Rinzai School thread debris

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I will laugh...

[Cain]

Uh, Nephew, you are aware the British probably killed more Indians through deliberate acts of policy than the Thuggee sect or insane Hindu traditions ever did, right?  Various massacres and famines, both of which were very much the responsibility of the British, took place during the Raj period.  The lack of seriousness with which the British authorities took public health killed upwards of 48 million people from 1817-1917.

And that the French under Napoleon were not spreading democracy throughout Europe and, in fact, according to a contemporary (no less than Thomas Paine) was spreading autocracy and misery, trampling the traditional rights of people in every country he invaded and ruling through superior force?  Hell, Napoleon re-instituted a hereditary monarchy with absolute power vested in the position of Emperor (as opposed to the French monarchy in existence before the Revolution, where fedual lords kept the power of Versailles in check, to a degree) under a massively centralized French state.

Knowing actual history might help your case here.

[Cain]

In fact, I think it's time to remind everyone exactly how British imperialism operated in Sri Lanka:

You see some pretty sick stuff when you do my job, but I just read something sicker than any Congo cannibal buffet. It's an article by a posh little limey named Jeremey Brown condemning the Sri Lankan government for being too messy in putting down the LTTE, and demanding that we stop buying the cheap textiles the poor Sinhalese make their living churning out.

What's sick about this is that the British establishment destroyed the Sinhalese people completely. Completely and purposely, sadistically. Stole their land, humiliated and massacred their government, made it Imperial policy to erase every shred of self-respect the Sinhalese had left.  You can talk about the Nazis all day long, but for my money nothing they did was as gross as what you find out when you actually look into the history of British-Sinhalese relations. If you can even call them "relations"; I guess a murder-rape is a relation, sort of.

But nobody knows about it. Weird, huh? Nothing weirds me out more than the total news blackout the Brits have managed to put on all the sick shit they did to brown and black people all over the world. They had a system, and it worked. They'd grab some paradise island in the tropics, use the Royal Navy to wall it off from the rest of the world, and crush the local tribe. If the locals resisted, the Brits would starve them to death, shoot them down, infect them with smallpox or get them addicted to opium–whatever they had to do to gang-rape the locals so bad that they'd lose the will to resist.

With the Dutch trade rivals gone, the Brits had only one problem left: the damned natives, the Sinhala, or "Kandyans" as they were called back then. That dumb name, "Kandyans," came from the fact that their main city was Kandy, up in the highlands in the south of the island, the fat part of the teardrop. The Sinhala lived in the highlands for the simple reason that it was a little cooler, not as totally malarial, up there compared to the stinking coastal marshes.

By all accounts, the Sinhala/Kandyans were harmless slackers, who didn't need or want much from the outside world. All they asked was for people to leave them alone up on their big rocky highlands to do their Buddhist thing. Unfortunately that wasn't British policy. It irked the redcoats that Kandy still had a king, an army, all this impudent baggage that went with independence. The British decided to break the Sinhalese completely, crush the whole society.

You have to remember that by this time, the early 1800s, the Brits have perfected their techniques in little experiments all over the world. Those Clockwork Orange shrinks were amateurs compared to the Imperial Civil Service. They had dozens of ways of undermining native kingdoms.

British administrators were trained to do a kind of rough, quick sociological sketch of the natives, get a sense of the fault lines and then figure out how to exploit them. The Brits saw fast that the Kandyans were a sluggish bunch of people divided into rigid castes in the classic subcontinent pattern. That made it easy: the Brits made two big castes their official pets and shunned the others, setting up a violent hate between different parts of Sinhalese society. That guaranteed that if the diehard Sinhalese/Kandyan nationalists ever revolted, the teacher's-pet castes would have a good selfish reason to help massacre them.

And this is where another standard Brit policy came into play–a real smart one that we ought to be imitating: use native auxiliaries, not homeland troops, as much as possible. For all kinds of reasons, but here are the main ones:

1. If you bring in troops from some remote part of the Empire to do your dirty work, it's those troops, those faces and accents, the locals will remember, and hate, for generations. So you, the sly little pink Brit administrator, can stroll in later and commiserate with the locals as they show you around their burned huts, bayoneted kids, etc., and even say with a straight face, "Oh my, those auxiliaries from wherever, what ruddy heathens, eh? Outrageous, I shall certainly let Whitehall know about these abuses!" Then, of course, you get in your sedan chair, close the curtains and chuckle all the way home to where your little bum-boy is waiting.

