Open Thread – Brown Pundits

Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.

Also, I’ve posted a new linguistic podcast on the patron page. It’s 1 hour and 20 minutes, and really dense with information and wide-ranging. There were five people, but I didn’t say much, and Zach was mostly asking questions. So there were three with a huge amount of knowledge engaging with each other. I have to say that this serves as a good model/example for future podcasts.

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Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
4 years ago

To all Pundits who today celebrate the original Easter holidays and all others believing and non-believing I wish good health and long life with traditional greetings and salutations – Hristos voskrese! Vaistinu voskrese!

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
4 years ago

RE: Forgotten White Irish Slaves (1/2)

(thought to write this later but will do now)

They came in like slaves: a human cargo carried by British ships on the road to America. They were sent from Ireland, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and even the youngest children. Whenever they rebelled, they were punished in the harshest manner. Slaveholders would hang them or lay their hands and feet on fire, as one of the forms of punishment. Some are burnt alive and their heads are left on spears on the slave market, as a warning to other prisoners. We know very well the crimes of African slave trade. But the African slave has written and spoken a lot about the Irish slave?

King James VI and Charles I continued to enslave Irish. Cromwell has deepened this practice of dehumanizing his neighbours. In Ireland, slave trade began when James VI sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation from 1625 has enabled the sale of Irish political prisoners abroad, as well as sales them to English immigrants in Western India. By the mid-1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold in Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. Ireland soon became the largest source of human cattle for English merchants. Most of the early slaves in the New World were actually WHITES.

From 1641 to 1652, more than 500,000 Irish were murdered by the English and another 300,000 sold into slaves. The Irish population fell from around 1,500,000 to 600,000 in a decade. Families collapsed because the British did not allow Irish fathers to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to the helpless population, homeless women and children. The British solution was to sell them at auctions.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children aged 10 to 14 years were taken away from their parents and sold as slaves to West Indies, Virginia, and New England. In the same decade, 52,000 Irish (mainly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were transported and sold to the best bidder. In 1656. Cromwell ordered that 2,000 Irish children to be driven to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English immigrants.

Many people still avoid calling the Irish slaves what they really were: slaves. They will conditionally call them “debt servicemen” to describe what happened to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
4 years ago

RE: Forgotten White Irish Slaves (2/2)

As an example, African slave trade has just begun in that same period. It is well noted that African slaves were much more expensive than Irish, even up to ten times, and they were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts. African slaves on the market were valued during the late 1600-es, £50 sterling and the Irish slaves were no more than £5 sterling. If Irish slaves have been beaten to death on plantations, it has never been a crime. The death of Irish goods was only a financial loss, but far cheaper than killing more expensive African slaves.

The English masters soon began breeding Irish women for their own personal enjoyment and for greater profits. Even if an Irish woman somehow gets her freedom, her children will remain slaves to their master. Thus, the Irish mothers, even with this newly acquired emancipation, will rarely abandon their children and remain in slavery.

Over time, the English have come up with a better way to use Irish women to increase their market profits: The settlers have begun to cross Irish women and girls (even younger than 12) with African people and thus produce slaves with a lighter shade. These new “mulat” slaves had a higher price than the Irish “livestock”, and also made it possible for English settlers to save money rather than buy new African slaves.

This practice of crossing Irish women with African peoples lasted for several decades, and was so widespread that in 1681, a regulation banned the practice of mating Irish slaves and African slaves for the purpose of making slaves for sale. In short, it was stopped only because it impeded the earnings of large slave carrier companies that brought slaves from Africa.

England continued to ship ships of tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. The records state that after the Irish uprising in 1798, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were terrible abuses of both African and Irish prisoners. A British ship threw 1302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean, so the crew had enough food to eat.

In 1839. Britain finally decided to end its own participation in the slave transportation. Although their decision did not prevent pirates from doing what they wanted, the new law slowly concluded this chapter of Irish misery.

But if someone believes that slavery was just an African experience, then he is completely wrong. Irish slavery really existed, but it was wiped out of our memory. But why is this so rarely discussed? Does the memory of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims deserve more than just to be mentioned in a comment like this? Or their story was the one the English wanted: to completely disappear, as if it had never happened.

None of the Irish victims ever returned to their homeland to describe their tribulations. These are the lost slaves, who have been completely forgotten over time due to the biased books of history.

AnAn
4 years ago

+1008

Milan it would be amazing if you could expand this into a full blogpost for Brown Pundits. I have wanted to write about this topic for some time but am afraid to openly discuss slavery.

We should not forget the vast numbers of slavs and Serbs who were captured and converted into slaves.

SP
SP
4 years ago

Meanwhile, the BJP has gone full birther:

https://twitter.com/republic/status/1123095766786924544

reeks of desperation. They know they’re on their way out.

AnAn
4 years ago
Reply to  SP

Oh my Allah! That is deeply inappropriate SP.

Ashokakbar
Ashokakbar
4 years ago

While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the Moslem sharpens his sword.
-Churchill
Source: https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/our-duty-in-india/

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
4 years ago

One assertion: “Indo-Aryan or steppe DNA is a small part of all of Indian DNA”

>> 16% (according to Russian geneticist), it means almost 200 millions of people.

How come that such significant historic memory was interrupted and why is still so strong resistance to say who were these guys, which language they spoke and which mythology they had?

Maybe because of several centuries of Muslim rule which deleted from memory everything what was before in conjunction with Vatican’s fabrication of this history? I have noticed the same syndrome in the original Aryans’ homeland where one verse in an several centuries old epic says that Serbs after the Kosovo battle (1389), when lost the king and all nobility, have forgotten all their previous history.

