Posts Tagged ‘India’

I have this horrible feeling of “Déjà Vu

Déjà Vu Monty Python’s Flying Circus 1970

It’s been nearly 10 years since my post titled Enfield Rifles, Israeli Tanks & Palestinian Lies” went up on this blog in response to claims by Palestinians that Israel was targeting civilians in their response to another Hamas attack that was immediately followed by calls from the left for a cease fire since Hamas was no longer in a position to effectively kill Jews in safety.

Unlike the last time however there seem to be a massive amount of western students educated by expensive elite colleges that have been getting a lot of fund from Arab states that seem to be making the same claims of “Genocide” and “targeting civilians” that were just as false 9 years ago when Israel wasn’t all in the way they are now.

It appears that these young mush for brains while being instructed on all 387 genders have not been taught anything about simple logic so I will explain to them the fallacy of their position in a way they will hopefully understand.

If you just want to read the original post you can click here as the point as much of the text will be the same but if you want to check out my embellishments read on:

There was a great video of Ben Shapiro answering a lot of nonsense from the “Death to Israel” crowd, a crowd so ignorant at best or mendacious as worst that one actually claimed that England didn’t bomb civilians during world war 2. The Oxford Union doesn’t allow embedding but you can view it here.

It takes a lot of ignorance for people to fall for this line although I suspect it’s more in the sense of a religious belief than actual ignorance, but for all the influences out there parroting the. “Targeting of Civilians” and “Genocide” line there is a witness who can without question prove the falsehood of that claim: The late General Reginald Dwyer.

On  April 13th 1919 General Dwyer led a contingent of about 90 men to Jallianwala Bagh where there was a large crowd of Indians some for protest and some for a local fair.

After deploying 50 of his men armed with bolt action Lee Enfield Rifles (First introduced in 1895) he opened fire on the crowd.  After expending aprox 1650 rounds his troops managed to inflict over 1500 casualties on the crowd with between 379 & 1000 dead depending on whose figures you believe.

Dyer never for one moment denied that he was deliberately targeting unarmed civilians, in fact Dyer actually had armored cars armed with machine guns but he was unable to bring them to bear. At the official inquiry he bluntly stated publicly that had he been able to deploy them he would have used them.

Once again here is the scene from the movie Gandhi that vividly portrayed that scene which is a key moment in the movement for Indian independence known as the Amritsar or the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.  

Now any good anti colonialist likely knows about what happened here and rightly decries it as an evil act. I suspect that if you mentioned it to the students currently marching in favor of Hamas they might have even been taught about this as it rightly portrays a white western colonial power in a bad light.

The problem however for our friends on the left is that this action clearly establishes their claims against Israel and their narrative in Gaza as a lie.

Consider the following:

  • General Dwyer had 50 armed men, using 19th century bolt-action rifles and in only 15 minutes of deliberately targeting a civilian population inflicted 1500 casualties.
  • Israel has called up nearly 400,000 men and women, they have deployed, jets, heavy artillery, tanks and all the weapons that a modern experienced 21st century army has at its disposal. It has been on the ground in Gaza for about five days (as of this writing on Friday morning) t and for several days before this, Israel was launching air and artillery strikes on Gaza.
  • Furthermore they are operating in a very densely populated area. In fact we are constantly told by the defenders of Hamas that Gaza is the most densely populated place there is on earth.

Now think about this for a second.

If we are to believe the Arabs on twitter, the students in universities, the “experts” on various platforms like tic-tok and the Arab media, and those marching in cities in Europe and the US that Israel is and has been deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians since day 1 as part of “genocide” then an obvious question arises:

How is it that the Israeli Army and Air Force, given weeks of time are less efficient killers of civilians than 50 British soldiers armed with bolt-action rifles, introduced when Grover Cleveland was President of the United States, were in 15 minutes?

If Israel was doing what you claim then Gaza would have been depopulated when the first version of this post went up in July of 2014 let alone today.

Bottom line if you are still maintaining that Israel is targeting civilians and committing genocide in Gaza not only do General Dyer, the dead of Amritsar and simple logic call you a nonsensical liar but by speaking this lie you are dishonoring the dead of Amritsar who never even considered the evils that Hamas committed on Oct 7th to begin this war.

Image from: https://www.imrmedia.in/india-rattles-china-appoints-new-envoy-to-taiwan/

Perhaps the only country not having a horrible 2020 might be Taiwan. Taiwan was one of the few countries to fight the spread of COVID-19 well, despite its proximity to Communist China. Later in the year, multiple US Navy vessels transited the Taiwan Straits, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated that the US is “a good partner for security” for Taiwan.

Now, on the day that is celebrated as Taiwan’s Independence Day (10 October, or “Double 10” day), #TaiwanNationalDay is trending throughout India. Communist China tried to snuff it out in advance with a strongly worded “reminder” that there is only one China. Not long ago China and India were fighting each other along their mountainous border, so its no surprise that this “reminder” found its way to the press. The reaction by Indians is telling. Even better, the timing is great, with Secretary Pompeo meeting with top Indian officials at the end of the month to discuss how to deepen ties between India and the United States.

After taking Hong Kong, China showed the world it will weather any storm of protests to achieve its own goals. Anything short of hard military and economic power doesn’t work. People continue to protest the horrible maltreatment of Uighurs and development of South China Sea artificial islands, and yet nothing has changed. The only reason China hasn’t grabbed Taiwan is the risk it faces of US military action. To get over this, China has built a navy now larger than the US (at least in terms of number of ships) and modernized its ground and rocket forces.

