Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (18895)	11/28/1998 11:37:00 PM
From: Drew Williams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Long OT rant..... << Colonisation is not all bad you know. Africa hasn't been anything great since they threw off the yoke of the evil British. Idi Amin put paid to a horde of his countrymen. That didn't happen when the British were in charge. >> Americans, when we think about colonization at all, which is not very often, mostly think about the British, French, and Spanish colonizers, because large parts of the continental USA used to belong to those three countries. (I'm not forgetting Russia used to own Alaska, it just is not relevant to most of us. Hawaii was an independent nation that we took over for the pineapples. Lucky thing, too, because we've needed Pearl Harbor for other reasons along the way.) If you accept Mqurice's functional definition of the word, America has been colonizing the entire planet for fifty years or so. The way the Europeans used the word before that was quite different. I recently heard an interview with the author of a new book (I apologize for mentioning this without providing either the name of the book or the author, neither of which I remember) that tells the story of how the Belgian King Leopold personally owned the Congo Free State. (Late 19th century?) He wanted it the Congo for the rubber trees, and was merciless in his exploitation of that countries resources. During his stewardship, somewhere north of five million people -- perhaps as many as ten million -- were massacred one way or another so the rubber would get out. Joseph Conrad wrote HEART OF DARKNESS based on real people and real events he knew from living there for a time. There were notable international committees who attempted to force Leopold to change, but they were generally ineffective. The author of the book started researching this after reading a notice about Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) being on one of these committees. He wondered why he (an historian) had never heard of this when the killing was at the same scale as the WWII holocaust where the Nazi's murdered six million or so Jews. There have been any number of major holocausts in the last hundred years or so, some better known than others, including the aforementioned "final solution," the Turks murdering the Armenians, and the Pol Pot led Laotian Killing Fields. The Soviets starved millions of Kulaks in the twenties and killed millions more, probably more than the Nazi's during WWII, with significant pograms continuing until Stalin's death. America has not been the cause of any of these. Well, you could argue the Laotian situation was a consequence of our involvement in Vietnam, but that is hardly the same as the others' direct actions. Yes, Americans did terrible things to the native American Indians. Slavery was a bad thing, and racism continues today to some extent. There is substantially more economic difference between those at the top and those at the bottom than is probably good for us. And if everyone on the planet polluted as much as I do we would all be gagging. So, we're not perfect. Who is? We're working on the problems. Frankly, I think we have less to feel guilty about than most. Of all the countries in the world, so many this century have had people risking their lives to get out. In the case of the United States, today and for most of its history, people have been risking their lives to get in.