Orientalism and the Myth of Independence
Shahzada Rahim
In the nineteenth century more half of the world was colonized by the European imperial powers and according to historians like Eric Hobsbawm, it was the peak century of western colonialism in Africa and Asia: the largest continents by population. Moreover, the very industrial heydays across Europe were the result of colonization, that provided cheap labor, raw material and other resources for the industrial boom.
Though the purpose of colonialism was to capture foreign market for the consumption of their industrial productivity, the imperial powers justified it through a civilizing mission — which connotes that the colonized people are/were “savages”, backward and culture-less, so they must be civilized. Famous Palestinian-born American scholar Edward Said described this:
culture was historically used by the western authors to justify the colonial project and European so-called “civilizing mission””
The post-colonial scholars like Edward w Said , Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon reconstructed the prejudicial writings of the European authors like Graham Greene, V.S Naipaul, and Joseph Conrad for stereotyping the Africans, Indians, Jamaicans and Chinese, who claimed that “they are barbaric, they must be dealt with with force and violence and they were not like us”. This is what became native-phobia, meaning dehumanizing the natives to the very end of the psychological subjugation.
Unfortunately, with the dawn of industrial age across Europe, imperial powers began searching for the foreign markets in order to feed their industrial progress. Though it was explicitly an economic thrust, it was wrapped in cultural narrative to justify their violent action across colonies.
In this regard, the British imperialists forcibly transplanted the institutions, that were not fit to conditions across the colonies — what famous British Historian Eric Hobsbawm while writing on imperialism argued: “the division of the globe by the European empires had economic dimensions”, mainly because, there was a moral bankruptcy and greedy appetite to colonize India and Africa. In history, it is believed that India and Africa provided enough capital for the industrialization in Great Britain but was never mentioned by the Eurocentric history.
On the contrary, in order to hide their moral bankruptcy and capitalist greed the Eurocentric authors have fictitiously portrayed the concept of “orient”. The creation of fake orient of cruel lipped princes and dusky slim-lipped maiden of ungodliness, fire and the sword has been brilliantly described by Edward W. Said in his famous book Orientalism.
In his book Said claims that “the purpose of such a false portrait was to provide moral, cultural and artistic justification for imperialism and for its underpinning ideology, that is the racial superiority of the Caucasian over the Asiatic” — that image was well-portrayed by western Authors.
For instance, in his stereotypical novel, Heart of darkness published in 1899, Joseph Conrad refused to accept the true portrait of African character – that they have independent lives and they are enjoying their civilization. This fake metaphorical portrayal dragged a lot of criticism from anti-colonial writers and historians. In his critique of Heart of darkness, Chinua Achebe described Conrad as the “purveyor of confronting myths”. According to another critique, Heart of Darkness projected African image as the ‘Other world’: the antithesis of Europe that makes it one of the renowned racist works.
Likewise, another Eurocentric propagandist Graham Greene portrayed colonized people as the lower humans by depicting them as flies, savages and madmen. In his dialectics Friedrich Hegel put forward the concept of “excluded middle”: the spectral presence of the liminal and subaltern groups, who slip between the two dominant antithetical categories. And, it was the Ravel hierarchy according to Jean Paul Sartre, which was the central pivot of the colonial ideology. Consequently, colonialism and neo-colonialism went very much wrong because it has been wrongly placed in the history of the Third World.
It was the west, which has Orientalized the east in their own terms and with their own colonial justifications. Jean Paul Sartre warned against the mystification of colonization, which has idealized the identity of indigenous people and it is a fact that it was initially supported by the mainstream Liberal ideology — what Sartre described as, “the pitiless reciprocity that binds the oppressor to the oppressed, their product and destiny. The colonizers have always relied on the myth of civilization in order to depoliticize its signifiers and to hide the truth”.
Though today we proudly claim to live as independent nations, we are still bound with our colonial past. The functioning institutions and the cultural bondage still make us as neo-colonized subjects, who are under psychological rule. In the Foucauldian context, we are still trapped in discursive practices and we are the product of materiality of these practices away from the historical totality.
Thus, our independence is still a myth because Orientalism still drives us away from colonial salvation.
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“Though today we proudly claim to live as independent nations, we are still bound with our colonial past. The functioning institutions and the cultural bondage still make us as neo-colonized subjects, who are under psychological rule. In the Foucauldian context, we are still trapped in discursive practices and we are the product of materiality of these practices away from the historical totality…”
& false reality.
