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I’m just coming off a severe staph infection that could have cost me my right leg below the knee, so can relate to devastating bacteria. Was hospitalized for a couple days to rehydrate and get iv antibiotics that appear to have knocked it out now. If you develop a skin infection that seems to be spreading fast, don’t jack around and have it checked
Once you learn microbiology you basically go through the process of cleaning the wound ASAP. There are opportunistic pathogens that are just waiting to be pathogens because they moved and that scares me.
The Irish potato famine wasn’t exclusive to Ireland. It actually first appeared in the US and spread to Europe.
The issue was, unlike other nations, the Irish ONLY had potatoes as all other crops were cash crops for tax.
The British government could have 100% minimized the damage. But they didn’t.
Good Job PM Peel. You fucked up.
The Brits actively shipped beef out of Ireland while people starved. The Brits also forced the Irish to labor in pointless workhouses to “earn” their food. For instance the Brits would force the Irish to build roads that led to nowhere. Apparently those pathways to nothing are still littered around Ireland.
My understanding is the Tories actually tried to provide relief by importing food which was discontinued by the liberals. So more PM Russell who fucked up.
Iirc they imported Corn from the US since it was cheap. But corn is a odd crop, it’s difficult to digest especially for the Irish who weren’t accustomed to the crop. So it provided minimal nutrition for the Irish.
This was framed as “Look, we give them food and they’re still starving! We’re wasting money, giving it to the Yanks, all for nothing! This is clearly god punishing the Irish for their sin!”
I don’t remember the exact responses by different groups in Parliament, infect Peel was probably wasn’t ass harmful as the others.
Although, I think it’s funny to know that the British PM at the time was named Peel.
I’m assuming “ass harmful” is a typo but prefer to believe it’s an historian term applied to British ideological aims
It was a typo but honesty, I think it fits perfectly so amma keep it.
This constitutes a period of British policy which we now know as “Ass Harm”, harm perpetuated by asses
- some fake historian
??? Fake news made up by the liberal media. They probably ruined their own crop. Glug glug if you know what I mean.
We’ve stopped calling it the famine here and now it’s “the great hunger”.
Ireland was producing more than enough to feed itself but the British landlords were forcing the export of non-potatoes and leaving us to die.
The queen at the time politically shamed the Turks into reducing their aid to us because it was higher than hers.
What’s up, Turkey? We haven’t forgotten your generosity.
Massive, massive shout out to our Choctaw brothers and sisters in America who gave what they didn’t have after the trail of tears.
For those not familiar, we have never, ever forgotten that one.
Sculpture in Cork called “kindred spirits”:
And when the choctaw faced trouble during the pandemic, Ireland returned the favor
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/world/coronavirus-ireland-native-american-tribes.html
Thanks for that :-)
I never knew.
The vast majority of Brits still hate British landlords.
A large contributor to Irish suffering were the British corn laws, a tariff that kept the price of barley, wheat, and oats artificially high. So when potato crops failed, the poor Irish couldn’t afford substitutes. Ironically, American maze was exempt from the corn laws, so much of that was imported to Ireland.
Tariffs: never any externalities or unintended consequences; you will certainly not regret imposing tariffs.
Not to mention that the Irish people had to sell all of their produce for very little money to their English landlords, who would then graciously offer to sell it back for a lot more than any Irish farmer could afford.
And just in case you ask “why not cut out the middleman and survive penniless on your own produce?”, remember how I said that the English were also their landlords?
Turns out that landlords were even MORE happy to throw poor people out for being unable to pay than they are nowadays and being homeless in mid 1800s Ireland wasn’t very survivable.
It is vitally important to understand that throughout the “potato famine” Ireland was a major exporter of food to the rest of the UK.
Irish farmers were growing all kinds of crops. Grains, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, etc, etc. All of these were sold to pay for the oppressive rents that they were forced to pay to English landlords who had stolen all of their land.
The potatoes the Irish grew were for subsistence, because all of the rest of their crops went to market. Even when the potato crops failed, there was more than enough food for everyone in Ireland, if the English would simply suspend rent collection for a short while, until the crop failures had passed.
Many motions to do so were put before parliament. All of them were rejected.
The Irish famine was not caused by a disease. It was caused by the intentional cruelty of the English.
Hats off to the historical accuracy of this comment chain. Not sure how many of you are Irish but honestly it’s heartening. ❤️
Tariffs: never any externalities or unintended consequences; you will certainly not regret imposing tariffs.
