colonialism

In 1948, 500 Palestinian towns and villages were abandoned, evacuated or destroyed. More than 70,000 Palestinian houses were demolished. In the Jaffa area, 96% of the villages were totally destroyed. As Jewish forces proceeded with the ethnic cleansing of territories both within and outside the UN-allotted borders of the Jewish state, a British army of 70,000 refused to intervene, despite being charged under the mandate with the protection of the civilian population.

When the East India Company was first established on new year’s eve 1600, Mughal India commanded 22 per cent of global GDP, with Britain producing less than a tenth as much. By the time Britain finally departed India’s shores three and a half centuries later, its national income was more than 50 per cent greater than its former colony.

One day [British colonial officer] Smith was given a secret file containing a minute that ordered him to get involved in regional elections taking place in the late 1950s in the run up to independence [in Nigeria]. He was to make vehicles, staff and other resources available to the NCNC colleagues of Okotie-Eboh who was standing in the elections. Smith was shocked at the request. He explained that the election had to be fixed because the plan was that the Northern region would hold power on independence...

Asked if such manipulation of an election result could have happened Professor Anderson, Director of the African Studies Centre at Oxford University, replied: “In almost every single colony the British attempted to manipulate the result to their advantage.... I would be surprised if they had not done so.”

During the famine of 1899-1900, when 143,000 Beraris died directly from starvation, the province exported not only tens of thousands of bales of cotton but an incredible 747,000 bushels of grain.

Over 60 years ago 6-7 million people perished in Bengal and in the neighboring provinces of Bihar, Orissa and Assam in 1943-1945 when the price of rice doubled and then finally quadrupled - those living on the edge who could not afford to buy food simply perished under the merciless scorched earth policy of the racist British colonial administration of British-occupied India

In the context of homeland Britain Churchill had argued that food supplies were vital for maintaining national morale. He told the War Cabinet on the thirty first of March 1941 that it was essential ‘to import sufficient to maintain the staying power of the people, even if this meant a somewhat slower development of our service programmes.’ But two years later the War Cabinet wasn’t prepared to divert shipping and food supplies to ease Indian hunger.