Great choice of closing words, Rahim, substantiated by Reuters.
Meanwhile, according to Reuters and all their puppet bearers of ‘simple bad news’, (like the Guardian who effectively copy the Reuters article word for word), with startling Data from Indonesian elections … and as many other distractions as humanly possible simultaneously, from Indonesia’s absurd pseudo-islamic brutal military & financial reality, historically … globally, the largest Islamic nation, infiltrated.
“As of Saturday night, 272 election officials had died, mostly from overwork-related illnesses, while 1,878 others had fallen ill, said Arief Priyo Susanto, spokesman of the General Elections Commission (KPU).”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-election-idUSKCN1S403N
Once upon a time, even @Reuters, 272 DEAD election officials & 1878 ‘ill’ workers from the General Elections Commission, would have raised more than a few eyebrows, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) in ANY COUNTRY, but apparently today the stress in any election is such, that it may be reported as just plain usual & somehow to be expected,
so no need to worry, eh ! ?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 272 dead in Indonesian election counting procedures, way more than the false flag death toll of Charlie Hebdo & Le Bataclan combined & about the same number of dead, (say Reuters & Co.), in Sri Lankan false flag attacks … ! ?
World gone mad, with an Oil & Gas agenda !
My advice, don’t vote & don’t try counting the votes, coz’ it sounds seriously dangerous: but, you could try …
Researching B.P.’s & others’ corporate interests, as well as their interconnectivity in Deep State marketing …
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lng-indonesia-bp-idUSKCN0ZH46H
Meanwhile, as “East Timor forges ahead on Deepwater Oil Drilling, of particular concern to environmentalists is that the project is to be carried out by the Deepwater Frontier, a ship belonging to Transocean, the same drilling contractor that owned the Deepwater Horizon.”
Now where have I heard that name before, eh ?
Something about $20 Billion bucks, cleanup costs & still rising ? !
ENI bets, Rahim ? regarding the collectively orchestrated corporate dictatorship ?
Whilst i’m on whataboutery, what about Sanctions against Russia, since 2014 ?
Well if yer’ B.P. obviously they don’t apply, according to the Oil & Gas Journal >>>
HOUSTON, Dec. 22
12/22/2017
By OGJ editors
“Rosneft and BP will jointly develop oil and gas resources on two licenses in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District of northern Russia encompassing giant Kharampurskoye natural gas and condensate field.
The Russian company will hold 51% interest in the project, and BP will hold 41%.
The companies will develop conventional gas reserves in Cenomanian strata and conduct pilot production and subsequent development of tight Turonian formations. They’ll also optimize oil production.”
Announced after Congress had doubled down on sanctions against Russia, in July 2017, against Trump’s will !
*****************************
Sense the hypocrisy & double standards? Sanctions of corporate convenience & avarice to control all.
Will B.P. be utilising Huawei Tech. ? 🙂
****************************************
Just a last reminder, 272 dead Indonesian election officials, due to “exhaustion” and 1878 seriously ill, so WTF …
Move along now, nothing to see here except corporate dictatorship,
harmonised with Deep State Military methodology >>> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Search ‘B.P. Indonesia’ (50 years presence, upstream & downstream with militaristic strategy 😉 )
I think that you’re wrong about authors like Conrad and Greene. Conrad in particular had a very interesting life and while some of his prose is typical of its time — Heart of Darkness isn’t that bad, try the short story Typhoon — it shows a willingness to see natives as people and also ostensibly civilized Europeans as savages. Its actually very interesting to read a selection of books by authors of that period because by the dawn of the 20th century the notion that ‘natives’ were actually just ‘us’ was starting to take hold — if you read material by John Buchan (other than The 39 Steps) you’ll see an appreciation of foreigners as our peers (and, of course, George Orwell was absolutely disgusted by his job as a colonial policeman).
One thing that ex-colonial people don’t admit is that their societies got taken over not so much by force but by guile, by clever Europeans exploiting their social and political structures. There’s no way an Empire could span a sixth of the globe using force alone. This weakness and tribalism is still exploited today by our modern empires, empires that know what buttons to push, what people to bribe and when to apply that bit of force (aka “freedom and democracy”). Its OK to blame Europeans or whoever, but just remember that the people who exploit you are really into equal opportunity — they’ll exploit anyone, including (obviously) their own countrymen.
