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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: 2033
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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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 33.
#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.
I've been trying to find some info on Congo history, and from what I've read the pygmies were there first, then others came and settled, by the time Leopold arrived in 1ate 1800s, the Arabs were already trading the natives as slaves, and the pygmies were already being eaten by the other natives. Indeed Leopold was very brutal and ruthless in his quest for rubber, and there are too many varying estimates of the dead. They died from diseases brought in by the white man, and from forced labor, starvation and outright murder. The estimates range from 10,000 dead all the way up to 10 million dead, that number claimed by Hochschild, who appears to be widely quoted. I don't think anyone will ever know the true number of dead from that era. The present day population is around 50 million, and the country is quite large, and very troubled.
Your prerogative. Hochschild's research is impeccable. As far as the blame agenda, well, he's an historian, you can believe him or not. That's why in the future, when the numbers of Iraqi dead are disputed, the same rationale can be used to discount the Lancet study. Only 30K civilians dead in Irak. That's what Dubya says. Varying estimates of the dead depend on who is pushing what agenda. The Belgians have every reason to minimise the numbers they killed. OK, so only 10K died at Belgian hands in the Congo in the 1890's.
To be fair to Diana, there's quite a range between 10k and 10 million. One would be interested in how the author derived his figure. Also, just because someone is an "historian" doesn't mean they are necessarily accurate or without an agenda. I don't know this fellow or his work so I can't say specifically, but inaccuracies or deliberate falsehoods certainly occur in historical research.
Alright, we'll just blame it on the Jews.
LMAO - well, that's not my point of view. I'm just sayin', is all.
It's a human desire to turn away from the brutality of the human race. I think citing someone's "agenda" is an easy way out. If you read the book and then come up with valid reasons for disputing his account, fine. But, it's part and parcel of the marked tendency to ignore some of the causes and reasons why Africa is the basket case it is. The unyielding brutality of the Colonial powers as they built their wealth on the blood of the natives. Not to say the natives weren't brutal to each other. But, viewing historical facts through rose colored glasses and hiding behind words like "agenda" and questioning research without reading the book, simply because the facts are highly uncomfortable is, well, human nature. If it wasn't Belgians, perhaps the truth is easier to take. As I said, Belgians, those truffle guys?
I think that's waffle guys. Aren't the French the truffle guys?
#34. To: robin (#33)
You are correct. Mea Culpa.
Depends on the kind of truffles. The Belgians are big into chocolate so they probably make a lot of chocolate truffles.
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#15. To: Destro, mehitable (#1)
Forgotten History of the Congo.
#25. To: swarthyguy, Destro, mehitable, robin (#15)
#28. To: Diana (#25)
#29. To: swarthyguy, Diana (#28)
#30. To: mehitable (#29)
#31. To: swarthyguy (#30)
#32. To: mehitable (#31)
#33. To: swarthyguy, mehitable (#32)
As I said, Belgians, those truffle guys?
Replies to Comment # 33.
#35. To: robin (#33)
End Trace Mode for Comment # 33.