A Different Drummer

Found via the excellent 3arabawy blog at arabist.net, this BBC news article reveals that the English had a plan to cut the flow of the Nile river during their joint 1956 invasion of the Suez Canal zone along with France and Israel.

The BBC article doesn't seem to give much thought to the probable famine and humanitarian crisis that such a move would have caused, instead quoting some random asshole from the British government at the time who seemed to see starvation as an excellent method of talking to the masses:

"It might be possible to spread the word among the more illiterate Egyptians that 'unless Nasser climbs down, Britain will cut off the Nile'," Cabinet official John Hunt was revealed to have said.

Unbelievable. They seem like really decent people to me these days, but the English political class seem must have been a pack of absolute bastards back in the colonial days. Luckily, the disastrous Suez crisis was the end of all that.....