Entirely agree with what you say. Conrad’s Kurtz is a crazy savage who has turned a region into one big charnel house/ concentration camp in the quest for profit.
When I talk to highly civilised and intelligent mainstream moslems, it’s often surprising and depressing to hear the extreme hatred and bigotry they routinely express towards Shia moslems. This division has been exploited by outsiders for centuries to colonise, oppress and exploit the region from the time of the Crusades to the present day. The same applies in other parts of the globe, with outsiders, particularly western imperialists, playing games of divide and rule and encouraging tribalist conflict.
At the time of the First Crusade in 1096, London was a little village of 25,000. There were huge sophisticated cities in Alexandria and Baghdad with features like street lighting and running water. When the Crusaders first arrived in the region, they weren’t taken seriously. They were assumed to be some kind of bandits who would do some looting, steal some livestock, and go home. But they stormed Jerusalem and massacred the inhabitants. How did this come about? There was a Sunni/ Shia civil war going on at the time. They were too busy fighting amongst themselves to kick out the invaders, who won by default.
Fast forward to the present day and you see the same old story. Moslems always fall for this. Sometimes you shake your head in despair and almost think that they deserve to be occupied, robbed, exploited and humiliated by western colonial powers and Zionists. After 2003, the US was on the verge of being ejected from Iraq by a popular uprising. So they ignited a sectarian bloodbath to play the classic divide-and-rule game. Undercover SAS were caught with explosives blowing up mosques to incite conflict.
You see the same with the forthcoming war on Iran. Gulf dictators in bed with Zionists and Neocons, begging them to destroy another moslem country and offering to foot the bill for all the carnage. How contemptible is that? Or the Lebanon war in 2006, when the Sunni dictators (if not their people) were conspiring with the Zionists and Washington to destroy Hezbollah.
The potential strength and power of moslems is always dissipated in this way. If they had refused to fall into this trap and play these divide-and-rule games, they would be genuinely sovereign states. They would never have been colonised, and the Zionist Regime would not exist.
Mohammed Marandi made some interesting points in a lecture on Orientalism.
From the 18th – 20th centuries, westerners travelling in North Africa/ Turkey/ Middle East/ Persia noted that there was a far more tolerant attitude towards homosexuality in those countries than in the West, where it was vigorously suppressed. This was taken as evidence of western cultural superiority – “look at these filthy foreigners” etc. Likewise, western women at the time were far more modestly dressed than women in Oriental countries. This was also taken as evidence of western superiority.
Now, of course, the positions on homosexuality and modest female dress have been reversed – and this is taken as evidence of contemporary western superiority.
Whatever happens to be the western standard at the time is automatically assumed to be superior.
LOL, I like that.
V.S. Naipaul’s reality is best captured by the expression “compardor intellectual”. All you need to know about him is that his recent passing was mourned by the likes of “Reason” magazine (Pravda of “libertarianism” in US) and Wall St. Journal, and not by anyone of note in any country populated mostly by brown people.
The post-colonial world is the neo-colonial world: that is the hierarchic, dependency, and chronic underdevelopment inter-relations were established and maintained – not by militarised colonisation and bureaucratic administration – but by imposed financial imperialism and sub-imperialism. The rapid industrialisation of India and China was not exactly organic, but the result of surplus capital colonisation and exported manufacturing capacity of the network imperialist core – BIS (Zurich*); Wall St (US); City of London Corporation (UK) …= ZUSUK. The BRICs and EMEs were not exactly independent and organic either – but seeded by surplus fictitious capitalisation distributed by Goldman Sachs (who also provided the BRICs EMEs model of development).
[Technically, BIS has extraterritorial jurisdiction (‘offshore’) based in Basel – but Switzerland as a whole famously offers banking secrecy. And ‘BUSUK’ doesn’t work].
International World Capitalism (neoliberal globalisation) is financially arranged as an imperial network core (ZUSUK); a sub-imperial semi-periphery (Eastern Bloc; Greater China); and deliberately enpauperised post-colonial periphery. Quite clearly, there is no homogeneous integration – but a reluctant and recalcitrant competitive inter-rivalry. What leads to confusion is – as David Harvey makes clear in “New Imperialism” – is that there are two forms of, often contradictory, competition – the economic and geopolitical. Which throws up anomalies: such as China being our mortal geopolitical enemy – who we must send our oversize trawler (with no aircraft) to contain …whilst they install our 5G and build our nuclear power plants. Hammond was also peddling the Cities exotic financial wares at last weeks BRI forum – wares that everyone would do well to avoid.
