Comrade Laleh sent me this comment about a post from yesterday: ""This is funny. That they expect countries under occupation to be warm and grateful to the occupiers."
You think this is weird! The 1960s counterinsurgency expert, Robert Thompson (who had served the British empire in Malaya, and who advised Kennedy, and who was one of the forefathers of strateic hamelts in VN) actually has a quote somewhere about how the best measure of the success of counterinsurgency is how smiley the natives are when a British colonial administrator goes into their village. Similarly, archival documents from Malaya show that British colonial/civilian administrators in malaya were worried about the flood of British Palestine Policement to Malaya after 1948, because they said, these Palestine Policemen are used to dealing with sullen Arabs, whereas the Malays are supposed to be good-natured and smiley. There is an entire colonial discourse around the "sullen" native, and the happy-go-lucky acquiescent or collaborating native."
You think this is weird! The 1960s counterinsurgency expert, Robert Thompson (who had served the British empire in Malaya, and who advised Kennedy, and who was one of the forefathers of strateic hamelts in VN) actually has a quote somewhere about how the best measure of the success of counterinsurgency is how smiley the natives are when a British colonial administrator goes into their village. Similarly, archival documents from Malaya show that British colonial/civilian administrators in malaya were worried about the flood of British Palestine Policement to Malaya after 1948, because they said, these Palestine Policemen are used to dealing with sullen Arabs, whereas the Malays are supposed to be good-natured and smiley. There is an entire colonial discourse around the "sullen" native, and the happy-go-lucky acquiescent or collaborating native."