2. Nobody back in London counts casualties as long as it's Malay mercs dying. You can lose a lot of them–and a lot of Malays did die fighting the Sinhala, especially in the total rout of a malaria-sapped Brit/Malay force at the Mahaveli River in 1803–but nobody is going to make a fuss in the Times of London (Mister Jeremy Brown's paper, as you may recall). If you're lucky they'll pop off before payday and you can keep their payroll for that estate in Shropshire.

3. Dropping hot-blooded feisty Malay muslims with guns far from home and making them fight Sinhalese bleeds Malay society as well as Sinhalese. Left in peace, Malays could be trouble–a proud, warlike people. So by sending them to die in Sri Lanka, you're diverting all that young, angry Malay blood away from SE Asia and using it to bleed Kandy (bleed Kandy–I like that!). Two birds, one bloodsoaked stone.

You see why I get impatient with you gullible suckers yammering about the fucking Nazis? The Nazis were retards, a white-trash tantrum, an eighth-grade chem-class pipe bomb, a quick-fizzle flash in the pan, compared to the Brits, the scariest motherfuckers ever to butt-fuck the planet.

The mercenaries the Brits sent to crush the Kandyans were Malays, muslims from SE Asia who didn't need a lot of pep talks to slaughter South Asian Buddhists (and steal their chickens). That was life for the Brits back then, at the top of their game: picking up pieces from one part of the world and dropping them where they'd do the most harm, half the world away. "Ah yes, let's ferry some Malay mercs to Kandy, that should give the bloody idol-worshippers something to think about!"

Destroying Buddhism was a big part of Brit policy. The Buddhist routine, the temples, begging monks, long boring prayers–it was the glue that kept Kandy together. So the Brits decided to destroy it. They even said so, in private memos to each other. They weren't shy in them days. Here's the Brit governor in 1807: "Reliance on Buddhism must be destroyed. Make sure all [village] chiefs are Christian."

Up to 1818, the Brits had a blast messing with doomed Sinhala rebellions, trying out CI recipes like Frankenstein guesting on Rachael Ray. A good time was had by all, except the Sinhalese. They had a very, very bad time, and it was about to get worse.

See, another constant you'll find in Brit imperial policy is that although they're very sly and patient, they have a very good sense of when to cut the crap and just wipe out a tribe that's been annoying them for too long. They were getting sick of the Sinhalese, with all their bickering and intrigues; the redcoats just weren't enjoying the Col. Kurtz game the way they used to. So boom: the "kill'em all" era begins.

But they did it smart, not like the idiot boastful Nazis y'all love to obsess on. I bet every one on the planet can name the Nazi death camps, but I'd be surprised if more than, say, a half dozen people outside Sri Lanka can name the policy the Brits used to destroy the Sinhala for good.

Anybody? Didn't think so. See, here's another little tip for up'n'coming genocidaires out there: always pick the most boring name possible. Those fucking Nazis, with their heavy-metal jewelry and titles! Dopes! You want extermination programs with names that put everybody to sleep.

And that's why in 1818 Britain brought "the wasteland policy" to Kandy. They could have called it what that Liberian wacko called his campaign: "Operation No Living Thing." That's what it meant: Brit-led troops "draining the sea" the Sinhala irregulars swam in by burning every hut, every field, and killing every animal in every village they suspected of harboring "rebels."

Hey, that's another key Brit CI techniques: that word "rebels." Blows me away: how can a Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, fighting for the country his people have owned for a hundred generations, be a "rebel"? And the pipsqueak redcoat officer hunting him down, who was born and raised in fucking London–he's not the "rebel," he's the forces of law and order, the rightful authorities. Quite a racket if you have the sheer, sociopathic nerve to say it with a straight face. (I'm talking to you, Mister Jeremy Brown!)

And then the nastiest CI weapon of all, the demographic bomb. This was a Brit specialty all over the world (see Fiji for a weirdly similar case). The Brits ran India, so they had total control over millions of obedient Tamil peasants who were starving, desperate, and ready to go anywhere, just pile into the hold of a ship and get out to cut cane or plant rice in some place that may as well have been on the Moon for all they knew.