Following VVP’s keynote speech in Beijing – it should be clear that there are two parallel, and somewhat interlinked (I’ll come back to that) – globalisations taking place. The network core imperial NATO/EU Atlantic Integrationism (with the City retaining its extraterritorial privileges intact*) …and the BRI and Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) sub-imperial Eurasian Integrationism (Eurasian Sovereigntism).
[*The Cities status is currently unclear. However, I believe it will be exempt from any restrictive Brexit Withdrawal agreement – making the endo-pauperisation of the UK as a whole a permanent austerity certainty].
The Russian grand strategy is integrating the supercontinent with the Chinese grand strategy – to consolidate Mackinder’s ‘World Island’. Allied with the flagship project – the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) …this rather challenges the historical hegemony of the network core. Rather than celebrate this with false consciousness adulation …I would rather raise the question: what does this offer humanity? Not being privvy to the plan – and who even says there is one – I can see two main outcomes – neither desirable.
One is the obvious militarised geopolitical conflict of rivalries sparking hybrid, asymmetric, strategic resource acquisition or denial wars …featuring ZUSUK’s imperial capital ‘United Colours of Jihad’ branding. Which is already well advanced – particularly in Africa …”Tomorrows battlefield today” …(and Sri Lanka – an important part of the Silk maritime corridor).
The other is much less likely to see completion – but the long plan is no doubt further economic integration toward the ‘Rules Based Global Order’ and ‘Global Governance’ – under the aegis of the WTO …to which ALL parties are aligned. It is easy to confirm: but all BRICs ‘Eurasian’ parallel banking institutions are dollar denominated for loans. China’s ‘World Bank’ is the AIIB – which signed a cooperation framework with the WB in FY2017. They are currently co-funding 11 projects (China is rather cosy with the WB, as it tries to build its share). China’s ‘IMF’ is the Contingency Reserve Arrangement. To get a loan: a member state can withdraw 30% from the CRA. For the other 70% – they have to go to the IMF …and submit to a neoliberal Structural Adjustment Policy. The alternative funding is thus an extension of the Washington Consensus and Bretton Woods institutional immiseration. The IMF/WB/WTO are finance imperialists: the BRICs alternatives sub-imperialist …extending the credit facilities to – ensuring the post-colonial periphery remains the post-colonial periphery …confirmed to austerity. Even Pepe is developing a note of cautious undertone in his more recent work:
”Much more than interest rates on Chinese loans – which in fact are small – the red alert on BRI-related projects in Laos concerns the environmental impact, and the fact that Laos is a poor, landlocked transit nation, it may be paying in the future a disproportionate social and environmental cost for projects that mainly benefit the Chinese economy.”
So, that is BRI: brought to you in conjunction with the IMF; under the aegis of the WTO; backed by the UNSC (2015); in cooperation with the WB.
Which mainly leaves Andre with a delirious effusion for parallel neoliberal globalisation: and the BRI road to nowhere …
Why the [past and present] violence spread by Western interventions is not included in the curriculum of History subject in schools? Will that happen? When?
I dispute that Joseph Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness” can and should be interpreted as an apologia for imperialism: I read it as a critique of imperialism and the tendency of imperialism (through the figure of Kurtz) to project its brutality and savagery onto its victims. The theme of the novella is that if African people are held to be barbaric, as they usually were in Joseph’s time (so Belgium could justify its colonial policies towards them), then their rulers were and are no less barbaric. The fact that the novella is told from an unusual point of view – the narrator is retelling a story told to him by someone else – complicates its reading.
I have not read any of Graham Greene’s novels so I cannot vouch for him and the work of V S Naipaul has never interested me.
In ‘The Quiet American’ Graham Greene’s depiction of US and French imperialism in Indo-China prior to the victory of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, is as good as any literary critique of imperialism.
I have read lots of Conrad, but not “Heart of Darkness”; my wife studied it for A-Level English. Whilst researching the British diplomat, Roger Casement, I saw that he and Conrad were likewise aghast as the horrors of European colonisation and Casement enlisted Conrad to help his case. Casement was later hanged for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916 when Ireland began to shake off the English oppressor. Conrad was o wannabe Englishmen so had to be careful not to knock the English Establishment too much.