That implies that Britain didn’t intend those consequences. But Britain has mastered using starvation as a weapon of genocide, in particular by masking it as an “unfortunate” result of taxes and tariffs.
Britain genocided more than ten million people in todays India about a century earlier and then again about three million in todays Bangladesh during World War II.
Britain murdered the Irish very much deliberately.
That implies that Britain didn’t intend those consequences. But Britain has mastered using starvation as a weapon of genocide, in particular by masking it as an “unfortunate” result of taxes and tariffs.
We do know that the British did try and get the Irish to renounce their heritage to receive aid during the famine as well. Some families had to renounce their Irish name and Catholicism before they would be given food during the famine.
Random observation, I had no idea how many languages are spoken in the British isles…
LanguagesEnglish, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, French, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Sercquiais, Shelta, Ulster-Scots, Angloromani, British Sign Language, Irish Sign Language
Aren’t the Brits more viral historically? Go, inject themselves into another organism and force it to produce more brits.
They’re more like a malignant bone cancer.
So, the EU got rid of cancer? That sounds about right.
The laugh this gave me was appreciated
It’s not wrong
Wait the Brits? Not the English? Ireland is part of the British Isles, doesn’t that make them Brits too?
Not really. British are from Great Britain (the island).
I see your argument, but the Irish will absolutely throw hands if you call them Brits. They thing the term should only apply to people on the isle of Britain, not the British isles as a whole.
Don’t start your car tomorrow
(I jest of course).
I wouldn’t ask an Irishman that, lol.
On a linguistic level yes. The ancient Greeks named the islands after the Prythonic tribes, who were active in Britannia and Hibernia (Ireland).
On a don’t-annoy-the-alarm-clock-aficionados level, nope. This guy isn’t with me. Never met them.
We’ll, they were Brits at the time, but I guess their time in the union was not entirely to their satisfaction.
Ireland is not part of the British Isles
Ireland is absolutely part of the British Isles, just not part of Great Britain. I would say that it’s generally only considered correct to call someone from Great Britain British, rather than the Isles as a whole though. However, in common parlance I would say that people from Scotland and Wales use Scottish and Welsh more than British, with people from England using English and British interchangeably, and people from Northern Ireland (that are unionist anyway) using the term British over Irish. That’s all to say, you’d probably get a smack upside the head for calling someone Irish British, and rightfully so.
Equals to calling a study on the corona virus SarsCov-19 dumb because it should be a study on the Chinese instead.
Seems different then.
The British were responsible for those deaths while the Chinese were not.
How does that make any sense?
If the paper was on the micro organism. Then its a paper on the micro organism. It’s completely irrelevant to the situation surrounding it.
Weaponized brain rot take.
Do you not understand that it’s a joke?
Obviously we all know the paper is talking about the microorganism, but since the real cause of the famine wasn’t the microorganism but the British, it’s funny to act like the paper is insulting the British rather than talking about the microorganism.
That’s the only way I can interpret your comment in any coherent way, that the joke just went completely over your head.
I do understand it.
It’s just bad. But you guys eat up any bad joke if the purpose is to blame the US, GB or Israel for anything. It’s predictable and lame.
So lame.
The wordplay is clever. Somebody’s big mad that people are blaming the British for something they did
Might want to examine why people making fun of one of the most blatantly evil empires of all time offends you.
The Irish people were growing tons of crops besides potatoes, but the British landlords took everything besides the potatoes as cash crops/taxes, leaving them only the potatoes to actually eat. There was more than enough food to prevent those deaths, but the Irish people weren’t allowed to eat it.
Doesn’t change the fact that the paper was about the fucking organism and not about the political schemes going on at the time.
How did this forum gather so many dense brains in one place?
The issue is that the title of the story implies that it was entirely due to the organism that the Irish people suffered so many deaths. Context matters and they framed this in the worst way possible.
The answer is that it’s complicated, and the British made decisions that needlessly complicated things further.
Just so we’re clear, the Irish did too — there were many different bad actors that took advantage of what happened in Ireland. It just so happens that the worst of them were British.
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Yeah you realized how fucking dumb your comment was, huh?
Edit: I realize how dumb my comment is. Leaving it up for shame.
Replied to the wrong comment. You can read it above if you so please.
Instead you assumed the worst.
I should not have, I’m sorry.
The British didn’t cause the famine, they “just” made it worse.
