Article

2006-05-08 Caribbean-Latin America

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Posted by Steve White 2006-05-08 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Gun, meet foot. You kids play nice now.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2006-05-08 09:47|| 2006-05-08 09:47|| Front Page Top

#2 The thought occurs that there are similarities between this and Africa during during the last half of the 20th century. Country after country replaced European colonial administrations with indigenous socialist/communist/tribalist thugocracies. The result was to give well-fed, prosperous peoples over to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. If I lived in Bolivia, I would apply for asylum in the US.

Posted by RWV 2006-05-08 10:30|| 2006-05-08 10:30|| Front Page Top

#3 Hell, if I lived in Bolivia, et al, I'd petition the US for Commonwealth status.

Posted by Hupese Omack9226 2006-05-08 12:50|| 2006-05-08 12:50|| Front Page Top

#4 I wouldn't go so far as to say that the people of Africa in the 1960s were well-fed and prosperous. As I recall, the Belgians truly did rape the Congo, and the Frenchies weren't a whole lot nicer in their part of the continent. These colonies existed first and foremost for the benefit of the mother country.

That said, the combination of anti-colonalism and socialism was a particularly bad one for Africa, one that only now they're beginning (in a few places) to fix.

Posted by Steve White">Steve White 2006-05-08 16:06|| 2006-05-08 16:06|| Front Page Top

#5 On the eve of independence, the Congo, a territory larger than Western Europe, bordering on nine other African colonies/states, was seriously underdeveloped. There were no African army officers, only three African managers in the entire civil service, and only 30 university graduates.

Posted by john 2006-05-08 19:42|| 2006-05-08 19:42|| Front Page Top

#6 Mark Twain calls Léopold the slayer of 15 million Congolese and a "greedy, grasping, avaricious, cynical, bloodthirsty old goat". His dark and graphic satire 'King Léopold's Soliloquy: A Defence of His Congo Rule' is published in pamphlet form by the American Congo Reform Association in September 1905.

" Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host,
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell."

Posted by john 2006-05-08 19:48|| 2006-05-08 19:48|| Front Page Top

#7 remember "Roland, the headless Thompson Gunner"...

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-05-08 19:55|| 2006-05-08 19:55|| Front Page Top

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