UK government ministers want the British Empire’s benefits taught in schools. Don’t let them ignore the death and destruction it inflicted
Gurminder Bhambra as a child with her grandfather, Mohan Singh | Gurminder Bhambra
1 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Recent weeks have seen a variety of UK government ministers – from Oliver Dowden to Kemi Badenoch to, most recently, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi – both extol the benefits of British Empire and urge the teaching of those benefits.
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This follows on from the government’s response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which set out the need for a new model curriculum for history which would advise schools on how best to teach these issues.
“No war has the honesty of confessing, ‘I kill to steal.’”
(Image by Rafael Edwards)
4 Apr 2022 – Wars always invoke noble motives. They kill in the name of peace. In the name of God. In the name of civilization. In the name of progress. In the name of democracy…
And just in case, if so many lies are not enough… the mass media are ready to invent imaginary enemies to justify the conversion of the world into a great madhouse and an immense slaughterhouse.
In King Lear, Shakespeare had written that “…in this world, the mad lead the blind…”. And… four centuries afterward, the masters of the world are madmen in love with death.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 5 2022 (IPS)* – The world is sailing into a perfect storm as key leaders seem intent on threatening more war, albeit while proclaiming the noblest of intentions. By doing so, they block international cooperation to create conditions for sustainable peace and shared prosperity for all.
Anis Chowdhury
Monetarist counter-revolution The 1970s saw Milton Friedman disciples’ monetarist counter revolutionblaming stagflation on ostensibly Keynesian economic policies. In 1974, Nixon replacement President Gerald Ford declared inflation “public enemy number one” and US “determination to whip inflation”.
Monetarists wanted tighter monetary policies to fight inflation. Curbing rising prices was deemed urgent, even though it would increase joblessness. They advocated abandoning expansionary fiscal measures for more growth and jobs.
Americans “need to imagine their vote has an impact on policy, an illusion the media encourages them to believe in.”
Ouch!
Peter Isaacson, writing in Fair Observer, seems to be saying . . . oh my God, democracy is a cliché, a big sham. I stand up, put my hand on my heart, pledge allegiance to the flag. This is America, land of the empowered voter.
Then I read about our president’s latest budget proposal, which includes $813 billion for “national defense” — pushing the Pentagon budget’s already record-setting enormity further into outer space — and I feel myself collapse (yet again) into nothingness.
Peter Isaacson
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 