Traditional thinking would condemn the US to build an even bigger military, and recently Defense Secretary Esper called for just that: a 500 ship Navy. That’s currently a pipe dream, because we can’t even man the Navy we have now. The Navy currently has roughly 350,000 Sailors; an increase to 500 ships would require gaining at least 200,000 more, not to mention ships and Sailors take time to build and train.

But India? India is already worried about China. India is already in conflict. If Taiwan brings India into any future conflict with Communist China, its a winning move. China doesn’t want to fight on two fronts. It might be able to hold off the US long enough to cement gains in Taiwan, but its not going to do well if India pushes into its western territories. Worse still, if a place like Tibet or Xinjiang decides to not rejoin China, that could drag any conflict out for years, dragging down the economy and the Chinese middle class in the process. That’s a double whammy, because Communist China has to provide a good economy in exchange for not being a democracy. If the economy goes south for too long, it risks revolt.

Deepening ties with India is a smart move for Taiwan and the US. Let’s hope we get more of this diplomacy to stave off future conflicts.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

India standing up to China

Posted: June 20, 2020 by ng36b in News/opinion, war
Tags: , , ,

Lost in the media’s fake news was a very disturbing report of a clash between India and China, the world’s two most populated nuclear-enabled countries, in the Galwan Valley. If you don’t know where that is, its a north-eastern section that divides China from India. India and China fought a war in 1962 over this and other regions, which China won. Ever since then, the Chinese have been encroaching on the area, and small flare ups have happened now and then, including this latest fight.

What’s different is that India probably learned lessons from last time and was better prepared. Previously China tended to have the upper hand in conflict, but based on the downplay from both sides on the most recent conflict, I’m guessing it was much more of a draw. India’s military has upgraded much, including training, so it was more of an equal fight, especially because that area makes it more difficult for more advanced weapons to be brought to play.

The big lesson to learn here is that China is only going to respect power when it comes to border disputes. If you don’t punch back twice as hard, expect China to simply continue to take. It’s become more apparent that China is like Hitler’s Germany, never quite satisfied with whatever land was given up to satiate Hitler’s desires. China will find excuses to lay claim to the Galwan Valley, Tawang, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Siberia, Hawaii, and whatever else it can get away with.

This also opens up huge opportunities for US-India relations. India has traditionally used Russian weapons and equipment, but as China rolls out more upgraded gear, better equipment and training is needed to stand up to them. Given the U.S. experience in Afghanistan, especially for special warfare personnel, the border disputes give an opportunity for enhanced US-India military training. Even better, from a strategic standpoint, having an open conflict on China’s western border would be a way to temper Chinese ambitions in other areas. China can take on Japan, Taiwan or South China Sea claimants one by one, but if they combine and also face a land war on their western border, its a bit much to handle.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

By John Ruberry

“While we can’t predict where the next influenza pandemic is going to come from,” Dennis Carroll, the director of the emerging threats unit of US Agency for International Development, says in the third episode of the new six episode Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak, “there are certain places that you want to pay particular attention to–and China is one of those, that’s the place where we’ve seen the emergence of virtually all of the deadly influenza viruses over the last half-century.”

Carroll says this while images of a Vietnamese wet market, where live chickens are sold and slaughtered, are shown.

“We know that viruses move from wildlife into livestock into people,” he says early in that same episode.

I’m writing this from home in Illinois, where I am living under Governor JB Pritzker’s shelter-in-place order because of the COVID-19 coronoavirus outbreak. While the origin of this disease is still being debated it is likely, according to experts, that it did first infect humans at a wet market.

I saw Pandemic last week on my Netflix welcome screen and at first I looked away and said to myself, “If I want to know about pandemics I can switch on the local news–or cable news.” And I was concerned that this was, to use the legendary chant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a “bring out your dead” series. And it starts that way, with Carroll, at a mass grave in western Pennsylvania, one that is marked by a single crucifix. The site contains the remains of victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Yes, not only can it happen here–but it has happened here.

And the “not-if-but-when” pandemic has arrived, only it’s coronavirus instead of influenza.

The focus of Pandemic is on the scientists, the aid workers, and the doctors on the front lines of disease prevention and cures. People like Jake Glanville and Sarah Ives, the scientists who are working with pigs in Guatemala to develop an all-strains flu virus, as well as Dr. Dinesh Vijay, who treats flu patients at a crowded hospital in Jaipur, India. But disease isn’t just an urban phenomenon. In Pandemic, we meet Holly Goracke, the sole doctor at tiny Jefferson County Hospital in rural Oklahoma, who works 72-hour shifts. And we also become acquainted with Dr.Syra Madad, the director of the special pathogens program of New York City Health and Hospitals.

Along the way we are introduced to anti-vaccination activists in Oregon, health care workers at an Arizona border detention center, and World Health Organization disease fighters in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who not only face the risk of contracting the extremely deadly Ebola virus, but also getting murdered by gangs.

Surprisingly, religion is viewed favorably in this scientific docuseries. Madad, Goracke, and Vijay all rely on faith to strengthen them as they battle disease.

Not surprisingly there are a few knocks in Pandemic over lack of funding from the Trump administration. Including from Madad. But she’s not infallible. In January, in a CNBC interview shortly after the debut of Pandemic, Madad praised China’s efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, although she did parse her statement with, “It’s too early to tell.” I wager she’d like to take that praise back.

If you are suffering from anxiety over coronavirus, you may want to stay away from Pandemic. The same goes if you are an anti-vaxxer–you’ll just get POd. Also, I suggest if you decide to view Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak then take it in just one episode at a time. At times the series is emotionally exhausting.

Pandemic is rated TV-14, Netflix says, because of foul language and smoking. And there are some disturbing scenes.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.