Alexander Cockburn Quotes

The British wanted to turn over control of India to Nehru's Congress Party and make India independent. However, there had been sectarian rioting and murder between Muslims and all the other religions of India—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Christians. Wavell was not confident that Nehru and Congress could control the situation and huge massacres would result. Gandhi, who normally did everything to avoid violence, this time placed Indian independence first and demanded continuation of the complete transition process including the police and military powers. This is one of the very few occasions on which non-violence was not pre-eminent for Gandhi.

Churchill was reported to be so angry and exasperated that his face turned red and he was sputtering. During World War II, Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian Nationalists were leading protests against British control of India. This not only bogged down British soldiers surprising the nationalists rather than fighting in Burma or in other war theaters, but India supplied a huge number of battalions to the British Army the world over and if that manpower dried up, the allied war effort would suffer. The American State Department wanted Churchill to announce that after Japan was defeated, there would be a process toward self-government. This way, they thought, the Indians would redouble their effort to defeat the Japanese and stop the then current protests and strikes. Churchill was strongly opposed to any diminution of the British Empire, but beyond that, he knew India quite well and realized that at any hint of Independence the large Muslim minority in India would insist on autonomy or a partition of the country and use sectarian violence and terror to intimidate the Indian Congress party and the British, but the major victims of the terror—the Hindus and the Sikhs would not remain passive, but would retaliate in kind. President Roosevelt was in the midst of planning the Normandy Landings of the D-Day invasion and did not want to pressure Churchill and the British at this point in time, so the door to independence was not opened during the war and Britain had to deal with the protests throughout. However, when, after the war, the Labor Government, started a process toward Indian independence which resulted in exactly what Churchill predicted. At least 2 million Indians were slaughtered in the internecine terrorist cycles of fear and retaliation motivated terror attacks what were so extensive that the British military could not really control it.

He chronicled the early Portuguese entry into South-East Asia in the sixteenth century. Siam became Thailand.

In 1832 the President sent Edmund Roberts, a New Hampshire sea captain, to arrange commercial treaties with Asian countries such as Burma, Indo-China, Siam and Japan:

See the American ambassador’s assessment after the war began {41089}

She was addressing economic domination.

While the American Civil War was raging, Pinyin Hong Xiuquan started a quasi Christian religion (he claimed to be the brother of Jesus Christ) in China which initiated a war of extermination with the Manchus and other religions. More than 20 million Chinese were killed in a religious war that proportionately killed more Chinese than the Nazis killed in Europeans. Though hardly noticed in America and Europe, the religious war of extermination had been so traumatic that dissident religions are the most feared problem by Chinese modern leaders—more so than Capitalists, Taiwan or any of the modern ‘enemies’. It is the Falun Gong and the Tibetan Buddhists who the leadership fear might grow into another Yellow Turban movement—the worst Trauma of Chinese History—even worse than the Japanese WWII invasion. Hence the irrational view of the Chinese leadership towards religions they cannot control. See {612649} and {612649}. In Western terms as Wiesel put it, the Chinese leadership suppression of Tibet makes little or no sense, but current Chinese leadership is paranoid as a result of its history.

What makes the situation even more complicated is that most of the land of the Middle East has been governed by a succession of Empires who may have drawn the lines differently from the previous governing dynasty. For example, the land that is Israel today, has been governed by Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Romans, various Arab dynasties, Turkey, England, and the Jews again. Turkey governed it for the longest period.

Ford was then a member of Congress. This was known as the “Domino Theory” and was the strategic reason that sending troops to Vietnam was in America’s vital Interest. However, the Domino Theory was incorrect. Vietnam did fall to the Communists, and yet NONE of the countries became communist. Actually, they became even more democratic.

This was his major justification for occupying and annexing the Crimea. He had a good historical point. The Crimea had been a part of Russia for centuries, and many Russians had died defending it over the years. At the high pont of the strength of the Soviet Union, the Soviet leadership reorganzied the "states" of the nation and placed the Crimea in the State of Ukraine -- which they also considered part of Russia and from where the great Russian hero, Alexander Nevsky came and unified Russia. When the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine became an independent coutry and assumed Crimea belonged to it, based in the last administrative reorganization of the area before the break-up. However, most of the commerce in Crimea was with Russia proper and not Ukraine. And the Crimeans were mostly ethnic Russians or Taters--a minority who had no historical or cultural ties to Ukraine. Neither group spoke Ukrainian much. 90 percent of the Crimeans wanted to Remain with Russia and not be part of Ukraine. This was the main reason that the Russians were so easily able to send armed soldiers in civillian dress into Crimea to size the territory--the vast majority of the indigineous Crimean poluation wanted them there and strongly favored annexation claiming that they had the right as American President Woodrow Wilson put it to "self determination". Bit Ukraine would hot allow a formal plebicite. So Russia sized Crimea, had the plebicite, and based on the results and the desires of Putin and the Russian leadership, annexed Crimea.