16 MAY

NEW LONDON BURNED AND THE GARRISON SLAUGHTERED [ 6 September 1781 ] In the late eighteenth century, New London was a small port at the mouth of the river Thames on the Connecticut coast connecting American agricultural communities with the outside world. During the American Revolutionary War, the rebels used it as a base to…

BORIS JOHNSON ADMITS UK NOT OPPOSED TO ILLEGAL DRONE STRIKES. Writing for The Spectator on 25 July 2018, the recently resigned British foreign secretary Boris Johnson implied that the government would not hesitate in authorizing intelligence sharing to enable a drone strike assassination of targets, who while not necessarily posing any imminent threat to life,…

DOUGLAS-HOME LIES ABOUT BRITISH BACKED TERROR OPERATIONS IN YEMEN. 21 July 1964 – British prime minister Alec Douglas-Home assured the House of Commons that “our policy is one of non-involvement in the civil war in the Yemen.” As historians Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac observe, “this was simply not true.”(1) The British government was…

BURNING AND INDISCRIMINATE MURDER AT ISTALIF [29 September 1842 ] On this day in 1842, a retribution expedition under the command of Major General McCaskill entered the Afghan town of Istalif, forty miles north of Kabul. It has been one of the first towns to participate in an anti-British insurgency which had ultimately led to…

NEWSPAPER DISMISSES DANGERS OF TREADMILL, BLAMING IDLE, SULKY SLAVES [ 12 October 1823 ] On 12 October 1823, the English newspaper John Bull, disparaged the concern expressed in a letter from the British colony of Trinidad over a slave called Moses who had broken his leg while being punished on a treadmill. MASS EXECUTIONS TO…

“SLAUGHTER ALL THE MEN” [ 29 June 1857 ] On this day in 1857, Colonel James Neill ordered his redcoats on a mission of bloody retribution against an Indian village suspected of harbouring mutineers,  insisting that “the village of Mullagu and neighbourhood be destroyed – slaughter all the men – take no prisoners,” adding “all…