You really can’t pinpoint the Famine as a specific genocidal event when the economic and legal policies of England had been setting up the conditions for 400 years at that point.
The British did something incredibly similar in Bengal during WWII, where a famine killed millions. They deliberately shifted the distribution of food toward Britain and away from India.
Both cases lack intent to wipe out an ethnic or religious group, but both cases show that a long history of colonization make a population completely disposable to the colonizer.
An Gorta Mór was doomed to happen the moment the Pope created the Kingdom of Ireland as a personal fief for the King of England. The Potato Blight was a match, while the English had been stacking kindling and pouring on lighter fluid for centuries.
Many intellectuals, economists, and politicians knew it was coming. The potato blight had burned through most of Europe, causing minor damage, before it reached the British Isles.
So when it struck and the English were like 🤷♀️ the population of Ireland was halved and the British definitely took advantage of that. The population still has not fully recovered. Ireland could support (and should have) 20 million people, but it barely has 5 million on the whole island. This is because the inherently violent political and economic system didn’t go away when the crisis ended. More and more people emigrated, decimating the cultural/linguistics strongholds of Ireland.
If we compare genocide to attempted murder, famine, being the economically and politically constructed tragedies that they are, should be compared to criminal negligence.
I don’t call the Famine a genocide. It’s just yet another relic of how damaging English colonial rule was to the island and to my ancestors. You can’t isolate the Famine from the rest of Irish history. Just my onion.
given that this event wasn’t the only time that the english used a famine to deliberately cut ‘undesirable’ populations down in their colonies, i don’t think there’s anything wrong with calling it a genocide. yes, the existence of famine alone is usually attributable to poor administration, but when purposeful malicious intent enters the picture the event becomes both a famine and a genocide.
population death caused by poor food distribution by the administration during times of weak harvest: famine
population death caused by purposeful withholding of food or other forms of purposeful food mismanagement by the administration to affect specific areas during times of weak harvest: famine & genocide
The idea that being born with a penis/testicles means that you’re biologically programmed to be an aggressive, domineering, violent, selfish asshole and there’s simply no way to avoid it is patriarchal propaganda meant to excuse men’s violence (especially against women), and to convince women to blame themselves when men are violent against them, and any feminist who tries to repackage this view in their analysis of “biological sex” is what 11/10 experts call a sucker
Not to mention that numerous anthropological accounts have already disproven any kind of ‘natural’ relationship between ‘biological sex’ and cultural behavior. Thinking that ‘biological sex’ has a universal set of behaviors cross-culturally is not only ethnocentric but complicit in reproducing colonialist and imperialist discourses that work to impose a EuroAmericanist worldview, by force, onto others.
Theories of political conflict or division (such as the ever-popular “tribalism”) that assume irrationality as the source of such conflict, rather than contradictory and/or incompatible sets of recognizable interests and real positions of power, are silly and wrong
Also generally used as justifications for colonial violence, even among leftists. See “Israel and Palestine have been fighting forever sooooooo” or “indigenous tribes naturally fought each other pre-colonization”
If you want just one (of many) valid reasons to hate how the Disney company handled the story of Pocahontas, know this:
When Pocahontas was kidnapped, she fell into a deep depression after enduring mental, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her captors.
She was in such poor condition that her captors thought she was going to die, so they allowed her sister Mattachanna and brother-in-law Uttamattamakin to come to Jamestown to take care of her and nurse her back to health. This is when she confided to her sister that she had been raped several times (by more than one person) and believed she was pregnant. Mattachanna and Uttamattamakin were also with her when they sailed to London and were the ones who had to tell her father of her death (possible murder).
Pocahontas and Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World leave out Mattachanna entirely, but this is how they chose to depict Uttamattamakin:
Disney knew enough about this man to actually add him in a film and call him by his name (which also becomes a running joke because everybody fucks it up throughout the film), and THIS is how they portray him.
If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach I really don’t know what will.
this. this is why I’m pissed, this shit right here. It makes me so unbelievably angry and makes me cry. I’m so sorry matoaka, so sorry they romanticized your abuse and your captors. I’m so sorry all the white girls dress up as you and defend there reasoning by saying “she’s just a disney Princess” you weren’t just a disney princess and I won’t let you be. you were a scared twelve year old child who went through things no child should ever have to go through. I will not let you be reduced to a bastardized fairytale. your real story will be heard and will not be ignored.
It is North America’s dark, open secret that native women are far more likely to be raped, and far more likely to be murdered.
No justice. That is the constant cry from friends and families of victims as countless cases are left unresolved and ignored.
This is not a problem with one cause, nor is it one that is going away. Therefore any attempt to move towards a solution must recognise how terrifyingly deep the international crisis of MMIW runs.
Despite thousands of women going missing every year, and thousands being raped over their lifetimes, startlingly few statistics are available.
Given the complicated and tense mesh of federal, state and tribal law – as well as entrenched racism towards indigenous people across North America – cases continue to fall through the cracks.
I was reading threads in the Winnipeg subreddit today – always a mistake, I know. And I was struck over and over again by the level of racism in literally any discussion of First Nations news that got brought up. It’s that way fr the general Canada sub as well, but this is especially alarming and unnerving to me because Winnipeg has the highest percentage of Aboriginal people (11% of the city) of any major Canadian city. We’re your neighbors and coworkers.
But nothing about the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada or the US is going to change until non-Natives start seeing us as human. The virulent hatred feeds and enables the ease with which Native women “slip through the cracks.”
Also reminded by that tomato envy pic, I was also kind of impressed at how familiar a number of French heirloom seed varieties that get pushed here look. Especially with things like tomatoes and squashes.
And no wonder. Those were most likely taken back to France from a bit further up the East Coast. Slightly different varieties, but part of the same complex.
I mean, that wasn’t exactly hard to figure out. But it was still an interesting demonstration.
(And at least I haven’t seen anything claiming that the French brought tomatoes, unlike with the “Tennessee Cheese” type peppers. Ancient Spanish heirloom! 🤔 Not the only vegetable I have seen that claimed about, but one that popped into mind. And it’s not just that seed vendor.
My Nana always grew a similar “cheese” variety. Here’s another one. Those conquistadors must have been busy spreading vegetables around central Appalachia…)
Being cold is a lot better than being hot. You can layer up as much as you want to stay warm, but if you take enough off to cool down you’re probably going to jail.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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