SP
SP
4 years ago

ISRO has announced a launch window for Chandrayaan II, its second mission to the moon:

https://twitter.com/isro/status/1123612384336027650

There have been delays due to technical issues, but this announcement signifies that these have probably been overcome. This mission represents a significant step for ISRO — not only will they attempt a soft landing on the lunar surface with a rover (very hard, as the Israelis recently learned), they will get to the moon with the GSLV Mark III variant of medium/ heavy lift rockets.

This is huge. After a lot of fits and starts (initial over-reliance on faulty Russian solid fuel stages), ISRO developed all stages of the GLSV indigenously and is now capable of medium to large payloads into low earth orbits, or lunar/ interplanetary transfer orbits. So far, ISRO’s workhorse has been the PSLV variants, which can max launch payloads of up to 2 tonnes into low earth orbit or into various transfer orbits (as needed for the last lunar and martian missions). The GLSV takes this up to 6-10 tonnes, depending on the required orbital parameters of the payload. Expect ISRO to seriously compete with Ariannespace and SpaceX for the medium to heavy payload commercial launch market in the near future (Antrix, ISRO’s commercial arm still launches much cheaper than SpaceX for payloads under 2 tonnes).

Even more importantly, this will demonstrate capability for science missions that require spacecraft to be placed at the so called Lagrange points — local points in the earth/ sun system a few million km away that one can also orbit around. In a few years, ISRO will launch Aditya-L1 (a solar observation mission), and discussions are underway for a joint European/ Indian cosmology mission (to observe the cosmic microwave background) to be placed at the second Lagrange point.

Within a generation, ISRO has gone from being development focused (communications, remote sensing, meteorology, hydrography, navigation etc) to mastering interplanetary travel, and on to some serious blue sky science. I get goosebumps thinking about it.

Prats
Prats
4 years ago

It is indeed amazing what ISRO has achieved. It will continue to steer the ship as far as space exploration in India is concerned but to reach the next level we need private players to step in.
A lot of space technology is slowly getting commoditized and there are a number of launch start-ups propping up (OneSpace, Rocket Labs etc).

India has lagged behind in aerospace research and industry due to regulations, lack of talent, and lack of capital. Even the number of (relatively) low capital drone start-ups in India is pretty low. I think it’s time for the government to look ahead and make some favourable policies.

SP
SP
4 years ago

Indeed, ISRO’s already on the ball with public/ private partnership. In addition to having set up Antrix, Team Indus (the Indian entrant for the Google X-prize) was completely privately funded but had a revolving door with ISRO expertise. Beyond this however, ISRO shows what you can accomplish with the right management culture

http://www.foundingfuel.com/article/the-culture-that-led-to-isros-world-class-capabilities/

Every organization takes on the pathos of those at the top, from which its clear that the heads that set up ISRO were way ahead of their time. I’ve had a few professional interactions with ISRO project scientists and they’re an impressive bunch to say the least. Extremely approachable and non-hierarchical, with no hint of baggage from inter-departmental/ divisional rivalries of the type that plagues NASA, although (somewhat reasonably) ISRO project scientists tend to view academic scientists with a bit more weariness than their European and American counterparts.

“India has lagged behind in aerospace research and industry due to regulations, lack of talent, and lack of capital. Even the number of (relatively) low capital drone start-ups in India is pretty low. I think it’s time for the government to look ahead and make some favourable policies. ”

Couldn’t agree more. To name and shame: Hindustan Aeronautics is a basket case, and represents an abject failure of management culture. Their incompetence is legendary — so much talent and intellectual capital has been squandered within that organization over the years. They need to be gutted and restructured from the ground up. If DRDO didn’t have it’s act somewhat together, HAL would have been exposed even more brutally for its incompetence years earlier. No sign of any vision from either party on the aerospace front unfortunately, although I agree it should be a high priority.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
4 years ago

Explosion inside bank in Sadiqabad injures 19
https://dunyanews.tv/en/Pakistan/491806-Explosion-bank-Sadiqabad

Comment: Some people are “protesting” violently against the inevitable sinking of the Pakistani rupee and skyrocketing inflation post the new IMF loan.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
4 years ago
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
4 years ago

Quotes from Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Repudiating-Gandhian-pacifism-in-the-face-of-mass-murder-449885

” Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions.” He also said that had the Jews committed collective suicide, that would have been “heroism.”

Ref: April 7, 1947, Prarthana Pravachan Speech:

“I make bold to say that if Hindus and Sikhs sacrifice their lives at hands of Muslims without rancor or retaliation they will become saviors not only of their own religions but also of Islam and the whole world”

Have a good weekend.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
4 years ago

Father of the Nation is too Big a Crown for Him (Mohandas Gandhi)

http://indiafacts.org/father-of-the-nation-is-too-big-a-crown-for-him/

“Millions of Indians are waking up to the fact that Gandhi was not quite the apostle of peace he’s made out to be but rather a misguided man who caused untold harm to India.”

“So basically, the man who would go on to lead India’s freedom movement was denying the same freedom to the Dutch Boers.”

“However, there is plenty of indirect evidence that Gandhi was serving Britain more than he was serving India’s cause.”

“It is clear that Gandhi, who apparently wanted freedom for Indians, did not care about freedom for the millions of Arabs who were seething under Ottoman rule.

““I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. I would be a real sinner if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek revenge. I must die without rancour. You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain.”

“He wrote about the Fuehrer(Hitler): “I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.”

“The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.”And he offered a shocking piece of advice, asking the Jews to “pray for Hitler”.

““I (Gandhi) do not believe that inter-dining and inter-caste marriage are necessary to national unity.”

Brown Pundits