You mean like John Pilger, (born in 1939), lol ?
Sorry if i was seemingly a bit hard on you a while back, Hugh: I believe if JP had understood back then, at the time of Sirhan Sirhan, how incredibly involved Secret Services were in the “news agenda”, via corporate dictatorship, for example, especially on the political & financial enticement towards extreme & brutal islamic regimes in Indonesia, before East Timor, a policy & strategy conceived by British & US Military intelligence from the 50’s onwards, JP would have been all the more consistently vociferous as Anti-Imperialist: but much official policy & strategy for ‘Weltanschauungskrieg’ was still kept well hidden or censored back in the 70’s and this was well evidenced by the largely successful 1967 cover up during & after the Israeli attack on Syria & the Golan Heights, simultaneously on the hour of the attack on the USS Liberty and the murder of 34 US Navy innocent personnel, in international waters, (merely monitoring & recording communications aboard an NSA reconnaissance vessel), almost completely unarmed: moreover, the attack was wholly deliberate, with malice aforethought to pervert the course of historical record: after the first IAF Pilot warned all other pilots & HQ that the vessel was flying the USA flag, so he, as religiously faithful Jew, denied perceived mistaken orders to attack & flew home, only to be immediately arrested for disobeying orders & in order to obfuscate & conflate history in the mainstream media: and not for the first time, i might add: after the attack on British Military intelligence in the Star of David Hotel in Jerusalem 1946, where a large bomb, planted by ZioNazis, killed many of my grandfather’s colleagues, in the basement, whilst he was on Radar & Radio duty,
in a Pyramid …
Grandfather was sworn to secrecy on that bombing in Jerusalem, & much more: originally being obligated to stay until 1948, he threatened to walk home and tell all, unless transport was arranged, (including how he designed & how to build or jam British radar & radio systems), having signed up in 1938 and spent the whole war in N.Africa & the M.E. whereupon he was promptly put on a boat in 1947, finally to return home: unable to speak to anybody for many decades, regarding all the Black Ops. he’d assisted in (mistakenly, helping the Zionists to establish a homeland & corrupt the minds of equitable Jews), only to be attacked repeatedly by Zionist extremists with a desire to stir & mix it all up again, in Palestine … where he finally understood the media goalposts of arrogant imperialism, conflated with corporate interests for resources & in media mind control, with added fear & terror, factoring in the requisite obedience.
I just felt it was unfair of you to label John Pilger, of all the awful journalistic puppets, historically speaking, JP will remain one of the few on the right side of history, principally speaking: a fairly lone voice in the international media, trying his level headed best, but heavily controlled & consistently sidelined, limited & often ridiculed by the state apparatus of mainstream media, rather like Assange 🙂
Hanging, way too good for the healthy mind of the dissenter, today Hugh: add some mental Torture & Public Condem-nation , seems to be the mindset of the average moronic politician & consumer of TV Fake News & Producers of ‘Weltanschauungskrieg’ !
Whatever you may feel about Pilger, i find it impossible to blame John Pilger 🙂 of all people: today, broadcasting @RT 😉
Actions speak louder, as you well know . . . once again,
My apologies,
Tim
Consider this: having received the S.o.S from the Titanic and been an avid ‘fan’ of Tesla, grandfather was always well ahead of the very existence of ‘D’ notices & the ‘D’Funk’D defect BBC mentality of the Crown Affairs of corporate convenience: all of whom, he figured religiously, arrogantly & very largely ignorantly, presumed to limit his previously free domain & right to communicate freely on the ‘Airwaves’, & with all, worldwide, even still remotely feasible today. But, >>>
The crux of any further development in any society, is the ability to communicate freely & without prejudice …
Something no capitalist comms. corporation will ever be capable of fulfilling, scientifically, imho: self-&-share- holder interest prevails over something that always was & is ostensibly FREE & STOLEN from us, by The Corporate LOBBY: communications, is something that comes with obligations & respect for others, like emergency services, but not political propaganda ‘en masse’, from some Corporatist Zionist Empire (CZE): Re.public, see ?
Somehow, almost bohemian notions, of reality … 🙂 in a world awash with a societal brainwash, that deliberately dumbs down . . . so as to work constructively against the ability to share Knowledge, freely & equitably.