And really it’s not even “the british” that are to blame. It was the rich land owners that continued to export the food grown in Ireland in order to make profit and the conservative (well, whig, but they are the spiritual predecessor to the modern conservatives and where politically conservative at the time) government that stopped and aid and refused to ban exporting food out of Ireland as they believed the famine was divine providence.
The British didn’t cause the famine, they “just” made it worse.
This is absolutely false. They didn’t cause the potato blight but they absolutely caused the famine by forcing the export of the remaining food stock which was more than enough to feed the population.
We still have not reached pre-famine population levels after 180 years.
Uhm akshually don’t you know that it was a subset of British society and not Britain as a whole. Jeeze, way to not be historically accurate.
Tap for un-circlejerk
Hope the /s is implied but just incase. If you’re British and upset by this take, maybe your ancestors should have rolled out some guillotines when the French did. It’s not too late to get rid of Charles, Starmer, Farage, Johnson and the rest of these chucklefucks.
Ah yeah. I’m Irish and I don’t blame modern folks over there for it. I know it was the ruling class but damn were they cold AF. To be fair though there were lots of acts of brutality from British soldiers over the centuries who I have to guess were working class. Well beyond just “following orders”.
We do remember the acts of kindness at the time, especially the Choctaw as I mentioned in another comment. Just goes to show it’s nice to be nice. You will be eventually be forgiven the sins of your ancestors they you do bad things, but you will forever be remembered as kind if your ancestors do nice things.
And I’m sure you personally have made moves to execute your worst politicians right? And have no ancestors that have done anything wrong in the past?
Oh no, I absolutely have ancestors in my past that have done horrendous things. And I’m Australian, so they were also British subjects ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As for the executions, well I’d love to get my hands on Charles! #NotMyKing
You don’t need to look that far back in all honesty. The Australian treatment of aboriginals has been abhorrent; and continues to this day.
Time to get your guillotine out.
Australians were considered British subjects right up until the ‘Australia Act’ of 1986. I still very much blame Britain for much of the way Indigenous Australians have been treated. In the same way that I put a lot of blame on Britain for the current war in Gaza. Or the escalating conflict between Pakistan and India.
Well yeah, it’s an easy cop out to blame a country the other side of the world for your fellow countryman’s treatment of aboriginals.
Introspection is hard; but deflecting the blame will do nothing to resolve the issue.
Edit: Australia gained Responsible government (IE: making their own rules independent of the UK; though subject to higher laws like taxes etc) between 1855-1890… with full autonomy granted in the 1930s.
So you lot have had around 100 years; and the treatment hasn’t budged… Let me guess; still not the Aussies fault eh?
yup because the blight was affected the low genetic diversity of the potato cultivar were using, this allowed the oomycetes to infect the potatos, aka water molds, which are not related to fungus.
They didn’t cause the potato blight but they absolutely caused the famine by forcing the export of the remaining food stock which was more than enough to feed the population.
That’s litterally exactly what I said.
It’s not though.
The British didn’t cause the famine, they “just” made it worse.
It’s a common misconception but there are a few issues with “didn’t cause the famine” for me:
- Potato blight != famine. There was a potato blight across all of Europe at the time. Ireland still produced more than enough food to feed itself even in 1847, the worst year of the blight. It wasn’t a case of making it worse, they literally wouldn’t have gone hungry at all.
- The only reason Irish peasants were so dependent on a single food crop to feed themselves was because it was what produced the most calories for a given area of land. The British stole the land from the Irish then forced payment at such a high rate from the people they stole it from that it left no choice but to use that single crop to feed themselves. They had to use their remaining non-potato land for higher value cash crops to pay rent on the land that was stolen from them.
- An enormous number of people died from exposure after being fucked off their land and having their homes burned to the ground because they couldn’t afford to pay rent to those landlords.
So the British did cause the actual famine in it’s entirety and the deliberate lack of relief was seen as an act of God / retribution to reduce the population here (which they 100% left to starve, with some kind landlord exceptions).
It’s why the Irish don’t call it “The Famine” any more. It’s “the great hunger” here because there wouldn’t have been a famine at all if we’d just been left the fuck alone to grow a variety of crops instead of being raped and pillaged for hundreds of years.
That’s a very good point and a distinction well worth making, thank you.
No worries :) I appreciate the back and forth.
Sir, you can’t blame class war rather than entire ethnic and cultural groups in here. How else will people know to fight against each other instead of the oligarchs?
Or we should just stick to facts?
