“fought and died”: In this case from your post and Chris’s post “and” is a two-place logical operator, a (logical) conjunction, with “fought” and “died” the two operands. It is true if BOTH of the operands are true, otherwise it is false.

It is definitely not true that “tens of millions” of these servicemen died in either of the two world wars or even in both of them combined. Therefore the argument is false. Additionally it is not true that “tens of millions” of the servicemen you describe even fought in both wars, therefore it fails the test on both operands – “fought” and “died”.

Your shouting of “imbecile”, “senile”, “crank” (1.40 post) and earlier “fool” (7.53 post) are ignorant ad hominem comments. I’m surprised that you have heard of Friedrich von Hayek let alone have the nerve to take his name for a pseudonym. Let me guess, your dad or mum is an ACT member, and you’ve heard them talk of Hayek.

I do think that if violent/invasive crimes were dealt to and punished more severly then these crimes will decrease which will help get rid of the reason for some racist views.

Also, if imigration was changed to allow anyone into a country providing they have a job but were at the same time to tighten up on immigration in other areas (eg, only allow imigration of immediate families) we would get rid of another reason for racist views.

Finally (heres the controversial bit) if we allowed people to discriminate freely at home, at work etc, we would be able to stop this hatred festering behind closed doors. If this was done with the previous two ideas then society as a whole would be able to decide what is acceptable rather than have the government ram down peoples throats what is acceptible (which must generate extremism). EG, No sane business would discriminate based on race, gender etc as it is unproductive, and likely to garner consumer boycotts. Yet at the same time, a business may wish to not employ a neo nazi, or a muslim who makes his wife wear a burqa as they do not wish to enable such repugnant values. Society would be able to pressure and educate people away from these views.

Chris C said in his post: “…Tens of millions of Indians, Pakistanis, Africans, Maori, Pacific Islanders and Caribbean Islanders, each to the man a non-white, fought and died in two world wars to defend freedoms that the BNP take for granted…”

Your qualification that he meant tens of millions fought in World War II but not all died, is also a colossal exaggeration to the point of being absurd.

I too am sick of them being associated with the right. I think it’s just laziness from the left who have really nothing else to try and pin on the right – so it comes easy to them to call right wingers fascists etc.

So unfair, the “right” would never try and apply any sort of lefty label. Righteousness rules.

The Socialist Workers Party are indeed weird – I once had a flatmate who was a member; it seems more of a cult than a political party, which is probably one of the many things they have in common with the BNP.

However, there is one crucial distinction. SWP activists want nazis banned. The BNP wants immigrants banned.

Not nice people these socialists or their comrades the national socialists – two peas out of the same pod. I too am sick of them being associated with the right. I think it’s just laziness from the left who have really nothing else to try and pin on the right – so it comes easy to them to call right wingers fascists etc. How many hundreds of millions people have died for the Socialist cause again?

Chris C exaggerated to the point of absurdity in saying tens of millions of non-whites fought and died in World War II.

You (Hayek) say: “He was being lazy in structuring his argument, but it was contextually clear.”

How can you have a good argument when your premises are absurd?

Nor was it mere “sloppy grammar”. It was bloody lies.

The original Hayek was a powerful thinker, and judging by your 9.20 post you’ve got a cheek using his name as a pseudonym.

As I understood it Chris was making a few separate points at the same time.

a) Tens of Millions of Non-whites fought in WWII

b) Lots of these died

ie when he said ‘tens of Millions fought and died’, he was being lazy in structuring his argument, but it was still contextually clear.

c) He has personally seen the war graveyards in Europe. And was struck by the number of non-European names.

again, he is not claiming that a lot of those non-european who fought and died were in the European campaigns, just that he was personally struck by the number of non-european graves he observed.

Instead of going to all this effort to criticize him for what can be construed from taking sloppy grammar literally, you should engage with his argument, which is a good one.

The Indian Army also took a major part in other campaigns, those in Iraq, the middle east, and in East Africa. Those campaigns lasted most of the war, but were of nothing like the intensity of the Western front, so casualties were proportionately lower. Troops were also raised amongst other areas, the Caribbean, East and West Africa, and I believe a few from Belize and Guyana, but I don’t think any of these served in France in the front lines although they may have served as labourers. The British did recruit thousands of Chinese as labourers, I’m not sure where these were sourced, most probably through Hong Kong. Just as a note, the French by contrast made extensive use of African troops, Sengalese, Moroccans, Algerians, etc in France as part of their front line troops. For numbers, around 1.5 million volunteered in India, 800,000 were deployed, with 48,000 killed or missing, around 65,000 wounded. So killed were around 6.25% of deployed, about 3.5% of volunteers, casualties in total about 13.5%. As a percentage of population, about 0.02%. By contrast UK, NZ, Australia, and Canada suffered 2.19, 1.64, 1.38, and 0.93%. So the UK had over 100 times the casualty rate of India.

