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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (9608)	12/26/2005 12:39:00 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 22250

> And what do the Belgians, including you, owe to those in their former colony, the Belgian Congo, after years of the most brutal exploitation and the rest? en.wikipedia.org >>Reports of outrageous exploitation and widespread human rights abuses (including enslavement and mutilation) of the native population, especially in the rubber industry, led to an international protest movement in the early 1900s. Estimates of the death toll range from 3 to 10 million and many historians consider the atrocities to have constituted a genocide. Finally, in 1908, the Belgian parliament compelled the King to cede the Congo Free State to Belgium. Historians of the period tend to take a very dim view of Leopold, due to the mass killings and human rights abuses that took place in the Congo: one British historian has said that he "was an Attila in modern dress, and it would have been better for the world if he had never been born." Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany once described his fellow ruler as a "thoroughly bad man." Leopold II is perceived by many Belgians as the "King-Builder" ("le Roi-Bâtisseur" in French, "Koning-Bouwer" in Dutch) because he commissioned a great number of buildings and urbanistic projects in Belgium (mainly in Brussels, Ostend and Antwerp). The buildings include the Royal Glasshouses at Laeken (in the domain of the Laeken Royal Castle), the Japanese tower, the Chinese pavilion, the Musée du Congo (now called the Royal Museum for Central Africa) and their surrounding park in Tervuren, the Jubilee Triple Arch in Brussels and the Antwerp train station hall. He also built an important country estate in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera in France, including the Villa des Cèdres, which is now a botanical garden. He was able to satisfy his megalomania and erect these buildings with the wealth provided by Congo exploitation. There has been a "Great Forgetting", as Adam Hochschild puts it in King Leopold's Ghost, after Leopold's Congo was transferred to Belgium. In Hochschild's words: The Congo offer a striking example of the politics of forgetting. Leopold and the Belgian colonial officials who followed him went to extraordinary lengths to try to erase potentially incriminating evidence from the historical records. (Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost).<< And a certain Belgian has the audacity, no, the chutspah, to point the finger at white South Africans for racial crimes. Nothing the South Africans have done compares, even remotely, with the dastardly deeds of the Belgians in Africa.

To: sea_urchin who wrote (9608)	12/27/2005 5:14:25 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Re: And what do the Belgians, including you, owe to those in their former colony, the Belgian Congo, after years of the most brutal exploitation and the rest? Well, as far as I'm concerned, I don't owe them my current lifestyle.... I mean, the Belgian-Congolese issue was settled, for the main part, in 1962 when Belgium granted her colony formal independence. Hence there's no longer a white Belgian minority lording it over native Congolese in the DRC --a crucial difference with South Africa, and a source of confusion as well. Indeed, you white South Africans must relinquish your socio-economic assets in addition to the purely political franchise already granted to the black majority NOT TO REDEEM YOURSELVES FOR APARTHEID'S CRIMES but to pledge yourselves to a truly multiracial and peaceful South Africa henceforth.... Unlike the Belgians, white South Africans can't tell their fellow black citizens, "but in you're in charge now! We left! You're on your own! The land, the country, the mines, the highways, the railways, the power plants, the banks, the hotels, everything, are ALL YOURS NOW!!! Don't blame us if you can't handle it and mess it all up!!!" Unlike Congolese, black South Africans can still point at the white elephant stuck in the middle of the living room --and rightly so. Of course, such a broad-brush disclaimer by former colonial powers like Britain, Belgium, France,... is somewhat hypocritical and unfair because, following the colonies' formal independence, economic neocolonialism kicked in and somehow took up where colonial stewardship left off. Most African countries, for all their political sovereignty, were still dependent on European and US markets to trade their riches. They were also dependent on European/US skills and know-how and, last but not least, money (IMF, world bank,...) Yet, self-rule doesn't mean "autarky" and all countries --not just poor African and Latin American ones-- must get by in a globalized economy where corporate and financial power lie increasingly outside the nation's narrow ambit. Heck, even tiny Belgium had to adjust to a world where GM, Ford, ExxonMobil,... boast of annual revenues bigger than Belgium's GDP. So, my point, Searle, is that you white South Africans, can't have it both ways. You can't call it quits just because you gave up the trappings of political rule while holding on tight to your socioeconomical privileges. Gus