So along with the massacre/reprisals, the Brits came up with one of their classic two-birds-one-stone plans: to neutralize the Sinhalese, let's import huge hordes of Tamils from India! They're cheap and docile and they'll give the Sinhala something to keep them busy even after we have to leave the island, haw! And meanwhile they'll drive the price of labor down even further! Brilliant, chaps, absolutely brilliant!

And they did it. Worked so well it's still working today.

Gosh, I wonder if the British ever used policies like this elsewhere?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Uh, Nephew, you are aware the British probably killed more Indians through deliberate acts of policy than the Thuggee sect or insane Hindu traditions ever did, right?  Various massacres and famines, both of which were very much the responsibility of the British, took place during the Raj period.  The lack of seriousness with which the British authorities took public health killed upwards of 48 million people from 1817-1917.

And that the French under Napoleon were not spreading democracy throughout Europe and, in fact, according to a contemporary (no less than Thomas Paine) was spreading autocracy and misery, trampling the traditional rights of people in every country he invaded and ruling through superior force?  Hell, Napoleon re-instituted a hereditary monarchy with absolute power vested in the position of Emperor (as opposed to the French monarchy in existence before the Revolution, where fedual lords kept the power of Versailles in check, to a degree) under a massively centralized French state.

Knowing actual history might help your case here.

I'm not arguing for the atrocities of the British Empire or downplaying them. I was using other examples in history that go along the lines of Perry forcibly opening Japan up to trade with the US.

As far as Napoleon goes it's not like it's this one dictator single handedly going in and forcing everyone under his rule. He needed soldiers to do that. Soldiers who remembered the Revolution and its ideas. I'm well aware that Napoleon killed the Republic, just as I'm aware of what the British were capable (I am Irish, after all).

Actually, do you know what brutal imperialism is good for? Pissing off people to the point where they demand their rights and a representative government. People don't care about that sort of thing unless it starts to affect them personally. Please don't suggest that I don't know what I'm talking about or I don't know any actual history. I'm looking at the positive effects of negative events.

Edit-- In other words, yeah history's pretty fucked up, but at least for some of these events some good came out of it. You can tell me that I'm talking out of my ass if you want, and we'll have to agree to disagree. But if you do that, you'll also have to address what Roger said about the conquistadors. Unless of course, Spanish brutality in the New World is more excusable.

[Freeky]

learning fails for some...

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Thank you all for expressing your views, I'm going to take some time to brush-up on my history as well 

[Doktor Howl]

Thank you all for expressing your views,

:chokeonadick:

Damn.  Need to add more emotes.

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stick: stop procrastinating

[Nephew Twiddleton]

You know what Cain:

I'm looking at this from the wrong angle. Yeah some good stuff came out of it, but, is it worth the human cost?

I know my history, but I'm gonna take a step back from my interpretation and reassess. I'm sure my starving dead ancestors are rolling in their graves. You don't make new rules unless they're already broken. Some things should not be excused, despite what silver linings they may have. I was wrong.

[Jenne]

...but it was an interesting position to come from, Nevvie Twid.  It was sort of a "you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs" point of view.  There are SOME historians out there who will espouse this sort of thing.  But it's not a universalist/all-things-being-equal idea, more of a "how things turned out is much better than the mess that was before."  

IS so-called democracy (there's no PURE model of ANYTHING in the universe when it comes to political ideologies) so much better than the fascism it purports to supplant?  ARE the military coups that often precede them (whether artificially forced (and who's to determine what's artificial and what's not? I guess indigenous works better here) or not) so very necessary or necessarily evil?

Anyway, gave me food for thought, though I think I suscribe to Cain's POV much more recently and deeply.

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Is it possible to develop a way that operates without violence?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

...but it was an interesting position to come from, Nevvie Twid.  It was sort of a "you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs" point of view.  There are SOME historians out there who will espouse this sort of thing.  But it's not a universalist/all-things-being-equal idea, more of a "how things turned out is much better than the mess that was before."  

IS so-called democracy (there's no PURE model of ANYTHING in the universe when it comes to political ideologies) so much better than the fascism it purports to supplant?  ARE the military coups that often precede them (whether artificially forced (and who's to determine what's artificial and what's not? I guess indigenous works better here) or not) so very necessary or necessarily evil?