ALL Indian army troops were volunteers, no conscription applied to any part of the “coloured” Commonwealth or Empire. As a proportion of the population, Indian casualties were miniscule compared to the so called “white” dominions, NZ, Australia, and Canada, let alone Britain.

So there is absolutely no case for there being “10’s of millions” of Indian or other “coloured” commonwealth soldiers being casualties, and there’s no case at all for millions of casualties from India at any remove as a result of the war.

And now they have won seats in the EU government.

Believe me – they are going to get more.

And although I think Key is doing a great leadership job – I have already decided to vote against him next election due to his denial of the 84% who voted to reverse the anti smacking bill.

evidence that the BBC carefully hand-picked the audience

That doesn’t surprise me, I thought that’s what they normally did to try and get a representative cross-section of voters in political audiences. It would only surprise me if they stacked the audience one way or another.

The indigenous peoples and cultures argument is the dumbest argument for British nationalism I’ve ever heard. Nick Griffin says that indigenous peoples of the UK trace their ancestry back to 17,000 years ago, when Stephen Oppenheimer, the source he quotes regularly, says that migration to the British Isles began 15,000 years ago and other sources put it as recently as 9,000 years ago.

The indigenous peoples and culture argument is the dumbest arguement for Maori nationalism I’ve ever heard. says that the indeigenous peoples of Aoteoroa trace their ancestry back about 1000 years ago.

The point is that the indigenous peoples of England are the English, who do trace their ancestry back further than our own indigenous peoples, and with a damn sight more accuracy as well.

Rather than another couple of dozens of posts of speculation, I’ve checked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

Assuming we’re talking about the non-British parts of the British Empire or what is now the Commonwealth, there were 227,000 military deaths in WW1 and 220,000 military deaths in WW2. However, the original claim mentioned Maori rather than New Zealanders and a number of other nationalities that are usually dark skinned. In which case the number of dark skinned British Empire military deaths will be much smaller once you take out the non-indigenous Canadians, Australians, South Africans, and New Zealanders.

The conquered mourns, the conqueror is undone.

Oh its easy really, you just have to forget that out of 30 million total military deaths in both world wars that at least 10 million were Russian, 7 million German, 4 million Chinese, 2 million Japanese, 1.5 million French, 1 million from the UK – not to mention the other countries who were not british subjects who lost hundreds of thousand of servicemen. And that all the non white british subjects (who number in the tens of millions remember) who fought and died in any theatre of either world war were transported and buried in France and Belgium…..

You said there are tens of millions of non english sounding names of british combatants buried in France and Belgium – one would think that if you are talking about names on grave sites, then you would be talking about people who have, you know been killed. Now as the number of deaths will be less than the total number of casualties, and the number of Indian deaths will arguably be the greatest percentage of non english sounding british combatants who fought in both world wars and there number comes no where near the figure of “tens of millions” – leads me to think you are talking out your arse.

Or are you thinking anyone with a non english sounding name is counted as a british combatant, therefore somehow the UK owes them something?

I said:
most of the Indian deaths were in India, defending the country against the invasion by the Japanese where they suffered 1.5 million deaths as a result

You said:
Secondly, you really did pluck that 1.5 million deaths from Operation U-Go out of thin air. The Burma campaign as a whole didn’t result in any more than 70,000 deaths.

Actually I got it from wikipedia….
Reading and comprehension musn’t be a strong point – you do know that the Indian sub continent was invaded by the Japanese dont you? I wasn’t talking about Burma.

Finally, have you been to Paschendale, Ypres or the Somme?

Aint got nothing to do with anything. Regardless of where my travels have taken me, that has nothing to do with anything I have said here, most of which can be verified with some simple research – mind you one could ask you the same question regarding where you saw these tens of millions of non english sounding names of british combatants on grave stones…..

Chris: You can’t even spell Passchendaele, and the battle burden there was born by British, Anzac, and Canadian troops. If there were Indian troops, they would have been a small part of the British commitment. It is an absolute untruth to suggest there are large numbers of Indian civilians in the war cemeteries near there, or that India, or the other countries you mention, lost tens of millions of people in World War 1.

You stand by your statement:” Tens of millions of Indians, Pakistanis, Africans, Maori, Pacific Islanders and Caribbean Islanders, each to the man a non-white, fought and died in two world wars…”

This is untrue, and absolute garbage. You weaken the hand of those who argue against the BNP when you not only make, but stand by such statements. Shame on you.