Tim. No apology needed, but thanks anyway. Thank God for JP and more power to his pen. I am well aware of the failed false flag of USS Liberty, remarkably told in a BBC documentary post 9/11. My only wish was that JP might have found the extra courage to explore the assassination of RFK and join in the effort to free Sirhan. But who knows what pressure he may be under to avoid such a toxic topic?
Hugh: hi there,
you nailed it, with “Toxic Topic” 😉
S.S.S. Titanic Censorship >>> nothing is unsinkable and the Great Flood was universal …
Sirhan Sirhan Silenced:-
Back then, even still today, some discussions & avenues remain absurdly censored & closed for the dumbed down ‘public’ domain & consumption, otherwise ‘they’ would have to cage the songbird (JP@minimum), to avoid discussing the extremely heavy evidence and implications of ‘Weltanschauungskrieg’, by our combined Secret Service Squirrel’s Titanic agenda & strategy: an agenda that must still recruit for their corrupted immoral corporate empire’s military goals, despite the revelations of MK Ultra, Ops. Mockingbird & Gladio and a very real huge pile of other perverse & pervasive psychological CIA, Mossad & GCHQ backed warfare, which was already well & truly developed by the year 1961,(my ‘Y.O.B.’ generation) 🙂
. . . including chemical testing of an extremely wide variety of drugs, from corporations like Sandoz.
Way back when Dr. Albert Hofmann stumbled upon and accidentally ingested & learnt of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), of course, military intelligence agencies were immediately fascinated by this, but with childish selfish reasoning @core: and, their SELFISH interest was not for public consumption. I can tell you this much from personal experience and knowledge, after living 15 years very close to Albert; every single dosage produced ever by Dr Hofmann, he sampled on himself first, before giving to others and this fact in itself, distinguished his intellect & interest in the science of our existence & metabolism, from all morally corrupted corporations, politicians and secret services, the bosses of which seldom live to the ripe & mature old age of Dr. Albert Hofmann …
(Born 1906, died 2008 R.i.P Berti) 🙂
There is but one ‘Final Solution’, in computerised times:
Open source all intelligence & engineering, in real time, to explore collective futures,
without prejudice >>>
Or simply stand down, KOWTOW (an oriental expression) & accept Corporate Dictatorship and the loss of Free Will, to scientifically very ignorant arrogant people, whose over-inflated ego genuinely still believes (sadly), that they have the right to play God, even Geo-engineering Weather & common public destiny, with OUR Taxes: when our collective compound intelligence & A.i. has already proven such people to be either Psycho or Sociopathic, in their goals to control all.
Thank ‘god’ that the Chinese at least understand this much & openly declared before the Beijing Olympics, that they had installed 500 installations on the Himalayas, to engineer the weather &
improve air quality in Beijing, for the duration … In the UK & USA the egos & ‘teeny’ tiny-minded intellect of our pathetic NATO secret services, utilising our taxes like Tick parasites, still cannot even admit the elementary ABC code (or A B V G D in Cyrillic), of binary computerised ACCOUNTABILITY to our children, children who are already developing Open A.i. as we discuss.
Sense the irony ?
Any serious discussion on Climate Change is pointless & permanently on hold, imho, until the dumb egotistical parasites of FUKUS Secret Service Squirrels finally accept that they’ve already been ‘busted’,
in this computer age :), with a publicly owned Acorn Stash: the GPS location of which, was public knowledge decades ago ! Lol, even before WTC 7 & 9/11.
One extra ‘Toxic Topic’ today, that transcends any secret service squirrel’s f**kwit intelligence.
If you’d like an absurd example of a childish F**kwit mentality most recent, lol, just do a psychological profile on Peter Strzok and ask yourself if this is the kind of guy you would like to have in charge of FBI investigations & any dealings with Russia, in any future designs for our Children’s Sake, FFS ?
Give me Jack Ma, every time 🙂 , somehow, less “Toxic” for my kids, by my calculations.
Best wishes,
Justice > Peace > & Out (Toxic Teeny Tiny minded secret service squirrels & their Fake Mythology) 🙂
Tim.
“Heart of Darkness” is a blistering critique of European colonization in Africa, not a racist screed at all..
“Though the purpose of colonialism was to capture foreign market for the consumption of their industrial productivity, ..”
