Monday 13 July 2009

The game of a hundred thousand years.

I tend to agree with Catherine Austin-Fitts, it’s a slow burn.


There is more than enough oil in the world. There is more than enough food in the world. There is no man made global warming.


So how does this affect you?


Well you’ve been programmed to believe that you are part of an advanced cultural dynamic that has raped the planet. You believe that you are part of that, no matter how guilty you feel. Well you are not.


The opening lines of this post expose you to three shibboleths.


As far as TPTB are concerned there is a global market for the things that the aboriginals currently consume.


These highly prized items are to be put out to the highest bidder on the rigged markets.


What are these highly prized items? Myrrh, frankincense, gold? No food and water.


Remember when they shut down the mines. Now we are to be screwed for energy. The whole game is about coercion. No choice.


So read this and whenever you see the word India/Bengal think English/Britain (Mid-West/USofA) soon.


“While famines had occurred in the Indian sub-continent before British occupation, in many instances the consequences of monsoonal failure and resultant drought were addressed urgently by the indigenous rulers. Thus irrigation works, public works employment and food purchase and distribution were useful responses to such impending disasters.


The British brought an unsympathetic and ruthless economic agenda to India. Economic exploitation damaged the indigenous Indian economy and resulted in a decline in the standard of living. The British disinclination to respond with urgency and vigour to food deficits resulted in a succession of about 2 dozen appalling famines during the British occupation of India.


These famines swept away tens of millions of people [1-10]. One of the worst famines was that of 1770 that killed an estimated 10 million people in Bengal (one third of the population) and which was exacerbated by the rapacity of the East India Company [1-3,10]. Bengal suffered further famines in 1783, 1866, 1873-74, 1892, 1897 and 1943-44 [1].


The extraordinary continuing aspect of this 2 century Holocaust was the exacerbation and indeed the creation of famine by the sequestration and export of food for enhanced commercial gain. Thus in severe Indian famines in the mid-19th century (by which time the British authorities were thoroughly familiar with this sort of event) export of grain was permitted on the grounds of non-intervention in trade 6. This horrendous scourge [8,9] continued into the 20th century. Thus Rajasthan suffered a succession of severe scarcities and famines from 1899-1941, a very severe famine occurring in 1939-1940 [8]. The culmination of this saga of immense human suffering was the Bengal famine of 1943-44 [1-7].



Profiteering, export, denial and death


With the entry of Japan into World War 2 and its conquest of South East Asia, including Burma, the British authorities took strategic steps that affected the availability of food in Bengal. Food was required for soldiers, workers in industrial cities such as Calcutta and for export to other parts of the Empire. The grain import requirement of nearly 2 million tons to make up for deficiencies in Indian production was progressively cut back to a disastrous degree.


Loss of rice from Burma and ineffective government controls on hoarding and profiteering led inevitably to enormous price rises. Thus it can be estimated that the price of rice in Dacca increased about 4-fold in the period from March 1943 to October 1943. Bengalis having to purchase food (e.g landless labourers) suffered immensely - thus it is estimated that about 30% of one particular labourer class died in the famine.


The effects of the famine were exacerbated by a strategic policy of "denial" of potential resources from the Japanese. This involved acquisition of surplus food stocks from parts of Bengal together with the seizure or destruction of tens of thousands of boats crucial for fishing and for food acquisition and distribution in a waterway-rich country.


A major feature of this famine was the inability of the authorities to keep rice prices down to affordable levels and hence make food available to the suffering millions. For a variety of reasons the rice market "froze" with dealers and millions of producers retaining supplies. Lack of supplies from other Indian provinces due to self-regulating food control powers given to the provinces in 1941 (enacted a week before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour) compounded the problem for Bengal. Heavy handed government intervention, a massive overall Indian food deficit, the determination of the authorities to adequately feed Calcutta and the military and the consequent fear and uncertainty of producers led to an appalling disaster for rural Bengal [1,2,5,6].


Decline of complex pre-colonial social relationships vital to disaster survival [5], overwhelming under-nourishment 6 and a greatly increased body of "landless" rural Bengalis [1,5,6,11] led to a nightmare for the 20% of rural Bengalis most vulnerable in this famine. Not surprisingly fishermen, deprived of access to fishing grounds and hence food and cash for rice, were among the worst affected [1,2,5,6].


Increasing population and lack of commensurate food production had yielded a pre-war situation in which India needed to import about 1.8 million tons of grain per year in the immediately pre-war years to make up the shortfall [1,6]. Nevertheless rice exports from India in the financial year 1942-43 were at near-record levels. A crucial factor, however, was the huge decrease in foodgrain imports to only about 20,000 tons in the financial year 1942-43 [1].