Anyway, gave me food for thought, though I think I suscribe to Cain's POV much more recently and deeply.

Thanks Jenne.

I guess that what sparked that was a realization that history is really the history of war. Wars are the defining catalysts of history, and it seems like nothing gets done without violence. And of course, when that sort of thing happens there's a lot of grey.

The US was born out of violence and clever twisting of news and ideas by our patriots, and it created a great nation that basically wiped out the natives until they were exotic and cool, kept slavery legal until the country split for economic and cultural reasons, etc. And this sort of thing keeps happening, but yet, people who are allied with us generally have a positive view of our country despite its history and current entanglements. Why is that?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Is it possible to develop a way that operates without violence?

It already exists. Everything that happens has a violent and non-violent cause. The violent cause is usually the successful one however, especially since the figurehead of the non-violent movement is pretty much destined to be assassinated anyway.

Example: Ireland, after several failed revolutions, the last of which had almost no public support (due to the fact that it happened in the middle of WWI), gains its independence after said revolutionaries are hanged, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood gets an influx of new recruits who are angry about it. Rampant assassinations ensue until the British say, "ok here's the deal. Take this agreement or we're going to send in the whole fucking army, who, by the way, are pretty hardened from trench warfare with the Germans." Deal includes a partition of Ireland. The Irish Civil War breaks out almost immediately, and all the terrorist activities there today are rooted in this deal.

Example: Gandhi, a rare example, manages to non-violently defeat the British Empire and secure Indian independence. He goes on to get assassinated, and India ends up becoming a nuclear power with frequent and bloody sectarian violence, as well as a modest, but active and destructive Maoist insurgency in progress.

If it's going to happen and history is going to take note, someone is going to be forcibly removed from the planet.

[Jenne]

...but it was an interesting position to come from, Nevvie Twid.  It was sort of a "you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs" point of view.  There are SOME historians out there who will espouse this sort of thing.  But it's not a universalist/all-things-being-equal idea, more of a "how things turned out is much better than the mess that was before." 

IS so-called democracy (there's no PURE model of ANYTHING in the universe when it comes to political ideologies) so much better than the fascism it purports to supplant?  ARE the military coups that often precede them (whether artificially forced (and who's to determine what's artificial and what's not? I guess indigenous works better here) or not) so very necessary or necessarily evil?

Anyway, gave me food for thought, though I think I suscribe to Cain's POV much more recently and deeply.

Thanks Jenne.

I guess that what sparked that was a realization that history is really the history of war. Wars are the defining catalysts of history, and it seems like nothing gets done without violence. And of course, when that sort of thing happens there's a lot of grey.

The US was born out of violence and clever twisting of news and ideas by our patriots, and it created a great nation that basically wiped out the natives until they were exotic and cool, kept slavery legal until the country split for economic and cultural reasons, etc. And this sort of thing keeps happening, but yet, people who are allied with us generally have a positive view of our country despite its history and current entanglements. Why is that?

Because, really, scratch the surface, and all governments and all countries have their deep-rooted problems that are like unto a cancer.  None are exempt.  Though there are many that will not admit this.  The US has a big fucking chip on its shoulder, or has had since the 1950's and '60's...but I think that might be changing with some of our fringes (read: some who are better-informed than others).  Our hegemony is waning, and many are coming to accept this.

The US still offers hope of many things and fulfillment in still others, whereas it's harder to obtain them from elsewhere.  Hard as it is to live here for a lot, for most it's still pretty easy, relatively.  That last word, that adverb, is an important one.

so...that's why...

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Is it possible to develop a way that operates without violence?

especially since the figurehead of the non-violent movement is pretty much destined to be assassinated anyway.

There's that Machiavellian maxim:  overthrown, or, assassinated if too violent?

Which would have developed into game theory and still originates from the fact that people cannot seem to level with the evolution of an executive ordering faculty emergent in mankind...

They say good fences make good neighbors, but then "over 50% of the root complex being in my property blah blah blah".  The rules are meant to be broken perhaps because they cannot be seen as fixed in the first place.  Then we deny an "objective" reference point and human arbitration comes into play for the conflict of intentions.  How do we otherwise align intentions?