will with regard to Menachim Begin and his excuses for the loss of life at the King David.However seeing that he went on to become a politician I think that I will continue to disbelieve most of what he said.

John.

Ganpat Ram: I stick by what I've said above. You have no concept of what was going on elsewhere at that time. Of course I knew Ghandi and Nehru were in prison on and off st that time, but it stretches the bounds of credibility that they didn't know about this when they wer fullu conversant with every other detail of what was going on in the world even when in prison. It would perhaps be better to emply your time concerning yourself with alleviating some of the terrible suffering caused by the disgusting abuses that continue to be perpetrated in your home country now, rather than harping on what ies in the past and is past remedying. Your information is somewhat incorrect to say the least, if your talk of abundant food and plentiful merchant shipping in 1943 is anything to go by. As I say, I was there and can bear witness to the fact that this is the exact opposite of the actual case.

nice

"In fact, the intellectual trend in Britain is a remorseless slide towards a dark age of intolerance, reverting to a reason-suppressing, heresy-hunting culture in which certain opinions are being turned into thought crimes." Melanie Phillips 18 Sept 2010

On the evidence of the above, this may be true.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

The twaddlemeisters - Blades and Harold - back in force. O dear...

Know this, twaddlemeisters:

Israel cannot nor should trust Arab and moslems decision makers in the Middle East.None - not least those of any faction of the Palestinians - accept Israel as a Jewish state; is prepared to countenance territory swaps; and will accept anything but the return of all refugees and their offspring.

Israel, therefore, has two options:

1) Prepare for an all out cataclysmic war which stands some chance of neutering Iran's conventional and military force and economic infrastructure; the same with regard to Hizbollah, Hamas and Syria or

2) face an inceasingly real existential threat from Iran and it's proxies.

The hogwash spouted by the twaddlemeisters will not alter this reality, If anything, the more the twaddle enters conventional wisdom, the more likely it will be that this cataclysm comes to pass.

The Arabs and moslems have never changed their tune towards the Jews in general and Israel in particular. World opinion has rarely been free of rabid anti Zionism and/or semitism (cherish the distinction, if it lubricates your spirit). Israel should play the opinion game, to be sure, but prepare for the showdown.

Twaddlemeisters are, in my view, the guarantors of bloodshed, death and destruction. They will, I am sure, reap the whirlwind.

Perhaps war between North Korea US/South Korea will be whistle for the kick off for Israel.

Ganpat Ram

Churchill's reputation is finally on the slide. Here is an extract from the Time magazine review of the Mukerjee book on the 1943 Bengal Famine and Churchill's role in it, "Churchill's Secret War":

"As Mukerjee’s accounts demonstrate, some of India’s grain was also exported to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to meet needs there, even though the island wasn’t experiencing the same hardship; Australian wheat sailed past Indian cities (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets) to depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans; and offers of American and Canadian food aid were turned down. India was not permitted to use its own sterling reserves, or indeed its own ships, to import food. And because the British government paid inflated prices in the open market to ensure supplies, grain became unaffordable for ordinary Indians. Lord Wavell, appointed Viceroy of India that fateful year, considered the Churchill government’s attitude to India “negligent, hostile and contemptuous.”

Mukerjee’s prose is all the more devastating because she refuses to voice the outrage most readers will feel on reading her exhaustively researched, footnoted facts. The way in which Britain’s wartime financial arrangements and requisitioning of Indian supplies laid the ground for famine; the exchanges between the essentially decent Amery and the bumptious Churchill; the racism of Churchill’s odious aide, paymaster general Lord Cherwell, who denied India famine relief and recommended most of the logistical decisions that were to cost so many lives — all are described in a compelling narrative.

Churchill said that history would judge him kindly because he intended to write it himself. The self-serving but elegant volumes he authored on the war led the Nobel Committee, unable in all conscience to bestow him an award for peace, to give him, astonishingly, the Nobel Prize for Literature — an unwitting tribute to the fictional qualities inherent in Churchill’s self-justifying embellishments. Mukerjee’s book depicts a truth more awful than any fiction."

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Harold: "I and others have repeatedly condemned the insicriminate rocket fire from Gaza. I do not recall any of the claque here ever condemning Israel's treatment of Palestinians."

No you haven't. Nor have you ever come clean about why you villify israel, like a infected bowel on laxatives, without EVER contextualising one criticism with any focus at all on the execrable nature of every sing moslem regime in the Middle East.

Moreover, the likes of nasty, puffed-up little propagandists like you would never think it worth mentioning that hard on the heels of a comprehensive opinion survey showing that most Palestinians support a two-state solution only as a stepping stone to a one state solution after Israel has been destroyed, and of a Palestinian Authority report denying any Jewish connection to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, we now have the third emphatic statement of Palestinian rejection of peace and its pre-requisites in under two weeks, this time from the Fatah Revolutionary Council.

You lot are a disgrace, as your dear old Wikileaks has also made perfectly clear.

Peace? Settlements? Give us a break. There will be no peace and the "new" culture of Wikileaks "honesty" should help cut through the claptrap and twaddle.

Gordon Ross

Good on ya, John Roosevelt, that's telling 'em !