Starving people flocked into Calcutta, victims dying in a city with well-provisioned markets. The British authorities (at times forcibly) removed tens of thousands of destitute, starving people from Calcutta and other urban areas in late 1943. These people were relocated to die in the country, out of sight, out of mind [1].The reluctance of destitutes to leave derived from the inadequacy of relief gruel when it became available and the additional availability of food from rubbish and from begging householders for "rice water" from the cooking of rice.


Responses to a disaster


The British government, the Central Indian authorities headed by the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow and the Bengali provincial administration (critically interfered with by Governor Sir John Herbert) were grossly derelict in dealing with the situation and its genesis. However a new and effective Viceroy Lord Wavell took up his position in October 1943 [7], this being complemented by the arrival of a new, vigorous Governor of Bengal, the Australian R.G.Casey, in January 1944 [7,12].


Lord Wavell (unlike his predecessor) visited famine-wracked Bengal and within his first week took the key decision ensuring that Calcutta would be fed by the rest of India and not by starving rural Bengal. This energetic and concerned man pleaded continually with the British Government for requisite grain imports, demanding (unsuccessfully) 1 million tons for 1944. He was insistent about the need for additional supplies to bring down the price of rice and to prevent further disasters.


The release of thousands of boats was agreed to from April 1944 and more effective measures directed to relief, mass health intervention and to controlling food supplies and prices were also introduced. Eventually the excess mortality due to famine declined to the "normal" level of mortality associated with an impoverished, disease-ridden society living on the edge of starvation.


Interestingly famine was not actually declared by the authorities in 1943 despite the enormity of the circumstances. The famine was debated in the House of Commons, one of the key sessions being attended by less than 10% of the members. These appalling events eventually disappeared from public view, if indeed they had ever effectively appeared.


Appalling realities


Various estimates of the total number of famine deaths have been made that range up to 5 million [1-7]. A very detailed American analysis of this tragedy estimated 3.5 to 3.8 million as the excess mortality due to starvation and attendant disease in 1943-1946 [5]. The magnitude of this event and its continuing consequences can be gauged from the increase in population of West Bengal plus East Bengal (Bangladesh) of only 3 million in the period 1941 to 1951 as compared to a population growth of 11 million in the period 1931 to 1941 [6].


Repeated requests for food imports into India (Indian population 400 million; Bengal population 60 million) in 1943 and 1944 resulted in only about half a million tons of grain being imported into India in this period [1,6]. In contrast the food stocks of the U.K. (population about 50 million) rose by about 10 million tons in the latter half of 1943.


Churchill repeatedly opposed food for India and specifically intervened to block provision of 10,000 tons of grain offered by Canada6. The U.S. declined to provide food aid in deference to the British Government6. The British Government rejected Lord Wavell's request for 1 million tons of grain in 1944 and also rejected his request that the U.S. and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) be approached for assistance.


Even when Congress (after extensive lobbying) altered legislation to permit UNRRA aid for India, no plans were in place for such assistance because the British authorities had not requested it [6]. An offer of 100,000 tons of rice from the Axis collaborationist leader Subhas Chandra Bose was ignored [6,13]. Lord Wavell records in his diary R.G.Casey's intelligence relating to the Argentinian use of 2 million tons of surplus wheat in their railway system in lieu of coal (of which there was a world-wide shortage) [7]. Churchill finally requested U.S. assistance in mid-1944 in terms that he was "no longer justified in not asking for such aid" - with a resultant negative response from Roosevelt [6].


It should be appreciated that India made a major contribution to the war effort. 2,400,000 Indians served in the British forces6 and thousands of Indian, and particularly Bengali, lascars served in the Merchant Navy (the pay being £5, £15 and £22.10.0 a month for Indian, Chinese and British sailors, respectively) [7].


The Second World War involved the following British losses: 303,000 British armed forces personnel killed, 109,000 Commonwealth losses, 60,000 civilians killed in air raids and 30,000 Merchant Navy sailors killed [14]. Against this we can set the forgotten "Allied" millions of Bengalis who died agonizing deaths, the toll amounting to 50 to 100 times the civilian losses in Dresden, Hamburg, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo or in German bombing raids on Britain.” http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com


That’s what is coming to a nation with NO MONEEEE!!!


Now don’t get me wrong, as I stated in a previous outing I’m not opposed to free markets, I just haven’t seen one yet ever. They are all rackets.


You may shake your head after reading the above and think that it couldn’t happen to you. Well you fail to get into the midset of TPTB. To them we ARE ABORIGINALS.


Heads up.

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Voyoy cheeky, leave us a deadletteredroped..