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Title: Is it possible that entire populations are going INSANE?
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Published: Nov 15, 2006
Author: Mehitable Storm
Post Date: 2006-11-15 11:31:45 by mehitable
Keywords: None
Views: 2026
Comments: 61
I just posted this idea in a thread to Robin about what is happening in the Congo and wanted to throw the idea out to a broader group. People are behaving so bizarrely, frequently on a mass scale such as in the Congo, that I am wondering if many large groups of people - and I mean entire populations - are suffering from psychosis. The behaviors in the Congo seem to be well beyond the behavior of even wartime atrocities - they seem like the actions of insane people. What is making people so crazy? Is it a social phenomena of breakdown in traditional cultures and values, or is there some real organic effect of chemicals and/or drugs that are making people literally INSANE?
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#1. To: mehitable (#0)
Americans live in sanitized sanitariums. This is nothing new for mankind be it in the past or the present. Soldiers have been doing this to women since man organized for war. See examples in recent history like the Japanese 'Rape of Nanking' or the taking of Berlin by the Red Army.
The Belgians, of all people, I know, those guys with sweet beer and truffles and chocolate. The book below is hard to read. Imagine, killing 10 MILLION people in a non industrialized fashion. Read this book. See how the civilizing Europeans would chop off the hands of those who refused to slave for them to enrich the King - of Belgium, of course! In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo-- too long forgotten--onto the conscience of the West.
Wow, I will have to check that out - thanks for the recommendation!
how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today. You're welcome. Good to see you're open to the history of HomoSapiens, as nasty as it is. And one nit, the Great War was absolutely insane. It was a lot more than just soldiers and blowing things up. Read A World Undone by GJMeyer, a recent history. You will lose all faith in any authority, as the Kings, Ministers and Generals, trapped in their prevailing mindsets, stumbled and sleepwalked into war, launched attacks and counterattacks without virtually a whit of compassion for the millions they sent to their deaths. Europe went mad. Completely. If the European monarchies had not gelded themselves in the blood orgy, it's quite probable that the domination of the world by the European powers would have lasted centuries more.
Kaiser Wilhelm bears an awful lot of the blame (as do his German subjects.) I fear Bush shares a lot of Wilhelm's psychological problems, and there is also, I think, all too much similarity between Wilhelmine Germans and current Americans.
Well, there was enough blame. The Austrian insistence, and shades of ClintonAlbright at Rambouillet, an ultimatum issued by the Habsburgs to Serbia that was designed to elicit Serbian refusal, much like NATO wanted Serbia to give up its sovereignity, a virtual parallel to the Austrian demand. Germany's fault lay in her giving a blank cheque of support to the Habsburgs. The Czar of Russia, coming to the aid of the Serbs. Not to mention the populations of all Europe, including Britain and France, who caught up in the jingoistic war fervor, clamored for war.
#43. To: swarthyguy (#27)
Austria, a junior partner who felt its existence threatened, behaved very much the way Israel does today. My point was that most of the danger in the world today springs from Bush and the U.S. It is therefore within our power to remove most of the danger. If some part of the danger comes from U.S. allies like Israel, and from other powers, I don't think that vitiates my point.
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#15. To: Destro, mehitable (#1)
Forgotten History of the Congo.
#16. To: swarthyguy (#15)
#17. To: mehitable, aristeides (#16)
#21. To: swarthyguy (#17)
Europe went mad. Completely. If the European monarchies had not gelded themselves in the blood orgy, it's quite probable that the domination of the world by the European powers would have lasted centuries more.
#27. To: aristeides, Destro (#21)
Replies to Comment # 27.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 27.