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To: Win Smith who wrote (162)	2/18/2001 2:58:55 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 51713

I read that book in my non-fiction book group. It was a profoundly disturbing book.

To: Win Smith who wrote (162)	2/18/2001 4:31:25 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 51713

Hi Wim, Thanks a lot for that interesting bit of history. In King Leopold's era, we in the US were doing a much more thorough job. While he was lazily only cutting the native population in half, we were in the process of 90% reductions of many tribes. Leopold was a mere tyro in the arts of genocide. At the same time, Queen Victoria had a cash flow problem. Her home subjects were developing a taste for tea that was insatiable. The problem was that England had no trade to make and thus was reduced to actually paying sterling to the growers in Assam and Darjeeling. This was anathema to the Queen, so she, Disraeli and Gladstone concocted a plan to addict the Chinese to opium, who, until the British gunboats made their way up the Pearl River and created a garrison that protected the joint promotion of drug addiction and Christianity, had been relatively hostile to opiate addiction. The British found that the opium trade was quite lucrative and it supported the tea trade without a drain on the British Current Account. The Boxer Rebellion, in part, was designed to eradicate the foreign devil from China, and Queen Victoria was the devil incarnate to many in the Orient. With justification, IMO. One of the US soldiers who was sent to China to put down the rebellion was Smedley Butler, USMC, who eventually rose to the rank of Lt. General of the Marine Corps. He was called upon in 1932 by lawyers representing the House of Morgan to perpetrate a coup d'etat and eliminate FDR. Here's a bit of his story: chss.montclair.edu trilia.com Interesting, eh? I only learned about the Smedley Butler involvement in the proposed coup d'etat during the most recent presidential election, when it appeared that someone would need better than a 5-4 majority in order to steal the election. The imperialist class is alive and well, and in the saddle again. The fleecing of the middle class that we're seeing with the huge increases in home heating bills and government bond lunacy in California..... we'll guess what, we ain't seen nothin' yet...... :) Best, Ray