Re: Wherever you look in Brussels and other cities of Belgium you see buildings, monuments etc which were built with the blood of blacks from the former Belgian Congo. The Belgian economy for nearly 100 years was run on the blood of blacks -- and all Belgians benefited. But because the Belgians simply walked out of the Congo, leaving a mess of unrivaled proportions anywhere in Africa, and which still persists, the past is simply forgotten.
Likewise, on the broader picture, wherever you look in London, Rome, Venice, Paris, Sevilla, and other cities of Europe you see buildings, monuments etc which were built with the blood of blacks from the former colonial empires. The European economy for nearly 500 years was run on the blood of blacks and native Americans -- and all Europeans benefited. But because the Europeans simply walked out of their former colonies, leaving a mess of unrivaled proportions anywhere in Africa and a genocidal holocaust in the Americas, and which still persists, the past is simply... the past!
Indeed, it's impossible to redress the crimes of colonialism, that is, past colonialism. But it's still possible for us to deal with and put an end to present-day colonialism --whether it's "domestic colonialism" in Europe and the US, or in its more brutal and anachronistic forms in Palestine and apartheid South Africa. Besides, to claim that all Europeans/Belgians benefited from their colonial empires is to miss the fact that the latter were also a curse for Europe's cannon fodder: millions of Europeans died during WWI in what was basically an imperialist struggle between European empires... Hence my minimalist condition that self-rule must be granted to colonized peoples, all the rest is either history or greed. As in the case of Jewish outfits filing class action suits against Swiss banks or German corporations or French museums. I think it'd be ridiculous for African countries to follow suit and demand billions of dollars to make up for colonialism. Money is not the silver bullet to kill poverty... As a famous Brussels priest put it, "The poor are poor not because they don't have money --they don't have money because they are poor!"(*) For that matter, zillions of dollars and euros were donated to Africa through numerous NGOs, to no avail as far as economic development is concerned. And when we look at oil-producing countries that have won tens of billions of dollars at the "geological lottery" we see that it didn't translate into advanced technologies, homemade consumer products and a local industrial base. Saudi princes and their retinues are merely shopping Europe and America, hiring western manpower to mind their own stores! Another clue to the "oil curse" is the fate of Norway. Isn't it funny indeed that, of all Scandinavian countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark), only oil-rich Norway didn't spawn any modern, world-class business? Finland gave birth to Nokia and Linux, Sweden spawned Saab, Ericsson, Electrolux,... Denmark boasts Lego, Bang & Olufsen(**),... But Norway?
Gus
(*) 7sur7.be
(**) bang-olufsen.com |
