This is ironic and actually very funny... https://www.theguardian.com/politic...k-over-brexit-bad-atmosphere?CMP=share_btn_fb
I'm glad you find it funny I find it rather sad, and what he says is 100% true - which is unusual for a link on here.
No one pretends the British Empire was perfect, but dear Alex is comparing it to the Nazis. **** off to Barcelona then, snowflake Alex, and I hope you don't have any sympathy for the Catalan cause because you're liable to be beaten around the head and thrown in jail by the fascist Spanish government (and don't expect any help from the EU when it happens)
The ironic thing Goldie is he wants to leave the UK because of Brexit and us leaving the EU and go to Barcelona! Who by the way for those that don't understand want independence. He should have moved to Brussels. The funniest thing was some of the comments I read saying "It is so sad"
I don't think that he was comparing atrocities of the British Empire to the Nazis Goldie - the comparison he was making was to do with how both countries have confronted their own history. Every German is aware of the atrocities of their grandparents, and the country has lived with that shame for many years. As the writer says most British people are either not aware of the atrocities of the British Empire, or believe the whole thing had a positive aspect to it. In fact many documents and papers documenting human rights violations of the British have been deleted by successive British governments. If you have strong nerves then read up on some of the human rights violations committed by the British in countries like Aden, South Africa, Malaysia or Kenya. It was, after all, the British who invented the idea of the concentration camp.
For me, there is no comparison, Cologne. I'm not saying there aren't things to be ashamed of, that happened during the many centuries over which the British Empire subsisted. Most people have heard of the Amritsar massacre for example. But there were also peace keeping functions. Look what happened between India and Pakistan when the Brits moved out. Of course you will find human rights violations, particularly if you apply C21st human rights laws to C18th or C19th events. The camps in South Africa started as refugee camps, and then turned, as you say, into something like concentration camps - shameful because many civilians died of disease but they did not involve the deliberate torture and murder of inmates as the Nazi camps did. Furthermore, the disease did not just affect the Boer civilians. British soldiers were dying at the same rate. These facts have never been hidden from the public.
The question is an interpretation of 'far right'. The AfD is a mixture of various trends and ideas - remember that Nigel Farage was in Germany helping their election campaign so if they are 'far right' then Ukip are as well. Seen through the eyes of the international media anything of that type which happens in Germany is going to be blown up out of all proportion, because of history. The truth is that immigrants are, generally, safer on the streets here than they currently are in the UK - and that is the acid test. Whilst there may be some far right wing groups in Germany there are very few of them who would identify with the actions of the Nazis of the past - no more than in any other country.
We're not talking about the 18th or 19th centuries Goldie. You say that torture was not involved in those camps ? 10% of the Boar population died in British concentration camps - including 22,000 children. But turning the clock forward a little. The torture centres of Aden in the 1960s for example. The 500,000 civilians in the concentration camps of Malaysia (1950). The internment camps of Cyprus, which were torture camps of the worst kind - between 1955 and 1959. The worst of all the concentration camps in Kenya (1950s) which contained 1.5 million people - if torture wasn't involved in all cases, then cramped insanitary conditions, starvation and disease did the rest. There again we have the use of chemical weapons in putting down the Iraqi revolution of the 1920s. The list could go on and on Goldie - a few people might be aware of the Amritsar massacre, because of the film about Gandhi, but the rest is more or less ignored, although many of these violations occurred after 1945. The difference is that much of Britain's history is glossed over in comparison to that of other countries.
There's a difference between deliberately starving people to death, herding them into gas chambers, carrying out heinous medical experiments on children etc which is torture, and keeping civilians in camps where disease takes the lives of both the captives and those running the camps. Of the examples you give, let's take Cyprus where Jews surviving the Nazi Holocaust were held, pending transfer to Israel. This was done under the auspices of the UN as I understand it. Conditions were harsh, over crowding etc . 2000 children were born in the camps, 400 people died (most of old age, I imagine) You say they were torture centres of the worst kind ie comparible to the Nazi's, Pol Pot etc. Where's you evidence for this, Cologne?
With respect to Cyprus this has nothing to do with Jews in transit, but rather with a British response to a Cypriot rebel campaign between 1955 and 1959 (a completely different case, and period). This involved the rounding up of innocent civilians - torture used involved 1. Regular beatings, sometimes with whips embedded with shards of iron. 2. Waterboarding. 3. Summary executions 4. Having hot peppers rubbed into eyeballs (this was the favoured method with children). However - the numbers involved here were not as big as in other places. For the last time - I am not saying that you can directly compare one atrocity with another, and think it futile to do that. As if you can excuse a human rights violation by saying that another one was worse. The comparison is not here - but rather in the historical consciousness of it. Germany is rightly ashamed of it's history, whereas many Britons do not even know their own.
You cannot excuse a human rights violation by reference to one worse, but you can certainly say that one is worse than another. There's a difference between murder (Germany 1939-45) and negligent treatment of prisoners (British camps in South Africa). You and Alex are making a comparison between the British Empire and the Nazis. Read your last sentence... I don't know much about this Cypriot terrorist campaign, and after a quick Google search, can find no references to torture, still less torture of children. If it's as bad as you say it is, surely it would be well documented, even if not by the British establishment?
Neither myself nore Alex are comparing on this level Goldie. We are saying that the difference lies in consciousness over the past. If you want to find reference to Cyprus then look up the article Friday Jan. 2018 in the Guardian entitled ''Cypriot veterans win right to claim damages over UK. torture claims''. What is significant is that the UK. Government had been trying to prevent this for around 60 years by claiming that, because it happened in Cyprus, and that country has a very strict Statute of Limitations - that crimes commited by the colonial power of the time were null and void. They later had to retract and 20 million pounds has since been paid in compensation to over 5,000 (surviving) victims. Naturally the settlement of this didn't reach the front pages, because it doesn't support Britain's image of itself. However, this is small scale - look at the history of Malaysia and Kenya and you will see that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I'm old enough to remember the Mau Mau insurrection when they were brutally killing white settlers, other civilians and members of other Kenyan tribes. The Brits came down hard on them, and there were other Kenyan tribes that supported the British. I'm sure there were atrocities on both sides.
Interesting that we have moved on from Cyprus ? In Kenya the numbers are much more impressive - no less than 1.5 Million Kikuyu herded into either concentration camps, or ''enclosed villages'', thousands of them tortured, maimed or executed. These were not actually Mau Mau, but rather people thought to be sympathetic to them. Again we have a recognition of this 50/60 years later (which had been hushed up in the interim period) when compensation was paid by William Hague in 2003. Once again it did not reach the headlines of many papers in the UK. again for the obvious reasons. Before we move onto Malaysia, you should remember where Harry Roberts (the one we used to sing about on the terraces when winding up the police in the 60s and 70s) actually developed the taste for killing.