Of course the actual origins of colonialism were rather different: Spain did not colonise mexico in order to sell tappas or tickets to bull fights, nor did Portugal and the Netherlands seek out the “East Indies” in order to sell cheese and wine. And notoriously the East India Company could never come up with anything that China wanted except silver, until opium, produced in India, arrived.
In fact in every case the imperialists were seeking to buy or otherwise acquire products from abroad.
To do so they had to arm themselves to protect their merchants from pirates, for example, and to fund a currency that would be acceptable. Or goods to barter. Indian cotton textiles, for example were as much in demand in Africa as Yorkshire woolens and Ulster linen were not.
The first major ‘goods’ exported to America were guns and slaves- the slaves being paid for, in Africa, often with guns and useful only because they could be employed in commodity production for export to Europe.
I’m not sure that these things change anything that Mr Rahim has told us, I suspect that none of it is new to either him or the late, and greatly lamented Edward Said. There has to be a problem, however, with a theory constructed on faulty premises. Which leads me to the suggestion that the development of the imperialist ideology, which originates in the Christianity of the Iberians (divided into various factions, some more ‘christian'[ than the others. These are complex questions but suffice it to say that it took the British In India several centuries to convince themselves that they were bearers of a superior civilisation. While Pizzaro’s Spanish followers knew that they were not, just as the Jesuits in Macao held the superiority of China in considerable awe. And these were just a few exceptions to the rule that Europeans saw themselves as superior. Among others were the large numbers of employees of the French and English in North America who reached the conclusion that the lives of the ‘savages’ were better than the fates their own society reserved for them, and struck out to live with the “Indians.” And then, of course, the South Seas come into consideration..
“Though today” writes Mr Rahim “we proudly claim to live as independent nations, we are still bound with our colonial past. The functioning institutions and the cultural bondage still make us as neo-colonized subjects, who are under psychological rule.” To which we, the lineal descendants of the seamen and soldiers, the factory hands and the dockworkers, the clerks and the functionaries of the Europeans mobilised (and sometimes forced, kidnapped or driven by famine) into the imperial service can only agree, we know the feeling of being ruled by imperialists.
Hmm. From his arrival in the Caribbean, Columbus set the tone for the Spanish conquest of the Americas (which they originally believed to be the Indies): grabbing whatever gold and silver could be got by force. The indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean islands and then of the mainlands of south and north America were viewed, as is the norm for the European mindset, as savages, uncivilized and were slaughtered in their millions and their lands grabbed, alien animals and plants introduced. Truly a civilized way, the European.
As for the British in India (at least) – Indian cotton textile manufacturing, already a well and long established reality there, was destroyed by the Brits for the “greater good” of British industrial-capitalist development and profit. And this was least we did to harm India…
And we cannot even apologize for one single slaughter, let alone for the millions we caused to die through starvation over the centuries of our “rule.”
This is true, but some people mistakenly stress the racist element here.
The same thing happened in Ireland, Britain’s first colony, which provided a blueprint for the rest of the world.
I couldn’t understand why British imperialism bothered and persisted with Ireland for so long – it was always more trouble than it was worth. No South African gold and diamond mines, no lucrative Caribbean sugar plantations, no Malayan tin mines and rubber plantations.
But in 1800, England had a population of 10 million, Ireland 8 million. 40% of the British army at Waterloo came from Ireland, including the Duke of Wellington. A lot of the Royal Navy’s 100,000 sailors were from Ireland. Ireland had a viable textile industry, linen/ flax, which was suppressed in the interests of English manufacturing.
Back in the 1600s, from 1641-1652, after Cromwell’s rampage through Ireland, the population fell from 1,500,000 to 600,000. 500,000 died in the wars in that period. A further 400,000 were driven like cattle into Connaught, where they were rounded up, branded, and loaded on slave ships in chains, where they were sold at slave auctions to Caribbean and American plantation owners. The African slave trade hadn’t taken off at that time. Most of the early slaves were Irish, not African. An Irish slave cost £5, an African slave £50. Cheap Irish slave women were bred with more expensive male African slaves. Irish slaves were treated worse than African slaves, because of religious hatred. Enslaved Catholic priests had a particularly hard time.
This doesn’t excuse African slavery in any way. But I sometimes point this out to black people – the enemy is imperialism and exploitation, which then, as now, couldn’t care less about race or religion. It will squeeze a profit out of human suffering wherever it can.